The Most Honourable Order of the Bath, awarded to Vice-Admiral Horatio, Viscount Nelson

The Most Honourable Order of the Bath, Knight Companion’s Breast Star, circa 1797, awarded to Vice-Admiral Horatio, Viscount Nelson following the Battle of Cape St Vincent, 14 February 1797;

the eight-pointed silver star with machine-cut sprung rays, the tips fitted with gold loops for thread suspension; the centre in gold, silver and enamels, with motto of the Order TRIA JUNCTA IN UNO, reverse fitted with two gold catch-pins and a concave gold backplate engraved over thirteen lines:

The Star of VICE ADMIRAL Lord Viscount Nelson Duke of Brontй KB &c &c.

Who fell in his last GLORIOUS VICTORY off Cape Trafalgar the - 21 October 1805. -

Presented to Vice Admiral Sir Richard Goodwin Keats by EARL NELSON 24th March - 1814. –

height 96.8mm, width 95.8mm, diameter of backplate 36.8mm, in extremely fine lightly-worn condition overall, reverse of lower ray with trace of removal of a further pin or fitment, rim of backplate with faint engraver’s scratch marks; housed in a red morocco fitted case of the type used by Rundell and Bridge and their successors and offered with a manuscript letter, in original cover with seal, recording the gift of the Star to Vice Admiral Sir Richard Goodwin Keats, K.B.

(lot 1) £300,000-500,000

The letter reads as follows:

Portman Square

March 24th 1814

My Dear Sir

I hope you will do me the favour to accept the Star herewith sent, in testimony of your esteem for, & the mutual friendship which subsisted between yourself & my lamented & beloved Brother.

I am, with great regard,

your faithful & obliged

humble Servant

Nelson & Bronte.

The official announcement of Nelson’s award appeared in the London Gazette: 27 May 1797:

‘The King has also been pleased to nominate and appoint Horatio Nelson, Esq; Rear-Admiral of the Blue, to be One of the Knights Companions of the most Honourable Order of the Bath.’

Provenance:

Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson of the Nile and Burnham Thorpe and 1st Duke of Bronte (1758-1805);

William Nelson, 1st Earl Nelson and 2nd Duke of Bronte (1757-1835), inherited under the terms of his late brother’s will;

Admiral Sir Richard Goodwin Keats, G.C.B. (1756-1834), to whom it was given by William Nelson on 24 March 1814;

Admiral William Keats (circa 1795-1874), nephew of the above;

Thence by direct family descent.

The discovery - or more correctly the re-discovery - of Nelson’s Bath Star, together with the associated letter with which it is offered, inevitably provokes the question: why was it given to Keats?

As has been demonstrated, Nelson and Keats were good friends and colleagues in a professional relationship in which mutual respect was not only paramount but also regularly proclaimed. That said, Keats was not a central figure amongst the ‘Band of Brothers’ and neither was he at Trafalgar; in fact, Keats and Nelson served together for only a short time and they never shared a fleet action. So why did William Nelson, 1st Earl Nelson - not a man remembered by history for manifestations of open-handed generosity – decide in 1814 to present Admiral Sir Richard Keats with the Star of a Knight Companion of the Order of the Bath that his brother had proudly worn since 1797?

Without a letter from either man exactly explaining the circumstances surrounding the gift, it is impossible to answer that question conclusively. We know that Keats made sure to destroy certain, probably potentially embarrassing, letters to him from H.R.H. The Prince William, Duke of Clarence (later King William IV), with whom Keats corresponded from the 1780s until the end of his life (White, p 351 and n. 16). Only one piece of correspondence between Keats and William Nelson has survived in the public domain, written some eight years before the presentation of this magnificent Star. It may hold the clue to the gift and, in so doing, may provide an insight into one of the practices of the age upon which so many individual careers depended – in a word, patronage.

Notions of patronage permeated Society in Keats’s time. He had himself benefited from it in his early years in the Royal Navy and his career was probably affected advantageously to some degree by his closeness to H.R.H. The Prince William, Duke of Clarence, one of whose illegitimate sons he was able to assist with the beginnings of a naval career. Nelson also benefited from patronage during his career and exercised it himself to promote the interests of those whom he considered worthy, or to whom he was obliged through kinship. It is clear that Keats felt and exercised a considerable responsibility for Charles Nelson, a young man whose father had died when he was only four years old and whose cousin and potential patron, the Hero, had been killed less than a month after he had joined the Navy. It is likely that William Nelson was only too happy for Keats to assume this responsibility after Horatio’s death, and was grateful to him for doing so.

The following letter from Keats to William Nelson is preserved in the British Library, among the Nelson papers (Add. Mss. 34992, ff. 84-85). Written from ‘Superb at Sea’ – in fact, off Barbados in the West Indies – and dated 11 January 1806, it reads:

‘My dear Lord,

Tho’ I owe you every manner of good will and wish you every possible success, I cannot for my life congratulate you on your accession to honors which has cost our Country and many of us so dearly, but I sincerely hope every distinction and liberality which a grateful nation can confer will be bestowed on the heirs and successors of the departed Hero.

One of those circumstances to which in the Navy we are peculiarly subject has taken the Superb from the Mediterranean to the West Indies, and I hope will soon carry her back again; before we left the Eastern Shore of the Atlantic I sent by the particular recommendation of Sir John Duckworth whose Flag is still in the Superb all the remaining things I bro’t from England for the late Lord Nelson to his successor in the command of the Mediterranean Lord Collingwood, who will I am sure take care to have them scrupulously accounted for to the Executors of Lord Nelson. The small paper parcel which I received from you together with another and a few private letters I sent by Capt. Capel of the Phoebe, who I daresay has taken great care to have them conveyed to you or Lord Nelson’s Executors. I enclose a List of the articles sent to Lord Collingwood – a copy of which I pray you to give his Lordship’s Executors.

Your Nephew Charles who (as I had no opportunity of meeting Lord Collingwood and the Victory having left station before the Superb arrived on it) is still with me – is in good health and spirits and a very good boy – and if contrary to my expectations the Superb should be detained in the West Indies ‘till the Sickly Season which be [illegible] in about July I have thoughts of sending him to England. I have hinted as much to his Mother to whom I write by this Packet, and I shall be glad to receive your wishes and commands respecting him. For it would grieve me exceedingly shd. any accident befall him whilst under my care. I keep him rated Mid. and you may be assured he shall be supplied with every thing necessary. On Xmas day we had a sight of an enemy Squadron just our Numbers, but they were unusually favour’d by the winds – and as no Action could have taken place but on very unequal terms (our Squadron being much separated in the chace) none did. This has bro’t us where we are near Barbados, from whence I send this –

I beg my best compts. to Lady Nelson and your family and have the honour to remain Your Lordships very Humble Servant, R.G. Keats.’

Charles Nelson was not William Nelson’s nephew, although he was of a sufficiently younger generation that Keats could be forgiven for making such an error. He was in fact a distant cousin of William and Horatio Nelson: their grandfathers had been brothers, being two of the three sons of William Nelson (c.1654-1713) of Scarning and Dunham Parva in Norfolk. Whereas William, Horatio and their siblings descended from the youngest brother, The Rev. Edmund Nelson M.A. (1696-1747), vicar of Sporle and rector of Hilborough, Norfolk, Charles and his siblings descended from the eldest brother, Thomas Nelson (1683-1762) of Sporle (Burke, p 1119 & Nelson, passim).

The youngest of three children of The Rev. Edmund Nelson M.A. (1725-95), rector of Congham, Norfolk, Charles was born in 1791 (Norfolk Registers). As O’Byrne records, he entered the Royal Navy on 30 September 1805 as a midshipman on H.M.S. SUPERB (74), Captain R.G. Keats. A letter from Keats to Horatio Nelson, written from Portsmouth on 1 October 1805 is preserved in the British Library (Add. Mss. 34931, f. 246). Probably the last letter that Keats ever wrote to the Admiral, it goes some way to explaining just how Charles Nelson first came to be aboard H.M.S. SUPERB. After some paragraphs regarding the state of the ship after her dockyard refit, and some naval gossip, Keats wrote:

‘This morning Mr Nicholson bro’t me the Youngster of your Lordship’s name, a fine smart looking Boy. I rather recommended to him to allow me to send him by Sir Edward Berry as he sails in the morning but he thinks his mother would prefer his going in the Superb so I purpose putting him with two Youngsters of his own age in the house of an acquaintance at Gosport who will have an attentive eye to them and give them the benefit of an Accademy of some reputation till the Ship goes out of the Harbor.’

This implies that Keats’s intentions, perhaps following informal instructions from Nelson, were to take the young Charles out to his cousin’s fleet where he would join H.M.S. VICTORY. As is related elsewhere in this catalogue, however, H.M.S. SUPERB’s delay in sailing prevented this and so Midshipman Nelson remained with Keats aboard his ship. Had he in fact sailed with Sir Edward Berry on H.M.S. AGAMEMNON, Charles would indeed have joined the fleet, but in the event he remained with SUPERB – and thus generally under Keats’s eye, either as captain or, after October 1807, as rear admiral – until July 1809. He served at St Domingo and in the Baltic and, like Keats’s own nephew William Keats (see lot 3), he was later to receive the Naval General Service Medal 1793-1840 with clasp for St Domingo. In 1811 Charles Nelson served briefly under Sir Richard once more, whilst passing his lieutenant’s examinations.

In March 1814, when William Nelson sent the K.B. Star to Keats, Keats was briefly in London, on leave and on business from the governorship of Newfoundland. He had been appointed to this post on 10 February 1813 and was to occupy it until 16 April 1816. Returning to England on 21 December 1813, Keats was in London on Admiralty business until 4 January 1814 and then on leave until 17 March; he was in London once more on 18 March 1814, just six days before receiving the gift of Nelson’s K.B. Star from William Nelson, and left for Newfoundland again on 26 April 1814 (ADM 50/76).

No mention of any meeting with William Nelson is recorded in his official journal, so whatever happened between the two men during this period must have been entirely private and personal.

The gift of Nelson’s Star may have marked an act, or many acts, of kindness or discretion on the part of Keats. Like many of Nelson’s contemporaries, Keats was fully aware of Nelson’s relationship with Emma Hamilton but contrived to remain on good terms with all parties concerned. Keats may also have exercised his patronage in other ways less visible than that clearly extended to Charles Nelson but no less beneficial to William Nelson, whose reputation for actively seeking favours from the great was notorious in his own lifetime and remains well-known today. It is unlikely that the reason for the gift will ever be known for certain but, in that it ensured the survival of a hitherto unknown, highly important and exquisite relic of Horatio, Lord Nelson, all those who hold such things dear must remain grateful to William, 1st Earl Nelson, for making it.

Stephen Wood MA FSA