Cornish Guardian (St. Austell & Fowey)
Former MP for St Ives notorious for his lack
AS seen during the General Election campaign, the personal conduct of MPS and candidates is under scrutiny as never before: but if you think they’re bad now (which isn’t to say they aren’t), then consider the case of William Pole-tylney-long-wellesley, 4th Earl of Mornington, twice MP for St Ives.
A minor Anglo-irish aristocrat, in an age when amorality and dissipation were more or less par for the course among the upper classes William nonetheless managed to become notorious for his lack of morals and dissipated lifestyle.
He was born William Wesley-pole in London in 1788, shortly before his family changed its name to Wellesley (William was a nephew of Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington), and in 1812 married Catherine Tylney-long, ‘The Wiltshire Heiress’, who was believed to be the richest commoner in England.
At 16, on the death of her only brother, she had inherited estates and investments valued at £300,000 (somewhat more than £30 million today); her rents alone amounted to £40,000 a year and, unsurprisingly, Catherine had many suitors including King George III’S third son William, Duke of Clarence, the future William IV, eager to use her fortune to pay his immense debts.
She, however, settled on William Wellesley-pole – at the seventh time of asking – a decision she was to regret almost immediately, and for the rest of her short and miserable life.
By Royal Licence, two months before their marriage William added ‘Tylney-long’ to his surname and once he had secured Catherine’s hand (at their wedding she wore a necklace which was worth £25,000 – £2 million today) he set about spending her money while treating her with cruelty and contempt.
He threw extravagant parties at Wanstead House, her huge Palladian mansion in Essex, which Catherine was not permitted to attend; a (premature) celebration of his uncle’s victory over Napoleon in 1814 was attended by a thousand guests including the Prince Regent and other members of the royal family. He spent £360,000 doing up the house, to live in the style to which he felt entitled. He squandered the equivalent of millions at the gaming tables, and similar sums on bribes to get himself elected to Parliament (successfully; he was MP for the Tory ‘pocket borough’ of St Ives from 1812 to 1818 and for Wiltshire from 1818 to 1820). In 10 years he’d gone through the lot; he managed to get himself appointed a Gentleman Usher to King George IV, conferring immunity against arrest for debt, but eventually the couple and their three children were forced to flee the country to escape his creditors.
Adding insult to injury, in Italy William began an affair with Helena Bligh, wife of a captain in the Coldstream Guards. Heartsick, in 1825 Catherine returned to England with the children, intending to obtain a legal separation from her husband, only to discover that William, as “life tenant” of Wanstead House, had put it up for sale. When no buyer could be found the magnificent property was stripped, demolished and the contents and materials sold off for the meagre sum of £10,000.
Catherine died at 35, reputedly of a seizure after reading a letter she’d just received from her husband – one of her sisters hinted that William had given her a venereal disease