The government awarded various honors to Nelson's family. An earldom was
conferred on Nelson's brother, the Reverend William, with a pension of
£5,000 a year, with £120,000 that he might purchase an estate; £20,000
of this gift were to be divided between Nelson's sisters, Mrs. Bolton
and Mrs. Matcham. Lady Nelson received £2,000 per annum till her death,
May 4, 1831, twenty-five years after the death of Lord Nelson.
Nelson's dying request for Lady Hamilton and their child, Horatia, was
disregarded by the government. Nelson left her by will £2,000, an
annuity for life of £500 charged on the Bronte estate, Merton Place, and
the yearly interest on £4,000 settled on Horatia till she became
eighteen.
Lady Hamilton survived Nelson nine years, dying Jan. 16, 1815, in
apartments in the Rue Française at Calais, at the age of fifty-one. She
lost Merton Place, in Surrey, through debts. She was imprisoned for debt
at the King's Bench, 12 Temple Place, in 1813, and was discharged after
some months, by a city alderman, J. J. Smith, who felt that she had been
cruelly treated. Fearing re-arrest, she went to Calais in 1814, with
Horatia, and died in less than a year. Her daughter, who was devoted to
her, wrote, years later, "Although often certainly under very
distressing circumstances, she never experienced actual want."
Lady Hamilton was buried in a cemetery just outside the city limits,
which was soon after used as a timber-yard, and all traces of the graves
disappeared. In accordance with her mother's last wishes, Horatia was
taken to the home of Mrs. Matcham, Lord Nelson's sister, where she
remained two years, and then resided with Mr. Bolton, Lord Nelson's
brother-in-law, till her marriage, in February, 1822, to the Rev. Philip
Ward, Vicar of Tenterden in Kent. She became the mother of a large
family, and died March 6, 1881, in the eighty-first year of her age.
The Rev. William Nelson, made an earl by the successes of his brother,
was succeeded in 1835 by his nephew, Thomas Bolton, as second earl, who
took the name Nelson. Thomas was succeeded the same year by his son
Horatio, the third earl. Lord Nelson is a graduate of Cambridge, where
he took the degree of M.A. in 1844. He married a daughter of the second
earl of Normanton in 1845.
[Illustration: JOHN BUNYAN.]
JOHN BUNYAN.
The first book which Benjamin Franklin owned was "Pilgrim's Progress."
This he read over and over.
Sir Humphry Davy, the great scientist, could repeat a large part of
"Pilgrim's Progress" before he could read it. Nathaniel Hawthorne read
and loved it when he was six years old.
Rufus Choate, the great orator, says E. P. Whipple, "read 'Pilgrim's
Progress' when he was six years old; and he not only got it by heart,
but eloquently expounded it to his companions, dramatically reproducing
the scenes, incidents, and characters of that wonderful allegory, so
that the little people he addressed were made to see in it what he saw."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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