She appears to have left England in complete ignorance that she had been transferred to Sir William Hamilton, and, from her pathetic letters to her old lover, to have been most anxious to leave Naples and return to him.
This was, however, impossible, and Greville, who was, it is clear, attached in some measure to her, and somewhat ashamed of his part in the bargain, had to make it clear to her that their connection was at an end, and that she had better yield to the persuasions of his uncle. Eventually she did so, but later on, in 1791, prevailed upon him to marry her, and they were married at Naples.
He then brought her back to London, as it was needful that she should be married according to the rites of the Church of England and presented at Court in order that she should take the position that was now rightfully hers as the wife of an English ambassador; and accordingly they were again married, and this time in Marylebone Church, on September 6th, 1791.
Then again she sat to Romney as Joan of Arc, as Cassandra and as The Seamstress, before she returned to Naples as Lady Hamilton.
Into the long history of her life in Naples there is no need to enter in these pages, nor to relate the story of the attachment which, as the wife of Sir William Hamilton, she formed for Nelson. She exercised great influence and power at Naples during the war, and was of the greatest assistance to Nelson, who for her sake deserted and cast off his wife, and entered into a close connection with Lady Hamilton, who was, it is clear, the mother of his child Horatia.
After the recall of the ambassador when the conduct of his wife had become notorious, Nelson took up his residence in the same house as that occupied by the Hamiltons; and when Sir William died in 1802 she went to reside with Nelson at Merton with the distinct understanding that so soon as Lady Nelson was dead he would make her his wife.
Nelson, however, died before his wife, and by his will left to Lady Hamilton certain property; but her extravagant manner of living soon exhausted her means, and as the nation did nothing of importance for her, an execution was put in and Merton and all its contents were sold. She then retired to a smaller house, and later on to lodgings, but was arrested for debt; and when she was able to do so she left the country and went to Calais, where, in 1814, she settled down, first in a farmhouse and then in apartments.
Her means were by this time greatly reduced, as she had only the interest of the money settled upon her daughter and the wreck of her own estate; but, as her daughter stated in later years, although "certainly under very distressing circumstances, she never experienced actual want." Her loveliness had left her, the beauty of her form had given place to corpulence, and it was in distress of mind and body that she died, attended only by her faithful daughter and by a rough hired servant, in her lonely apartments in the Rue Française, Calais, on January 15th, 1815.
She had some years before become a Catholic, and was at the very last attended by a priest and was buried with full Catholic rites outside Calais in the cemetery; but the land has for many years ceased to be used as a burying-place, and all trace of her grave has been lost. Her daughter survived her, and as the wife of the Rev. P. Ward died in March, 1881, at the age of eighty-one years.