Nelson (138 page)

8
. Account from Cartagena enclosed in ADM 1/396: no. 5.

9
. John C. Dann, ed.,
Nagle Journal
, pp. 206–7; Augusto Conte y Lacave,
Ataque de Cadiz
, p. 36. The dispatches for the battle are Nelson to Jervis, 20/12/1796 (two letters) and Preston to Nelson, 20/12/1796, filed in ADM 1/395. For an account possibly derived partly from Cockburn see Edward P. Brenton,
Naval History
, 1, p. 338.

10
. Pitcairn Jones, ‘Sea Officers’ Lists, 1660–1815’, PRO and NMM, and David Syrett and R. L. DiNardo,
Commissioned Sea Officers
, give basic details of officers. For Culverhouse see also his statement of 18/4/1797 in HCA 32/845 and Richard Vesey Hamilton and John Knox Laughton, eds,
Above and Under Hatches
, pp. 66, 84. The standard work on Hardy is A. M. Broadley and R. G. Bartelot,
Nelson’s Hardy
, John Gore’s
Nelson’s Hardy and His Wife
largely concerning itself with the latter.

11
. Nelson to his father, 1/1/1797, Monmouth MSS, E599.

12
. The quotation is from Act IV, scene iii. See also Colin White, ‘Nelson and Shakespeare’.

13
. Dann,
Nagle Journal
, p. 207; Nelson to Marino, 24/12/1796, and Nelson to Jervis, 29/12/1796, both in Monmouth MSS, E988.

14
. Nelson to Jervis, 24/12/1796,
D&L
, 2, p. 317.

15
. Nelson to Spencer, 4/1/1797, 28/3/1797, Add. MSS 75795, 75808. The former letter is erroneously dated 1796 and filed accordingly.

16
. Culverhouse to Nelson, 23/3/1797, Add. MSS 34905; Jervis to Spencer, 2/3/1797, Add. MSS 75912; Jervis to Nepean, 13/7/1797, ADM 1/396; William O’Byrne,
Naval Biographical Dictionary
, pp. 384–5.

II The Small World of Burnham Thorpe (pp. 31–47)

1
. The best source of information for the Nelson family is Reverend Edmund Nelson’s manuscript, ‘A Family Historicall Register’, which appears to have been finished in 1789. A MS copy can be found in NMM: NWD/34, but the whole appears in Ron C. Fiske,
Notices of Nelson
, pp. 5–9. See also
D&L
, 1, pp. 17–18, and several useful secondary works: Thomas Foley [actually Florence Horatia Suckling],
Nelson Centenary
; Thomas Nelson,
Genealogical History of the Nelson Family
; and M. Eyre Matcham,
Nelsons of Burnham Thorpe
.

2
. James Harrison,
Life
, 1, p. 11.

3
. See also Frank and Jean Pond, ‘The Rolfe Tombs’, and George A. Goulty, ‘Lord Nelson and the Goulty Connection’.

4
. Esther Hallam Moorhouse,
Nelson in England
, pp. 7–8; Ben Burgess, ‘Who First Painted the Parsonage?’; Faculty Book, Norfolk Record Office, Norwich, DN/FCB/1, p. 588.

5
. Nelson to William, 29/3/1784, Add. MSS 34988; Matcham,
Nelsons of Burnham Thorpe
, p. 27; census returns, 1801, Norfolk Heritage Centre, Norwich;
The Poll for the Knights of the Shire for the County of Norfolk
, p. 203.

6
. Parish registers, Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk Record Office. Stories that Nelson was born at Barsham or in his grandmother’s cottage at Burnham Thorpe (
Notes and Queries
, 11th series, 1 [1910], pp. 483–4, and 2 [1910], pp. 36, 91) are poorly supported. In his autobiographical sketch (see introduction, above, n. 7) Nelson categorically says he was born in the parsonage. This sketch, like another autobiographical fragment written about 1796 (NMM: STW/2, published in
NLTHW
, p. 52) and a biographical memoir by Nelson’s brother, William, in February 1799 (NMM: PHB/15), has little about Horatio’s first years.

7
. Matcham,
Nelsons of Burnham Thorpe
, p. 118. Sir Mordaunt Martin, who died in September 1815 at the age of seventy-five, remained a lifelong associate of Nelson.

8
. William Faden,
Map of Norfolk
, surveyed in 1790–94, marks Burnham Thorpe as the seat of ‘Capt. Nelson’. See also Francis Blomefield and Charles Parkin,
Topographical History of the County of Norfolk
, vol. 7; Samuel Lewis,
Topographical Dictionary
, vol. 1; and Michael Stammers, ‘The Hand-Maiden and Victim of Agriculture’.

9
. This story seems to have first been published in
NC
, 3 (1800), p. 195. Several later stories on the theme of Nelson getting lost illustrate the potency of these local legends. See, for example, Hilda Gamlin,
Nelson’s Friendships
, 2, p. 278, and the ‘Nurse’ Blackett story alluded to in my text. The earliest example of Horatio’s use of ‘Horace’ appears in the Burnham Thorpe marriage register for 13 March 1769, when the child signed ‘Horace Nelson’ as a witness to the union of Thomas Massingham and Elizabeth Spurgeon. His signature was corrected to ‘Horatio’, possibly by his father. The boy made no such mistake attesting to the marriage of Peter Dennis and Hannah Pinner on 13 November 1769. On each occasion an additional witness was required, and Nelson was respectively joined by Robert Jacomb and Ann Scott. The latter, like the newlyweds, signed with a mark.

10
. Oliver Warner,
Portrait of Lord Nelson
, found that villagers still spoke of Nurse Blackett in the mid-twentieth century, but wrongly inferred that the memory depended upon unbroken ‘local lore’ (p. 9). In fact the stories came from her grandson’s wife, Mrs ‘Valiant’ High of North Creake, as published in Francis J. Cross,
The Birthplace of Nelson
, pp. 8, 10, 12, and James Hooper,
Nelson’s Homeland
, pp. 46–51. Mrs High said that she often heard her father-in-law (James High, the son of John and Mary Blackett High) talk about Nelson.

I have not discovered Mary’s birth date. At the time of her marriage to John ‘Hie’ on 13 February 1783, a ceremony conducted at Burnham Thorpe by Nelson’s brother, the Reverend William Nelson, she was described as a member of the parish of Burnham Norton. However, she makes her last appearance in census records in 1851, when, living in Brancaster, she was described as Mary High, a ‘pauper’ from Burnham Thorpe, aged ninety-six. Mary died at Brancaster on 7 August 1852, and her death certificate gives her age as ninety-eight. I deduce the year of her birth from these records, but have been unable to find a baptism at Burnham Thorpe or Burnham Norton. See the parish records in the Norfolk Record Office; the Brancaster census, 1851, Norfolk Heritage Centre; and the death certificate, 9/8/1852, General Register Office, London.

The other specific Nelson anecdote told by Mrs ‘Valiant’ High, though repeated by some biographers, is also probably erroneous. By Mrs High’s account, Miss Blackett married a man named High, and their son was nicknamed ‘Valiant’ after Captain Nelson commended his ‘right valiant fight’ during a scuffle at Burnham Thorpe in 1793. Subsequently the name ‘Valiant’ passed from this son to his, the husband of the informant. Unfortunately, parish registers show that Mary (Blackett) and John ‘Hie’ had two boys, John (born on 12 January 1784) and James (born 2 March 1789). It was the latter to whom Mrs High alluded, but he was barely four years old at the time of the alleged street brawl!

Having said all this, there are some convincing details in Mrs High’s interviews. After her husband’s death, the former Miss Blackett lived with the family of the said son, James, then landlord of the Jolly Sailors inn in Brancaster. According to Mrs ‘Valiant’ High the old ‘nurse’ became confused in her last years, but remained devoted to Lord Nelson. A few days before her death, she rose from her bed, dressed and packed sheets and blankets in a bundle. ‘His Lordship has come home,’ she said upon being discovered, ‘and he sent for me to stay at the rectory.’ The old lady was persuaded to return to her bed and died soon afterwards. This anecdote, which the informant may have witnessed first-hand, suggests that Mary Blackett High may have worked as a domestic at the rectory at some time, probably during the period 1788 to 1793, when Nelson made his home there. James Hooper (p. 25) records that the last local believed to have known Nelson personally was Mrs Ann Melton, who died at Docking, Norfolk, on 9 August 1879 at the reputed age of 101.

11
. Harrison,
Life
, pp. 8–9.

12
. Matcham,
Nelsons of Burnham Thorpe
, pp. 46, 50. A silhouette of Edmund Nelson, done by Charles Rosenberg about 1800 or 1801, forms a frontispiece to this volume. For reproductions of two other portraits, the best by William Beechey, see Hilda Gamlin,
Nelson’s Friendships
, 1, pp. 164, 303.

13
. Matcham,
Nelsons of Burnham Thorpe
, pp. 26, 39, 55, 81.

14
. Will of Ann Suckling, 10/12/1767, PRO: PROB 11/936, no. 80.

15
. James S. Clarke and J. McArthur,
Life and Services
, 1, p. 14; William to Nelson, 3/5/1802, 19/10/1802, Alfred Morrison,
Hamilton and Nelson Papers
, 2, pp. 188, 199.

16
. Matcham,
Nelsons of Burnham Thorpe
, pp. 18, 134.

17
. Nelson to Elliot, 8/10/1803,
D&L
, 5, p. 237; Nelson to Allott, 14/5/1804,
D&L
, 6, p. 18.

18
. In the 1840s Captain George Manby, inventor of the life preserver, claimed to have been a schoolfellow of Nelson at Downham Market in Norfolk (
United Service Journal
[1841], pt 1, p. 560; Thomas Joseph Pettigrew,
Memoirs
, 1, pp. 2–3). But the Nelsons were clear about the education of Horatio and William (Fiske,
Notices of Nelson
, p. 7; Nelson memorandum, NMM: STW/2; Nelson’s ‘Sketch of My Life’, 1799,
D&L
, 1, p. 1), and by the time Manby (born November 1765) went to his school Nelson was at North Walsham, or perhaps even with his first ship. Manby’s claim was clearly bogus. He was
frank about the shock he felt at Nelson’s death and his admiration for the admiral in his unpublished recollections (Add. MSS 29893), but made no claim to have been at school with him at that time. ‘It was Nelson I had fixed upon as my model’ he said. He and the admiral had been born ‘in the same district of that county, West Norfolk’. In later life Manby became obsessed with Nelson, turning part of his house into a Nelson museum, and it was apparently then that his story about being a schoolfellow was created. See the judicious discussion by Bob Brister, Ronald Cansdale and Jim Hargreaves in
ND
, 7 (2001–2), pp. 559–60, 632–4, and Kenneth Walthew,
From Rock and Tempest
.

19
. Goulty, ‘Lord Nelson and the Goulty Connection’. Foley,
Nelson Centenary
, p. 15, suggests that Nelson stayed with a maternal great aunt, Sarah Henley, but the Goultys are far more likely candidates.

20
. Details of Norwich school are supplied by H. W. Saunders,
History of Norwich Grammar School
, and Richard Harries, Paul Cattermole and Peter Mackintosh,
History of Norwich School
.

21
. C. R. Forder,
Paston Grammar School
; Nelson to Bulwer, 7/5/1801, Bulwer papers, Norfolk Record Office, MF/RO/334/1, 3; Nelson to William, 14/4/1777, Add. MSS 34988.

22
. Clarke and McArthur,
Life and Services
, 1, pp. 15–16.

23
. W. Loads, ‘Reminiscences of a Pastonian of 1864’. Loads was a great-grandson of Mrs Crosswell, formerly ‘Miss Gaze’, and could ‘just recollect . . . a very old lady wearing a “cross-over”’. Although one would ordinarily dismiss such a late tradition, the story is borne out by the school records (Forder,
Paston Grammar School
, p. 91) and the parish registers of North Walsham, copies of which are filed in the Norfolk Record Office. These last establish the existence of the Gaze family in North Walsham. Elizabeth married John Crosswell on 14 September 1773 and bore him ten children between 1773 and 1795. See also Clarke and McArthur,
Life and Services
, 1, p. 16.

24
. Hanson to Nelson, 29/9/1802, ‘Nelsoniana’, Norfolk Record Office, MC20/48; Ron C. Fiske, ‘Nelson, Levett Hanson, and the Order of St Joachim’.

25
. Forder,
Paston Grammar School
, pp. 86–7.

26
. Pettigrew,
Memoirs
, 1, p. 3; Haggard to
The Times
, 16/2/1895,
ND
, 8 (2003), p. 125; letter of Ella D. Maddison Green, 5/11/1897, Paston School papers, Norfolk Record Office, MC20/27.

27
. Edmund Nelson briefly details the fortunes of his children in his ‘Family Historicall Register’. For Ann’s apprenticeship see the Goldsmiths’ Company Apprentice Book 8, Goldsmiths’ Hall, London, p. 268.

28
. Clarke and McArthur,
Life and Services
, 1, pp. 13–15. I attempted to locate the reference to Suckling’s appointment to the
Raisonable
in the
Norfolk Chronicle
but the relevant issues are missing both in Norwich and London.

29
. Several family statements, including Nelson’s, have him joining the
Raisonable
on 1 January 1771. ‘Horace Nelson’ of Wells was indeed rated midshipman on the books of the ship from 1 January, but he was not marked as actually present until the musters of March/April 1771 (muster, ADM 36/7669, and pay book, ADM 33/676). That Nelson returned to the Paston school after the Christmas holidays and left about March or April also seems clear from the accounts of William Nelson and Levett Hanson given above. Further evidence comes from James Harrison,
Life
, 1, p. 12, who stated that Nelson joined the
Raisonable
at Sheerness. This would place the event after 15 March, when the vessel moved from Chatham to Sheerness (
Raisonable
log, ADM 51/763).

30
. Nelson to William, 20/2/1777, 14/4/1777, Add. MSS 34988; Nelson to Crowe,
D&L
, 4, p. 447; and Nelson to his father, 28/5/1779, Foley,
Nelson Centenary
, p. 19.

III Captain Suckling’s Nephew (pp. 48–62)

1
. W. S. Lewis et al., eds.,
Walpole’s Correspondence
, 24, pp. 178, 209; Nelson to Collingwood, 28/9/1785,
D&L
, 1, p. 143.

2
. Logs of the
Raisonable
, ADM 51/763 and ADM 52/1937.