of the Peninsular army; in this capacity his generalship became conspicuous in a succession of victories, in which he drove the French first out of Portugal and then out of Spain, defeating them finally at Toulouse on the 12th April 1814, and so ending the Peninsular War; on his return home he was loaded with honours, and had voted to him from the public treasury a grant of L400,000; on the return of Napoleon from Elba he was appointed general of the allies against him in the Netherlands and on 18th June 1815 defeated him in the ever-memorable battle of Waterloo; this was the crowning feat in Wellington’s military life, and the nation showed its gratitude to him for his services by presenting him with the estate of Strathfieldsaye, in Hampshire, worth L263,000, the price paid for it to Lord Rivers, the proprietor; in 1827 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the army, and in 1828 was Prime Minister of the State; as a statesman he was opposed to Parliamentary reform, but he voted for the emancipation of the Catholics and the abolition of the Corn Laws; he died in Walmer Castle on 1st September 1852, aged 84, and was buried beside Nelson in a crypt of St. Paul’s (1769-1852).

WELLINGTON COLLEGE, a college founded in 1853 at Wokingham, Berks, in memory of the Duke of Wellington, primarily for the education of the sons of deceased military officers; there is a classical school to prepare for the university, and a modern side to prepare for the army, &c.

WELLS, a small episcopal city in Somersetshire, 20 m.  SW. of Bath; it derives its name from hot springs near it, and is possessed of a beautiful cruciform cathedral in the Early English style, adorned with some 600 statues of saints, 151 of which are life-size, and some of them colossal.

WELLS, CHARLES JEREMIAH, English poet, born in London; author of a dramatic poem entitled “Joseph and his Brethren,” published in 1824, a poem which failed to attract attention at the time, and the singular merits of which were first recognised by Swinburne in 1875, the author having meantime given up literature for the law, to which he had been bred (1800-1879).

WELSH, DAVID, a Scottish divine, a gentlemanly scholarly man, professor of Church History in the University of Edinburgh; was Moderator of the General Assembly on the occasion of the Disruption of the Scottish Church (1843), and headed the secession on the day of the exodus (1793-1845).

WELSH, or WELCH, JOHN, a Scottish divine, a Nithsdale man; became Presbyterian minister of Ayr, and was distinguished both as a preacher and for his sturdy opposition to the ecclesiastical tyranny of James VI., for which latter he suffered imprisonment and exile; he was an ancestor of Jane Welsh Carlyle, and was married to a daughter of John Knox, who, when the king thought to win her over by offering her husband a bishopric, held out her apron before sovereign majesty, and threatened she would rather kep (catch) his head there than that he should live and be a bishop; she figures in the chapter in “Sartor” on Aprons, as one of Carlyle’s apron-worthies (1570-1625).