THE WELLESLEY-POLES.
The death was announced a few weeks ago of a lady whose name will awaken a train of recollection in the minds of all who take an interest in English family history. This was Miss Tylney-Long, sister to the ill-fated Mrs. Tylney-Long-Wellesley-Pole.
The duke of Wellington's second brother, William, succeeded in 1778 to the large Irish estates of a kinsman, Mr. Pole, and assumed that name in addition to his own. Mr. Wellesley-Pole, who was eventually created a peer as Lord Maryborough, had a son, who became, on the death of his uncle, the marquis Wellesley, earl of Mornington. Never had the peerage a more unworthy member. Starting in life with every advantage, Mr. Wellesley-Pole seemed bent upon showing how effectually he could foil the efforts of Fortune to serve him. When he reached an age for marriage the greatest heiress of the time was Miss Tylney-Long. By a succession of failures of male heirs the vast wealth of the family of Child had devolved on this lady, and Mr. Wellesley-Pole became the successful suitor for her hand. One of her seats was Wanstead in Essex, some fifteen miles from London. Originally a royal manor, Wanstead was granted by Edward VI. to Lord Rich, who sold it to Elizabeth's favorite, Leicester. Subsequently, on its reverting to the Crown, James I. gave it to Sir Henry Mildmay, but, he having been one of Charles I.'s judges, it became forfeited, and once more returned to the sovereign. Charles II. gave it to his brother James, who sold it to Sir Robert Brooke, and he in turn sold it to Sir Joshua Child.
The Childs were the greatest mercantile family of their time. Sir Joshua founded the banking-house of the name which still flourishes (the oldest in London), and of which the young earl of Jersey is, through his great-grandmother, also a Child heiress, the principal partner. Sir Joshua's son was raised to a peerage as Earl Tylney, and about 1715 employed a celebrated architect of the day, Colin Campbell, to build a magnificent mansion. Wanstead was deemed on its completion in many respects the most magnificent house in England. It was of Portland stone, two hundred feet in length and seventy deep. The great hall was fifty-three by forty-five feet, the ball-room seventy-five by twenty-seven. This abode was furnished in a style of the most lavish splendor, and Mr. Wellesley-Pole's income was more than adequate to maintain it in befitting style. But no income is adequate to meet the expenses of a gambler and spendthrift, and such was Mr. Wellesley-Pole.
Some of his wife's property was happily settled on her and her heirs, and could not be got hold of by her rascally husband; but Wanstead, after being leased for some time to the duc de Bourbon—who here received intelligence of the death of his unfortunate son, the duc d'Enghien—came to the hammer. The sale of the effects in 1822 exceeded anything of the kind which had been known in England up to that date. The catalogue consisted of four hundred quarto pages, published in three parts, at five shillings each, and it is said that not less than twenty thousand copies were sold. It is not a little remarkable that the contents of Fonthill Abbey (the celebrated seat of the author of Vathek), which teemed with even greater riches, were sold almost at the same time. Nor were the contents of the mansion only disposed of. The fabric itself, which had cost three hundred and sixty thousand pounds, was sold for eight thousand pounds, it being a condition of the sale that it should be razed and the materials removed within a definite number of months.
Had Tylney-Long-Wellesley-Pole (for such was the polysyllabic name he bore after his marriage) been only a spendthrift and a gambler, his case might not have seemed remarkable. But he showed himself in every way a heartless scoundrel as regarded his wife and his children, who had to seek legal protection against him. About a year after the sale of her splendid home his wife died, and the event is thus spoken of in a leading journal of the time: "The premature death of an amiable and accomplished lady born to large possessions, and against whom the voice of calumny never so much as breathed a slander, calls, we think, for a passing comment, as illustrating and furnishing, we trust, a lasting and useful lesson to the heartlessness of too many men of the present day. With a fortune that made her a prize for princes, this amiable woman gave her hand and heart to the man of her choice, and with them all that unbounded wealth could bestow. What her fate has been all the world knows: what it ought to have been the world is equally well aware. To her, riches have been worse than poverty; and her life seems to have been scarified and her heart broken through the very means that should have cherished and maintained her in the happiness and splendor which her fortune and disposition were alike qualified to produce. Let her fate be a warning to all of her sex who, blessed with affluence, think the buzzing throng which surrounds them have hearts, when in fact they have none; and if there be such a feeling as remorse accessible in the quarter where it is most called for, let the world witness, by a future life of contrition, something like atonement for the past."
So far, however, as the world could discover, the atonement never came. Lord Mornington, as he became, actually found another woman to marry him: he ill-used her, and having sunk into narrow circumstances, neglected to provide her with the barest necessaries, so that the applications of the countess of Mornington to the London police magistrates for assistance became of frequent occurrence. It may seem strange that the Wellesley family should not have stepped in to prevent such a scandal. Probably they thought that the woman who in the teeth of his evil reputation had chosen to marry him should take the consequences. He died in 1857. His son, whose life his father's conduct had sadly embittered, did not long survive him, and bequeathed the remnant of his estates, including Draycot, a large mansion (which had been strictly entailed) in Wiltshire, to his cousin, Lord Cowley, then ambassador at Paris. His title passed to the duke of Wellington.
THE FATE OF DANGAN CASTLE.
Lord Cowley, on being created an earl, selected for his second title that of Viscount Dangan, thus perpetuating the memory of the old seat of the Wellesleys in Ireland. It is a somewhat remarkable circumstance that although no family in the United Kingdom has within the last century acquired such fame and honors as the Wellesleys, they have long since ceased to own a rood of ground in the country whence they derived the affluence and rank which were to the famous sons of Garrett, earl of Mornington, the first stepping-stones to fame.
The Wellesleys are only Wellesleys—or Wesleys, as the name was formerly spelt—in the female line. Richard Colley, son of Henry Colley, of Castle Carbery, county Cork, succeeded on the 23d of September, 1728, to the estates of his cousin, Garrett Wesley, Esq., of Dangan, county Meath, assumed the name and arms of "Wesley," and was created baron of Mornington July 9, 1746. He married, December 23, 1819, Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Doctor John Sale, M.P. for Carysfort, and died January 31, 1758, when he was succeeded by his only son, Garrett, father of the duke of Wellington, who was created in 1760 Viscount Wellesley and earl of Mornington.