Thomas Weld

Thomas Weld (22 January 1773 – 10 April 1837) was an English landowner who renounced his assets to enter the Roman Catholic priesthood. He was consecrated Roman Catholic bishop and cardinal. Family Weld was born in London on 22 January 1773, the eldest son of the fifteen children of Thomas Weld of Lulworth Castle, Dorset, by his wife Mary, eldest daughter of Sir John Stanley Massey Stanley of Hooton, who belonged to the elder and Catholic branch of the Stanley family, now extinct. He was educated at home under Jesuit Charles Plowden. His father, Thomas Weld, a former pupil of the Jesuit school in Bruges, had in 1794 donated 30 acres of land with buildings, to the Society of Jesus to establish Stonyhurst College. He distinguished himself in relieving the misfortunes of the refugees of the French Revolution, and supported the English Poor Clares who had fled from Gravelines, and the Visitandines; and he founded and maintained a Trappist monastery at Lulworth. His uncle, Edward Weld (c.1740–1775), married Maria Smythe in July 1775, but he died just three months later after a fall from his horse. His widow later married Thomas Fitzherbert in 1778, but he died in 1781. The widowed Mrs Fitzherbert was introduced to George, Prince of Wales (later King George IV) in spring 1784, and they went through a form of marriage on 15 December 1785. The marriage was considered invalid under the Royal Marriages Act 1772 because it had not been approved by King George III and the Privy Council. Later when Weld was installed as a cardinal in Rome, he persuaded Pope Pius VII to declare his aunt's marriage to George sacramentally valid.