page_title: Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley
section_title: Family life
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley / Family life
caption_attribution_description: Hyacinthe Gabrielle Roland, Marchioness Wellesley, (formerly Countess of Mornington)
context_page_description: Richard Colley Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, KG, KP, PC, PC was an Anglo-Irish politician and colonial administrator. He was styled as Viscount Wellesley until 1781, when he succeeded his father as 2nd Earl of Mornington. In 1799, he was granted the Irish peerage title of Marquess Wellesley. He first made his name as Governor-General of India between 1798 and 1805, and he later served as Foreign Secretary in the British Cabinet and as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.He was the fifth Governer-General of India.In 1799, he invaded Mysore and defeated Tipu the Sultan of Mysore after a huge battle portraying Tipu as a cruel tyrant needing to be put down.
  He was the eldest son of The 1st Earl of Mornington, an Irish peer, and Anne, the eldest daughter of The 1st Viscount Dungannon. His younger brother, Arthur, was Field Marshal The 1st Duke of Wellington.
context_section_description: Wellesley lived together for many years with Hyacinthe-Gabrielle Roland, an actress at the Palais Royal. She had three sons and two daughters by Wellesley before he married her on 29 November 1794. He moved her to London, where Hyacinthe was generally miserable, as she never learned English and she was scorned by high society: Lady Caroline Lamb was warned by her mother-in-law, Elizabeth Milbanke, a noted judge of what was socially acceptable,  that no respectable woman could afford to be seen in Hyacinthe's company.
  Their children were:
  Richard Wellesley (1787–1831), a member of parliament
  Anne Wellesley (1788–1875), who married firstly Sir William Abdy, 7th Baronet, and secondly Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Charles Bentinck
  Hyacinthe Mary Wellesley (1789–1849), who married Edward Littleton, 1st Baron Hatherton
  Gerald Wellesley (1792–1833), who served as the East India Company's resident at Indore.
  The Rev. Henry Wellesley (1794–1866), Principal of New Inn Hall, Oxford.
  Edward John Johnstone (1795-1877)
  Through his eldest daughter Lady Charles Bentinck, Wellesley is a great-great-great grandfather to Queen Elizabeth II.
  Wellesley also had at least two other illegitimate sons by his teenage mistress, Elizabeth Johnston, including Edward (later his father's secretary), born in Middlesex in 1796.  Wellesley's children were seen by   Richard's other relatives, including his brother Arthur, as greedy, unattractive and cunning, and as exercising an unhealthy influence over their father; in the family circle they were nicknamed "The Parasites".
  Following his  first wife's death in 1816, he married, on 29 October 1825, the widowed Marianne (Caton) Patterson (died 1853), whose mother Mary was the daughter of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last surviving signatory of the United States Declaration of Independence; her former sister-in-law was Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte. They had no children. If not as unhappy as his first marriage, it was generally regarded as a failure.  Wellington, who was very fond of Marianne (rumour had it that they were lovers)  and was then on rather bad terms with his brother, pleaded with her not to marry him, warning her in particular that  "The Parasites", (Richard's children by Hyacinthe)  would see her as an enemy.
caption: Hyacinthe-Gabrielle Roland, as painted by Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun in 1791.
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