xxiv A FARMERS YEAR 



from Cranwich to Bradenham Hall (with which, by the way, that had 

 an hereditary connection, since Edmund, Lord Nelson's father, was 

 born at East Bradenham in 1722, during his father's tenancy of the 

 living), until the year 1811, and that it was after this date that Lady 

 Hamilton visited them there. Also it would seem that the coat which 

 Canham used to hang out on the railings was not that in which Nelson 

 was killed at Trafalgar, since before 181 1 Lady Hamilton had sold it to 

 Alderman Smith, and that Nelson's belongings from the Victory were 

 sent to Merton and not to Bradenham. When Mrs. Neluon-Ward 

 wrote me her first letter she was of opinion that this coat belonged to 

 Sir William Bolton, the son-in-law of Mrs. Susannah Bolton, a naval 

 officer with whose history I am not acquainted. In a subsequent 

 letter, however, she states that the Misses Girdlestone, who are 

 relatives of the Boltons, have now a coat in their possession which 

 appears to have been the one that old Canham used to air upon the 

 railings. Here are her words : ' The Misses Girdlestone also mentioned 

 the coat we have been in correspondence about. They say they now 

 possess the coat ; it is one that belonged to the Admiral, but was not 

 the Trafalgar coat ; it has always been called the Copenhagen coat, 

 and has no hole in it. They possess the coat through their great 

 grandmother, Susannah, and their grandmother, Katherine, wife of 

 Sir William Bolton.' 



I should add that my late friend, Mr. Cordy Jeaffreson, in his 

 book ' Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson,' vol. ii. p. 266, writes as 

 follows : ' Whilst Nelson was at sea, Lady Hamilton lived upon affec- 

 tionate terms with his brothers and sisters, receiving them at Merton 

 for staying visits, and making trips to their homes in different parts of 

 the country. "I long," Nelson wrote to her, on July 12, 1803, "to 

 hear of your Norfolk excursion, and everything that you have been 

 about, for I am ever most warmly interested in your actions." In the 

 autumn of the folio-wing year (1804) s ^ e was again with the Boltons at 

 Bradenham Hall, co. Norfolk, the wooded home of the Norfolk 

 Haggards.' 



The italics, I should state, are mine ; but if, as I have every reason 

 to suppose, Mrs. Nelson- Ward is right in believing that the Boltons 

 did not go to Bradenham until 1811, it seems strange that Mr. 

 Jeaffreson should have made this curious error in dates in a serious 

 biographical work. The truth is that, after the lapse of a hundred 

 years, such points are very difficult to unravel with certainty. 



H. R. H. 



