Wellington's youngest brother Henry was a diplomatist of high repute
in his day, and his grandson, Colonel F. A. Wellesley, has done well to edit The Diary and Correspondence of Henry Wellesley, First Lord Cowley, 1790-4846 (Hutchinson, 21s.). He went out to India when his eldest brother was Governor-General, and says that he lost a reward of £10,000 for his services because an incautious letter of his, reflecting on the East India Company's directors, was intercepted and published by the French. He was Envoy and afterwards Ambassador in Spain from 1810 to 1821; he spent the next ten years at Vienna, dealing with Metternich, and from 1841 to 1846 he held the Paris Embassy, dying in 1847. His papers are thus mainly concerned with foreign policy, on which his shrewd comments are often illuminating. The controversy about the Spanish royal marriages in the 'forties, which nearly brought on a French war, nowadays seems strangely remote ; modern diplomatists are spared such business as that.
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