"The battle of Trafalgar," says Bourrienne, in his Memoirs of Napoleon, "paralyzed our naval force, and banished all hope of any attempt against England."
England raised monuments in many of her large cities to her heroic dead. In Trafalgar Square, London, stands the Nelson column, fluted, surmounted by his statue, while on the sides are representations of his four great battles, St. Vincent, the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar, cast in gun-metal taken from the enemy in these engagements. The four lions by Landseer are at the base.
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.