Walter Wellesley

Walter Wellesley (c.1470-1539) was a sixteenth-century Irish cleric and judge. He was Prior of Great Connell Priory, Bishop of Kildare 1529-39, and Master of the Rolls in Ireland.

He was born about 1470, the second son of Sir William Wellesley (c.1443-1502) of Dangan, County Meath and his wife Ismay, daughter of Sir Thomas Fitz-Christopher Plunket, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. His brother Garrett (died 1538) was an ancestor of the Duke of Wellington.

Walter was educated at the University of Oxford, and was said to have been one of the outstanding scholars of his time. He became an Augustinian friar, and before 1520 became prior of their house at Great Connell near Newbridge, County Kildare. For the rest of his life he showed great concern for the welfare of the Priory.

Walter "had a singular mind towards the maintenance of English rule in Ireland", and as a result enjoyed the trust of Henry VIII. Henry proposed him as Bishop of Limerick, but the choice was rejected by the Pope. In 1520 Surrey, the Lord Deputy of Ireland suggested him as Bishop of Cork, but Wellesley himself rejected the proposal when told he could not remain Prior of Great Connell. Finally in 1529 he became Bishop of Kildare, on condition he could also retain the priory. He was Master of the Rolls 1521-2.

Though he was trusted by the Crown to carry out its policies faithfully, Wellesley showed little enthusiasm for the Reformation. At the Dissolution of the Monasteries, his great concern was to ensure the survival of Great Connell. In 1537 he asked for it to be exempted from confiscation on the ground that it was part of the Diocese of Kildare. His assurance to Thomas Cromwell that "no brother is elected unless he be of the English nation" was not necessarily a sign of anti-Irish prejudice, since monasteries within the Pale were not permitted to admit Irish monks, and he may simply have been stressing that Great Connell observed this rule strictly.

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