John Wickens, “Henry Paget, Fifth Marquis of Anglesey”, c 1905, National Trust of England
The Marquis of Anglesey is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. The title was created in 1815 for Henry Paget, Second Earl of Uxbridge, who was a hero of the Battle of Waterloo, second in command to the Duke of Wellington. Other subsidiary titles held by the Marquis are Earl of Uxbridge, Middlesex, in the Peerage of Great Britain 91784), Baron Paget, de Beaudesert, in the Peerage of England (1553), and the titles of Irish Baronet, of Pias Newydd in the County of Anglesey, and of Mount Bagenal in the County of Louth. The family seat of the Marquis is Plas Newydd at Lianddaniel Fal, Anglesey.
Born on June 16, 1875, Henry Cyril Paget, 5th Marquis of Anglesey, styled Lord Paget until 1880, held the title of Earl of Uxbridge between 1880 and 1898. Notable for squandering his inheritance on a lavish social life, he was
the eldest son of Henry Paget, the 4th Marquis, by his wife Blanche Mary Carwen Boyd. After the death of his mother in 1877, Paget went to Paris to live with the French actor Benoít-Constant Coquelin, who was rumored to be his real father.
At the age of eight, Henry Paget was taken to live at the family seat in Plas Newydd when his father re-married to an American heiress. Paget attended Eton Collage, later receiving private tuition. He learned painting and singing in Germany and spoke fluent French, good Russian, and grammatical Welsh. Paget became commissioned as a Lieutenant in the 2nd Volunteer Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers.
On the 20th of January, 1898, Henry Cyril Paget married his cousin Lilian Florence Chetwynd, maintaining an unconsummated marriage for six weeks at which time his cousin left. The marriage was annulled in 1900 and one year later changed to a legal separation. On the death of his father in October of 1898, Paget inherited his title and the thirty thousand acre family estates, 
providing an annual income of £110,000, equal to £12 million per year in 2019. Paget swiftly acquired a reputation for a lavish manner of living, spending his money on jewelry and furs, and throwing extravagant parties and theatrical performances.
Paget renamed the family’s country seat as “Anglesey Castle” and converted the family chapel into a 150 seat theater, named the Gaiety Theater. Dressed in opulent costumes, he took the lead role in productions of Shakespeare’s “Henry V” and Oscar Wilde’s “An Ideal Husband”. From 1899, most of the performances, performed before invited notable guests, were a variety of song and dance numbers, sketches, and tableaux vivants, stationary posed scenes with actors and props. In 1901, the Gaiety Theater was open as a public entertainment venue after having been refurbished and fitted with electric stage lighting.
During the next three years, Paget toured with his company around Britain and Europe. The company travelled with specially painted scenery and their own orchestra; many of their props were exact copies of furniture from Anglesey Castle. Each of Paget’s costumes was specially designed and made to order, either by couturiers or by the London costumiers Morris Angel. 
The company, which at its largest consisted of fifty performers and crew, required five trucks for the baggage and scenery. The Marquis travelled in a powerful Pullman motor car with a personal staff of four. When at Anglesey Castle, Paget kept actors in lodgings in the neighboring village of Llanfair.
By 1904, despite his inheritance and income, Henry Paget had accumulated debts of £544,000 (£60 million in 2019):[ on June 11th he was declared bankrupt. Everything, including his jewelry and dressing gowns from Parisian shirtmaker Charvet, were sold to pay creditors. Paget ‘retired’ to France on an income of £3,000 a year,, accompanied by a manservant, first to Dinan in Brittany and finally to Monte Carlo. On March 14, 1905 at the age of twenty-nine, Henry Cyril Paget, 5th Marquis of Anglesey, died at Monte Carlo’s Hotel Royale following a long illness of tuberculosis. His remains were returned to St. Edwen’s Church, Llanedwen, for burial.
The title passed to Henry Paget’s cousin Charles Henry Alexander Paget, who destroyed all the papers of the 5th Marquis and converted the Gaiety Theatre back into a chapel. It was at least in part owing to the debts left by the 5th Marquis that the family’s principal English estate 
at Beaudesert, Staffordshire, had to be broken up and sold in the 1930s. The Paget family moved into the family seat Plas Newydd for their permanent residence.
Henry Cyril Paget’s outrageous and flamboyant lifestyle, his taste for cross-dressing, and the breakdown of his marriage, have led many to assume that he was gay. Lawyer and early gay rights reformer in England, Harford Montgomery Hyde, author of “The Other Love”, viewed Paget in his 1970 writings as the most notorious aristocratic homosexual at this period. Heritage Studies professor Norena Shopland, specializing in LBGT and Welsh histories, wrote that Henry Paget should be included in the history of gender identity. However, there is no evidence for or against his having had any lovers of either sex. Upon Henry Paget’s death, the deliberate destruction of his papers by his cousin Charles Henry Paget has left the matter to speculation.
In 2017 the actor and composer Seiriol Davies wrote and performed in his play “How to Win Against History”, a musical based on Henry Cyril Paget’s life. This award-winning show was performed at the 2017 Edinburgh Festival Fringe before going on tour in Wales and England. In 2019 the show had its Irish premiere at the Dublin Theater Festival.