Hon. and Very Rev. Gerald Valerian Wellesley (1809 – 17 September 1882) was a Church of England cleric who became the Dean of Windsor. A nephew of the Duke of Wellington, he was domestic chaplain to Queen Victoria and played a major advisory role regarding the royal family's personal affairs. He was one of the Queen's chief confidants and often served as an intermediary in her problems and conflicts.
In Church appointments he was sensitive to the Queen's preferences: he avoided recommending the appointment of either High Churchmen or teetotallers. He tried to identify and place clergymen who were also high status gentlemen in key parish churches. He was politically nonpartisan, but was a friend of William Gladstone[[]]. He played a prominent advisory role in the ministerial crisis of 1880.[1]
On 16 September 1856, at St Mary's, Bryanston Square, London, he married the Hon. Magdalen "Lily" Montagu (1831–1919), daughter of Henry Montagu, 6th Baron Rokeby, and his wife, Magdalen Huxley. They had one child, who died at aged 17.
Albert Victor Arthur Wellesley (4 July 1865 – 23 April 1883), godson and page of honour to Queen Victoria[2]
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",[4] doing "everything on all sad and happy occasions to make me comfortable"[5] 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 and 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.[6]
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'.
