This Cowley or
Colley, taking, in 1745, the name of Wesley, received from George II. the
title of Earl Mornington: and Colley's grandson, the Marquess Wellesley of
our age, was recorded in the Irish peerage as _Wesley_, Earl of
Mornington; was uniformly so described up to the end of the eighteenth
century; and even Arthur of Waterloo, whom most of us Europeans know
pretty well, on going to India a little before his brother, was thus
introduced by Lord Cornwallis to Sir John Shore (Lord Teignmouth, the
Governor-general), 'Dear sir, I beg leave to introduce to you Colonel
Wesley, who is a lieutenant-colonel of my regiment. He is a sensible man,
and a good officer.' Posterity, for _we_ are posterity in respect of
Lord Cornwallis, have been very much of _his_ opinion. Colonel Wesley
really _is_ a sensible man; and the sensible man, soon after his
arrival in Bengal, under the instigation of his brother, resumed the old
name of Wellesley. In reality, the name of Wesley was merely the
abbreviation of indolence, as Chumley for Cholmondeley, Pomfret for
Pontefract, Cicester for Cirencester; or, in Scotland, Marchbanks for
Majoribanks, Chatorow for the Duke of Hamilton's French title of
Chatelherault. I remember myself, in childhood, to have met a niece of
John Wesley the Proto-Methodist, who always spoke of the, second Lord
Mornington (author of the well-known glees) as a cousin, and as intimately
connected with her brother the great _foudroyant_ performer on the
organ.
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