RICHARD COLLEY, Marquis, was the eldest son of the first Earl of Mornington, and brother to the Duke of Wellington, and was born at Grafton Street, Dublin, on the 20th of June 1760. Passing from Eton and Oxford, where he was highly distinguished as an elegant scholar, he by the death of his father unexpectedly found himself second Earl of Mornington. He took his seat in the Irish House of Peers, and soon after entered the British House of Commons. Having attracted the notice of the king during the regency debates of 1789, he was soon after appointed one of the Lords of the Treasury, was made a member of the British Privy Council, and was raised to the British peerage by the title of Baron Mornington.

Lord Mornington was made Governor-General of India on the 4th of October 1797, and he reached that country next year, whether his brother, Colonel Arthur Wellesley,