Life
Educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge (graduating as MA in 1830), he was ordained in 1831. His first living was a family one at Stratfield Saye (1836–1854), during which he became Queen Victoria's resident chaplain (in 1849), leading to his appointment as Dean in 1854. Tactful and gentlemanly in demeanour, religiously analogous to the queen, and a preacher of short sermons, he became "one of Victoria's most valued advisers", doing "everything on all sad and happy occasions to make me comfortable" and acting as an intermediary between her and Gladstone on both ecclesiastical and secular matters. Her appreciation of him was summed up in what she required in his successor as dean:
- a tolerant, liberal minded broad church clergyman who at the same time is pleasant socially & is popular with all Members and classes of her Household,—who understands her feelings not only in ecclesiastical but also in social matters—a good kind man without pride.
Gladstone frequently sought his advice on patronage questions, noting in his diary at the time of Wellesley's death:
- ‘I reckoned his life the most valuable in the Church of England’.
After his death, he was buried in St George's Chapel, Windsor and his widow was appointed "Extra Woman of the Bedchamber" in November 1882.
Read more about this topic: Gerald Wellesley
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“There was never a revolution to equal it, and never a city more glorious than Petrograd, and for all that period of my life I lived another and braved the ice of winter and the summer flies in Vyborg while across my adopted country of the past, winds of the revolution blew their flame, and all of us suffered hunger while we drank at the wine of equality.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“For my part, I would rather look toward Rutland than Jerusalem. Rutland,—modern town,—land of ruts,—trivial and worn,—not too sacred,—with no holy sepulchre, but profane green fields and dusty roads, and opportunity to live as holy a life as you can, where the sacredness, if there is any, is all in yourself and not in the place.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Children became an obsessive theme in Victorian culture at the same time that they were being exploited as never before. As the horrors of life multiplied for some children, the image of childhood was increasingly exalted. Children became the last symbols of purity in a world which was seen as increasingly ugly.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)