The Arms of a Duke in the Supreme Court of the UK Building

Continuing our look at the heraldry contained in and on the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom building in London, formerly the Middlesex Guildhall, we find several instances, both inside and outside of the building, of these arms, seen on the exterior of the building next to one of the several renditions of the arms of Middlesex:

And in detail:

These arms are not, as some of the more eagle-eyed among you may have assumed, the arms of Arthur Wellesly, the 1st Duke of Wellington of Napoleonic Wars fame.

No, these are actually the arms of his son, Arthur Richard Wellesley, 2nd Duke of Wellington (1807-1884).

Having succeeded his father, the 1st Duke of Wellington, the 2nd Duke also inherited all of his late father's other titles. The best way to list them all is to take them from his obituary, which gives the 2nd Duke's name and titles as:

Arthur Richard Wellesley, KG., Duke and Marquis of Wellington (Somerset), Marquis of Douro, Earl of Wellington (Somerset), Viscount Wellington of Talavera and of Wellington, and Baron Douro of Wellesley, both in the same county, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom; Earl of Mornington, Viscount Wellesley of Daugan Castle, and Baron Mornington, of Mornington, county Meath, in the Peerage of Ireland; Prince of Waterloo in the Netherlands, Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo, and a Grandee of Spain of the 1st Class, Duke of Vittoria, Marquis of Torres Vedras, and Count Vimiera, in Portugal.

Now, the main reason, I presume, for his arms to appear both inside and outside of the Supreme Court building was that Wellington became Lord-Lieutenant of Middlesex in 1868. He was, in fact, the last Lord Lieutenant to command the Middlesex militia and volunteers; the Regulation of the Forces Act 1871 removed that responsibility from the Lord Lieutenants from 1872, and the volunteers came under the War Ministry.

In addition to his arms appearing on the exterior of the building (the first image, above), we also find the following examples in the interior:

At the bottom left  of this plaque, which we saw in our last post:

In stained glass, here on the right:

And in its own window:

And finally, carved in wood heldby an angel:

The arms are blazoned: Quarterly: 1st and 4th. Gules, a cross argent, in each quarter five plates; 2nd and 3rd, Or a lion rampant gules armed and langued azure; for augmentation, an inescutcheon of the union badge of the United Kingdom.

Crest: Issuant from a ducal coronet or a demi-lion rampant gules maintaining a swallowtailed pennon argent charged with the cross of St George, the ends gules.

Supporters: Two lions gules gorged with an Eastern crown chained or.

Motto: Virtutes fortuna comes (“Deeds of bravery are the companions to fortune”).

The second Duke of Wellington may not be as well-known as his more militarily (the Peninsular War, and Waterloo) and politically (Prime Minister, 1828-1830) prolific predecessor, yet his heraldic legacy lives on both inside and outside of this building just yards away from the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.