Strathfieldsaye, 27th November 1846.
Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington presents his humble duty to your Majesty.
He has just now received your Majesty's most gracious commands from Osborne, dated the 26th instant.
He does not doubt that many of the brave officers and soldiers who served in the armies in the Peninsula under the command of the Duke are anxious to receive and wear a medal, struck by command of the Sovereign, to commemorate the services performed in that seat of the late war.
Many of them have, upon more than one occasion, expressed such desire, in their letters addressed to the Duke, in their petitions to Parliament, and, as the Duke has reason to believe, in petitions presented to your Majesty.
Although the Duke has never omitted to avail himself of every occasion which offered to express his deep sense of the meritorious services of the officers and soldiers of the Army which served in the Peninsula, he did not consider it his duty to suggest to the Sovereign, under whose auspices, or the Minister under whose direction the services in question were performed, any particular mode in which those services of the Army should be recognised by the State.
Neither has he considered it his duty to submit such suggestion since the period at which the services were performed, bearing in mind the various important considerations which must have an influence upon the decision on such a question, which it was and is the duty of your Majesty's confidential servants alone to take into consideration, and to decide.
Neither can the Duke of Wellington now venture to submit to your Majesty his sense of a comparison of the services of the Army which served in the Peninsula, with those of other armies in other parts of the world, whose recent services your Majesty has been most graciously pleased to recognise by ordering that medals should be struck, to commemorate each of such services, one of which to be delivered to each officer and soldier present, which your Majesty was graciously pleased to permit him to wear.
Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington humbly solicits your Majesty, in grateful submission to your Majesty upon the subject of the last paragraph of your Majesty's most gracious letter, that, considering the favour with which his services were received and rewarded by the gracious Sovereign, under whose auspices they were performed; the professional rank and the dignity in the State to which he was raised, and the favour with which his services were then and have been ever since received, that your Majesty would be graciously pleased to consider upon this occasion only the well-founded claims upon your Majesty's attention of the officers and soldiers who served in the Army in the Peninsula; and to consider him, as he considers himself, amply rewarded for any service which he might have been instrumental in rendering; and desirous only of opportunities of manifesting his gratitude for the favour and honour with which he has been treated by his Sovereign.