(1760 - 1842), e. s. of 1st E. of Mornington [I]; educ. Eton, Harrow and Ch.Ch. Oxf. 1778; suc. fa. 1781 as 2nd E.; MP 1780 - 1 [I], 1784 - 97; KP 1783; m. 1 1794 Hyacinthe Gabrielle Roland (d. 1816), 2 1825 Marianne Caton, wid. of Robert Patterson; gov.-gen. Bengal 1797 - 1805; cr. B. Wellesley 1797 and M. Wellesley [I] 1799; amb. Spain 1809; KG 1810.
1790 - 1 [Paris by 27 Sep. 1790] Mont Cenis (12 Oct. 1790), Turin (four days), Genoa, Parma (one day, early Nov.), Bologna, Florence (two days), Rome, Naples (by 4 Jan. 1791 - after 15 Feb.), Rome (by Apr.), Florence, Verona [Spa Jul.]
Lord Mornington went abroad for the sake of his health, travelling with his French mistress, Hyacinthe Gabrielle Roland, whom he subsequently married. He described his travels in four letters addressed to Lord Grenville.1 They crossed Mont Cenis on 12 October 1790 and made only brief stops on their way to Naples, where they stayed some six weeks. From Naples on 4 January Mornington wrote that he had been away from England 'near six months'. His letter made copious allusions to Virgil and Horace; 'all the old ideas of Eton and Oxford employed my mind', he wrote, without which 'I think the journey through Italy would lose the greatest part of its amusement'. At Naples he disagreed with that 'coxcomb Mr Addison' who had doubted the authenticity of Virgil's tomb, taking from it a cutting from the 'most sacred laureus' for Lord Grenville (15 Feb.). He returned to Rome, where Hyacinthe sat to Vig?e Lebrun, the portrait dated 1791 (Christie's, 26 Jun. 1964). He witnessed a murder under his window, the murderer walking away 'very coolly to the house of Cardinal Albani where he was received with open arms'. Such colpi di coltello, added to the 'dirt, stink, & vermin', made him feel uncomfortable at Rome and in April he had contracted a malarial fever ('not at all of the same nature of that which obliged me to leave England'). He resolved to return to the cooler northern climate. He was still indisposed in Florence, where the British envoy, John, Lord Hervey, was particularly attentive to him, but the heat prevented him from visiting Venice. He went through Verona to the Tyrol and Germany and by 3 July he was in Spa, proposing to be back in England in August or September.
1. HMC Fortescue, 1:607ff; 2:4ff, 32, 117 ff.