The Irish branch survived in Sir William de Wellesley, who was summoned to Parliament as a baron, and had a grant by patent, from Edward III., of the castle of Kildare. In the fifteenth century, the family obtained the Castle of Dangan by an heiress. The _de_ was subsequently dropped from the family name, and the name itself abridged into Wesley--an abbreviation which subsisted down to the immediate predecessor of the subject of this memoir; or, if we are to rely on the journals of the Irish Parliament, it remained later still. For in 1790 we find the late Lord Maryborough there registered as Wesley (Pole,) and even the Duke is registered, as member for the borough of Trim, as the Honourable Arthur _Wesley_. Richard Colley Wesley, the grandfather of the Marquess, having succeeded to the family estate by the death of his cousin, was in 1746 created a peer. He was succeeded by his son Garret, who was advanced to the dignities of Viscount Wellesley of Dangan Castle, county Meath, and Earl of Mornington. He was a privy councillor in Ireland, and _custos rotulorum_ of the county of Meath. He married Anne, eldest daughter of Arthur Hill Trevor, first Viscount Duncannon, by whom he had six sons and two daughters. The Earl was a man of accomplished tastes; he had travelled, adopted _dilettante_ habits, and expended more money in the decoration of his mansion and demesne than his fortune could well bear. But he would have been eminent if he had been compelled to make music his profession; his glee of "Here, in cool grot and mossy cell," has no rival in English composition for the exquisite feeling of the music, the fine adaptation of its harmony to the language, and the general beauty, elegance, and power of expression. He died on the 22d of May 1781.