Orders, Decorations and Medals

The historically important insignia of the Order of Saint Patrick successively worn by Richard, 1st Marquess Wellesley (1760-1842), Governor-General of India, by the 6th Earl of Mayo (1822-72), Viceroy of India from 1869 until his assassination in February 1872, and finally by the 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava (1826-1902), third Governor-General of Canada and eighth Viceroy of India

The Most Illustrious Order of St. Patrick, an important set of insignia, circa 1800-10 comprising an impressively large oval double-sided sash badge in gold and enamels, 80mm x 65mm excluding suspension, some bruising to the edge of the badge and one outer and several inner retaining pins lacking, minor enamel chip to stalk of one central shamrock and likewise to one border shamrock on each side, otherwise very fine and superb condition for age, and breast star in silver with hinged arms and gold and enamel centre, the silver backplate engraved with three successive inscriptions ‘Marquefs Wellesley / ÆTAT. 83’, ‘Richard Southwell 6th Earl of Mayo / ÆTAT. 50’, and ‘The Marquis of Dufferin & Ava / ÆTAT. 76’, fitted with gold pin for wearing, extremely fine, the green enamel shamrock expertly restored, the two pieces contained in a mid to late 19th century fitted case, the lid with later gilt embossed inscription, ‘Order of St Patrick worn by Richard, Marquess Wellesley (1760-1842), Governor-General of India and afterwards The Earl of Mayo (1822-1872) Viceroy of India’, complete with full dress sash, a most important and historic set of insignia £20000-30000

Provenance: Sotheby March 1995, by direct descent.

‘Wellesley was Governor-General of Bengal in 1799 at the time of the subjugation of the rebel state of Mysore under Tippoo Sultan, and the army in gratitude for his leadership, ‘caused a star and badge of the Order of St Patrick to be prepared, in which as many of the jewels as could be found suitable were taken from the Treasury of Tippoo’. He initially refused it, but subsequently accepted it from the hands of the East India Company, and was delighted to have it. ‘It is magnificently beautiful and of enormous value. I should think about 8 or 10,000 pounds sterling; it is the most superb decoration I have ever seen.’ After his resignation from the Order in 1810 to accept the Order of the Garter, he would not have been able to wear the star and badge of the Order of St Patrick again. What happened to the jewelled Patrick star and badge is unknown, but the marquess was in some financial difficulties in the last years of his life, and it may have been sold to pay his creditors, and even broken up, though his silver star and enamelled badge did survive. There appeared in The Times on 31 March 1885, the following article:

'There have been three Irishmen - namely, Lord Wellesley, Lord Mayo, and Lord Dufferin, who have been Governors-General of India and also Knights of St Patrick. When Lord Mayo went to India the star of the Order worn by Lord Wellesley was lent to him by Mr Alfred Montgomery, and he used it during the period of his viceroyalty. After his death Mr Montgomery presented the star to Lady Mayo and when Lord Dufferin went to India, she lent it to him and he now wears it.’ The badge and star still exist, and were auctioned at Sotheby's in London in 1995.’ (Ref: The Most Illustrious Order - The Order of Saint Patrick and its Knights, Peter Galloway, London, 1999).

Alfred Montgomery, referred to above, was the son of Sir Henry Conyngham Montgomery, a senior civil servant on the Madras establishment. Born in 1814 and educated at Charterhouse, at the age of sixteen Alfred became private secretary to the Marquess of Wellesley, the elder brother of the Duke of Wellington. Wellesley was deeply attached to Alfred's mother, and it was widely rumoured that his choice of private secretary had been influenced by his suspicion that he was in fact the boy's father. Alfred was generally believed to bear a striking similarity in appearance to Wellesley and was perhaps best known during his lifetime as a magnificent wit and entertainer, the ‘last of the Dandies’.

He was granted a civil list pension of £300 in 1834, raised to £720 in 1882. He died in 1896 and Wellesley’s St Patrick insignia appears to have been bequeathed to Montgomery who took it upon himself to further the association of the Order with the high office of Governor-General, or Viceroy, of India, by lending it to his brother-in-law, Lord Mayo, upon his appointment as Viceroy in 1869. Married just three weeks after Wellesley’s death, to Fanny Wyndham, daughter of George Wyndham, Baron Leconfield, and granddaughter of George O’Brien Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont; their daughter Sibyl subsequently married the 8th Marquess of Queensberry, whilst Fanny’s younger sister, Blanche, a few years afterwards married Richard Southwell Bourke, later 6th Earl of Mayo (qv).

Richard Colley Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, also called (from 1781) 2nd Earl of Mornington, Viscount Wellesley of Dangan Castle, or (from 1797) Baron Wellesley of Wellesley, was born in June 1760 at Dangan, County Meath, Ireland. A successful statesman who, as governor of Madras and governor-general of Bengal (both 1797-1805), greatly enlarged the British Empire in India and who, as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland attempted to reconcile Protestants and Catholics in a bitterly divided country. He was a founder Knight of the Order of St Patrick in 1783 but resigned in 1810 on appointment as a Knight of the Garter. He did, however, have further important associations with the Order of St Patrick, serving two terms as Grand Master in 1821-28 and 1833-35.

A moderately liberal disciple of Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, Wellesley sat successively in the Irish House of Commons, the Irish House of Lords (after inheriting his father’s Irish titles in 1781), and the British House of Commons until 1797. From 1793 he was a member of the British Privy Council and a commissioner of the India Board of Control.

As governor-general in India, he used military force and diplomacy to strengthen and expand British authority. He annexed much territory from some states and contracted with other states a series of "subsidiary alliances" by which all parties recognized British preponderance. He received a barony in the British peerage in 1797 and a marquessate in the Irish peerage in 1799.

On receiving a British government order to restore to France its former possessions in India, he refused to comply; his policy was vindicated when the Treaty of Amiens of 1802 was violated and Great Britain resumed war against Napoleonic France. Wellesley's annexations and the vast military expenditure that he had authorized alarmed the court of directors of the East India Company. In 1805 he was recalled and, soon afterward, was threatened with impeachment, although two years later he refused an offer of the Foreign secretaryship. In 1809 he went to Spain to make diplomatic arrangements for the Peninsular War against France and later that year became foreign secretary in Spencer Perceval's ministry. In that office he antagonized his colleagues, who considered him an indolent megalomaniac and welcomed his resignation in February 1812.

As Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Wellesley disappointed the anti-Catholic George IV, and he was about to be removed when Wellington was appointed Prime Minister in January 1828. Wellesley then resigned because his brother was opposed to Roman Catholic emancipation, although the duke was constrained to accept that policy as a political necessity in the following year. Wellesley’s second term as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1833-34) ended with the fall of the 2nd Earl Grey's reform government. When the Whig Party returned to power in April 1835, he was not sent back to Ireland, and in his rage he threatened to shoot the Prime Minister, the 2nd Viscount Melbourne. Despite his own great achievements, throughout his life he displayed an ever-increasing jealousy of his younger brother Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, and, indeed, wanted to be created Duke of Hindustan so that his rank would equal that of his brother. Wellesley had no sons, and the marquessate became extinct upon his death in September 1842.

Richard Southwell Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo, was born in County Meath in February 1822, educated at Eton and graduated from Trinity College, Dublin. He lived much of his early life with his great-uncle the Earl of Mayo, at Palmerstown, and was given a captain’s commission in the Kildare Militia. As the Countess of Mayo was a lady in waiting to Queen Adelaide, the family spent much time in London where Bourke was admired as a ‘young man with a fine bearing and one of the best waltzers in town’. He went on the customary Grand Tour of Europe, including a visit to the Russian Court. Of that country he observed ‘there was no middle class. In no other country, except perhaps Ireland, is the transition from palace to the cabin more abrupt or the difference between the peer and peasant more wide’.

In 1849 when his father succeeded to the earldom, he became Lord Naas and was given Palmerstown with 500 acres by his father. He was Conservative M.P. for Kildare, 1847-52, for Coleraine, 1852-57, and afterwards for Cockermouth. When, in 1852, he was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, at the age of 30, he became known as the ‘Boy Secretary’ but went on to hold this office again in 1858 and 1866.

He succeeded to the earldom upon the death of his father in 1868, and became a Knight of the Order of St Patrick the following year. Queen Victoria ‘expressed herself very graciously about the way he had conducted Irish affairs’, while Disraeli, announcing the appointment of Mayo as Viceroy of India, declared that ‘a state of affairs so dangerous was never encountered with more firmness, but at the same time with greater magnanimity; that never were foreign efforts so completely controlled and battled and defeated as were this Fenian conspiracy, by the government of Ireland, by the Lord Lieutenant and by Lord Mayo. Upon that nobleman, for his sagacity for his judgement, fine temper, and knowledge of men, her majesty had been pleased to confer the office of Viceroy of India, and as Viceroy of India I believe he will earn a reputation that his country will honour.’

Lord Mayo was sworn in as governor-general at Calcutta on 12 January 1869, and was invested as an extra Knight of the Order of St Patrick six days later, having taken with him to India the insignia of the Order previously worn by the Marquess Wellesley, and kindly lent to him by Mr Alfred Montgomery, who had not only been the late marquess’s private secretary but was also Lord Mayo’s brother-in-law, the latter having married Fanny Wyndham’s younger sister, Blanche, in 1848.

In India, Mayo continued the policy of non-intervention that had been pursued by his immediate predecessors and through diplomatic manoeuvre secured the goodwill friendship of Sher Ali, Ammer of Afghanistan, who met with the viceroy at Amballa in March 1869.

In due course Mayo secured Russian recognition of the Oxus as the northern border with Afghanistan, and secured the boundary between Persia and the Afghan province of Seistan, which prevented war between the two countries. He was extremely averse to punitive expeditions against the frontier tribes but the Looshai expedition, which took place in the last year of his government, was rendered necessary by the repeated inroads of the tribe of that name upon the Cachar tea plantations. Perhaps his greatest achievement was the financial reform of the country which had been in a poor state of affairs when he arrived in India but which he left in surplus rude health. It was during his administration that the first general census was undertaken in 1870, and his interest in agriculture and education led to many reforms and to the establishment of Mayo College at Ajmer for the education of the young sons of the Indian princes and chiefs in the science of government.

In the midst of these useful and devoted labours Lord Mayo was suddenly struck down by the hand of an assassin on the occasion of a visit of official inspection to the penal settlement of Port Blair, Andaman Islands, on 8 February 1872. The assassin was a convicted murderer, Shere Ali Khan, an Afridi who had worked for the Commissioner of Peshawar. His mind seemingly made up to murder a high ranking British officer in revenge for his deportation, he afterwards told the courts that he had waited for almost all day near the small launch which the viceroy would board. Mayo and his party, accompanied by Lady Mayo, having witnessed the sunset from atop Mount Harriet, returned to board the launch that was ready to carry the viceroy back to the Royal Navy ship, H.M.S. Glasgow, where he would be spending the night. It was here that the assassin made his move, stabbing the viceroy in his back. The attacker was apprehended and the vicreoy’s body carried back to the ship. By the time the doctors examined him, it was too late, the wounds stretching from his back to his chest were just too deep for any man to have survived.

Lord Mayo’s murder sent shockwaves throughout the Empire, the British Government fearful that it was part of a greater mujahideen conspiracy against the empire. Shere Ali Khan, however, when questioned upon whose orders he was acting, would simply reply ‘I killed him by the order of Allah!’ He was duly convicted of murder and hanged. Lady Mayo was received by the Queen with the greatest respect and sympathy, becoming a Lady of the Bedchamber, 1872-74, and being appointed to the Royal Order of Victoria and Albert, 2nd Class in May 1872 (See Lot 523). Alfred Montgomery, as already stated, made a gift to his sister-in-law Lady Mayo of the ‘Marquess Wellesley’ St Patrick insignia that he had hitherto loaned to the late Lord Mayo. Lady Mayo was to continue the association of this insignia with the high office of Viceroy of India by loaning it to Lord Dufferin during his term as viceroy from 1884 to 1888. During his 1875-76 visit to India, at Calcutta, the Prince of Wales unveiled an equestrian statue of Lord Mayo, expressing a melancholy satisfaction at unveiling a statue of one whom he had been proud to call his friend and who would have left a great name among Indian Viceroys had he lived.

Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, K.P., G.C.B., G.C.S.I., G.C.M.G., G.C.I.E., P.C., was born as Frederick Temple Blackwood in Florence, Italy, in June 1826. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, where he became president of the Oxford Union Society. He succeeded his father in 1841 as 5th Baron Dufferin and Claneboye in the Peerage of Ireland. A prominent member of Victorian society, in his youth he was a popular figure in the court of Queen Victoria and was appointed a Lord-in-Waiting to Queen Victoria in 1849. The following year he was created Baron Claneboye, of Claneboye in the County of Down, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. He was one of the most successful diplomats of his time, his long career in public service begining in 1855 when he was attaché to the mission to Vienna for settling the terms of the Crimean war. In 1856 he commissioned the schooner Foam, and set off on a journey around the North Atlantic, later publishing a book about his travels, Letters From High Altitudes, which remained in print for many years, and was translated into French and German.

He was appointed as British commissioner to Syria in 1860, where his skillful diplomacy maintained British interests while preventing France from instituting a client state in Lebanon. After his success in Syria, Lord Dufferin served in the Government of the United Kingdom as under-secretary of state for India, 1864-66, and, in 1866, held the same office in the War Office. In 1868 he was made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and, in 1872, became the third Governor General of Canada, bolstering imperial ties in the early years of the Dominion. The popularity and influence of the Dufferins in Canada is reflected by the large number of Canadian schools, streets and public buildings named after them. In 1873 Dufferin established the Governor-General’s Academic Prize Medals for superior academic achievement by Canadian students.

His six-year tenure as Governor-General having expired, Dufferin was appointed as Ambassador at St Petersburg in 1879 and, in 1881, to Turkey. In 1882 he was sent to Egypt as Special Commissioner and in 1884 he was appointed as eighth Viceroy of India. His viceroyalty was marked by an expansion in the size and scope of provincial legislative councils, a solution to the tensions prevalent between tenants and landlords in Oudh and the Punjab, and a greater understanding with the Amir of Afghanistan regarding Russian threats towards India. Among other things, the Indian National Congress was founded during his term in 1885, and he laid the foundations for the modernization of the Indian Army by establishing the Imperial Service Corps, officered by Indians.

Following his return from India, Dufferin resumed his ambassadorial career, serving as Ambassador to Italy from 1889, and to France, 1891-96. Retiring from the diplomatic service in 1896, his final years were marred by personal tragedy and a misguided attempt to secure his family's financial position. His eldest son was killed in the Second Boer War, shortly before a mining company of which he had become chairman collapsed under scandalous circumstances. Although no personal blame attached to Dufferin, it was a blow to his failing health; he withdrew from public life and died in early 1902.