The eldest of the
Wellesleys is gone: he is gathered to his fathers; and here we have his
life circumstantially written.
Who, and of what origin are the Wellesleys? There is an impression current
amongst the public, or there _was_ an impression, that the true name
of the Wellesley family is Wesley. This is a case very much resembling
some of those imagined by the old scholastic logicians, where it was
impossible either to deny or to affirm: saying _yes_, or saying _no_,
equally you told a falsehood. The facts are these: the family was
originally English; and in England, at the earliest era, there is no
doubt at all that its name was De Welles leigh, which was pronounced in
the eldest times just as it is now, viz. as a dissyllable, [2] the first
syllable sounding exactly like the cathedral city _Wells_, in
Somersetshire, and the second like _lea_, (a field lying fallow.) It
is plain enough, from various records, that the true historical
_genesis_ of the name, was precisely through that composition of
words, which here, for the moment, I had imagined merely to illustrate its
pronunciation. Lands in the diocese of Bath and Wells lying by the
pleasant river Perret, and almost up to the gates of Bristol, constituted
the earliest possessions of the De Wellesleighs. They, seven centuries
before Assay, and Waterloo, were 'seised' of certain rich _leas_
belonging to _Wells_.
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