Arthur Charles Wellesley, 5th Duke of Wellington, JP (9 June 1876 – 11 December 1941), known as Arthur Wellesley from 1876 to 1900, and styled as Marquess of Douro from 1900 to 1934, was a British nobleman and landowner.
Wellesley attended Eton between 1890 and 1895, and later attended Trinity College at Cambridge. He was commissioned as a lieutenant in the 4th (Militia) battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment on 7 July 1897, and served as Aide-de-camp to the Earl of Ranfurly, Governor of New Zealand.[1] After the outbreak of the Second Boer War in late 1899, he joined the regular army as a second lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards on 17 January 1900,[2] and was part of a detachment sent to South Africa in March 1900 to reinforce the 3rd battalion fighting in the war.[3] He served with his regiment there until July 1902, when he returned home after the war ended the previous month.[4] He resigned his commission in 1903. He returned to active service as a temporary reserve second lieutenant in 1915, during World War I, and relinquished his commission in 1919, still a second lieutenant.
The duke was a supporter of several far right-wing causes. He was a member of the Anglo-German Fellowship from 1935 and served as President of the Liberty Restoration League, which was described by Inspector Pavey (an ex-Scotland Yard detective employed by the Board of Deputies of British Jews to infiltrate the far right) as being antisemitic. When Archibald Maule Ramsay formed the 'Right Club' in 1939, Wellington chaired its early meetings. Ramsay, describing the Right Club, boasted that "The main objective was to oppose and expose the activities of organised Jewry."[5] On the day that World War II broke out, the Duke of Wellington was quoted as blaming the conflict on "anti-appeasers and the fucking Jews". He died of pneumonia in 1941.[6]
Family
In 1909, he married Lilian Maud Glen Coats, elder daughter of George Coats (who became the 1st Baron Glentanar in 1916). They had two children:
