THE mud-spattered cloak which the Duke of Wellington is believed to have worn at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 is expected to sell for around £25,000 at an auction.
After the Battle of Waterloo, the navy blue with violet velvet collared campaign cloak was acquired by Lady Caroline Lamb, who had an affair with the Iron Duke in the summer of 1815, in the immediate aftermath of the battle.
Auctioneers Sotheby’s say: “Now best remembered for her affair with the poet Lord Byron, Lady Caroline made a conquest of Wellington in Brussels and it is easy to imagine the Duke giving her the cloak as a memento.
“The first documented owner was Grosvenor Charles Bedford, an extremely well connected man about town who worked as a civil servant in the Exchequer and was given the cloak just eight years after Waterloo.
“In his diary entry for May 14, 1823, Bedford recounts how he and a close friend were shown round the Hunterian Collection at the Royal College of Surgeons by their mutual friend and anatomist, Anthony Carlisle, who presented Bedford with the cloak, informing the new owner that it had been given to him by Lady Caroline, who had received it from the Duke. The cloak has passed down by family descent since that time and has never been sold or publicly exhibited.
“Sir Thomas Lawrence painted two portraits of Wellington in his Waterloo cloak and both depict a cloak of a very similar design to the cloak in the forthcoming auction.”
The cloak is expected to sell for between £20,000 and £30,000 at Sotheby’s in London on July 14.
In 1817, two years after the Battle of Waterloo, the Parliamentary Commissioners bought Lord Rivers’s estate at Stratfield Saye, near Basingstoke, for Wellington at a cost of £263,000.
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The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says: “His new status as a Hampshire landowner was marked in December 1820 by his appointment as Lord Lieutenant of the county, a position he held for the rest of his life.”
Wellington also played a part in maintaining law and order in Hampshire, establishing a professional police force in 1839.
He had been born into aristocracy in Dublin in 1769, to the Earl and Countess of Mornington.
The Iron Duke’s mother dismissed her rather withdrawn fourth son as “ugly Arthur” but he would go to be hailed as a national hero.
Fatherless at an early age, and neglected by his mother, he was a reserved, withdrawn child.
When he was 15 Arthur was taken away from his unhappy life at Eton and he entered the military.
After the triumph of Waterloo he served as Commander-in-Chief, as Prime Minister, and, when he had ceased to lead the Tories, as Cabinet Minister.
In his extreme old age he organised the defence of London against the Chartists.
When Wellington became Prime Minister in 1828 one of his first achievements in office was overseeing Catholic emancipation in 1829, the granting of almost full civil rights to Catholics in the United Kingdom.
But for the majority of his political career he was very conservative, known for his measures to repress reform.
He died in September 1852 after a series of seizures. He was 83.
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