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Retirement

Wellington retired from political life in 1846, although he remained Commander-in-Chief, and returned briefly to the public eye in 1848 when he helped organise a military force to protect London during the year of European revolution. The Conservative Party had split over the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, with Wellington and most of the former Cabinet still supporting Peel, but most of the MPs led by Lord Derby supporting a protectionist stance. Early in 1852 Wellington, by then very deaf, gave Derby's first government its nickname by shouting "Who? Who?" as the list of inexperienced Cabinet ministers was read out in the House of Lords. He became Chief Ranger and Keeper of Hyde Park and St James's Park on 31 August 1850. He remained colonel of the 33rd Regiment of Foot from 1 February 1806 and colonel of the Grenadier Guards from 22 January 1827. Kitty died of cancer in 1831; despite their generally unhappy relations, which had led to an effective separation, Wellington was said to have been greatly saddened by her death, his one comfort being that after "half a lifetime together, they had come to understand each other at the end". He had found consolation for his unhappy marriage in his warm friendship with the diarist Harriet Arbuthnot, wife of his colleague Charles Arbuthnot. Harriet's death in the cholera epidemic of 1834 was almost as great a blow to Wellington as it was to her husband. The two widowers spent their last years together at Apsley House.