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A GOLD AND ENAMEL MOURNING RING FOR LORD NELSON BY JOHN SALTER, LONDON, 1805 WITH NELSON FAMILY PROVENANCE A GOLD AND ENAMEL MOURNING RING FOR LORD NELSON BY JOHN SALTER, LONDON, 1805 WITH NELSON FAMILY PROVENANCE commemorating the death of Admiral Lord Nelson at Trafalgar, the enamel rectangular bezel decorated with the gothic letters N and B, surmounted by a viscount’s and a ducal coronet, inside bezel engraved Lost to his Country 21 Octr. 1805, outside shank engraved with Nelson’s motto PALMAM QUI MERUIT FERAT Thomasine Goulty (née Nelson, 1732-1821), Admiral Lord Nelson’s aunt and younger sister of Nelson’s father Edmund; Thence by descent. Mrs Goulty was the daughter of the Reverend Edmund Nelson, Rector of Hilborough. Her younger elder brother, also Edmund, was Admiral Nelson’s father. She was baptised on the 4th September 1732 and married John Goulty, a prosperous Norwich shoemaker, in 1757. On her death, aged 88, she bequeathed ‘the ring Lord Nelson to my granddaughter Thomasine Cleeve’. This was presumably because her own son, Nelson’s cousin John Goulty, also owned a ring. In 1810, Thomasine married Charles Cleeve of Fakenham, Norfolk, and she subsequently gave the ring to her sister Eliza, wife of Charles Radcliffe. Thence by family descent. This ring is listed as ‘Mrs Goulty’ in the ‘List of Persons to whom mourning rings were sent agreeable to directions of Rt. Honble Earl Nelson and J. Haslewood Esq. to late Ld Visc. Nelson of Bronte’ composed by Sarah, Countess Nelson, the wife of Nelson’s brother and executor William, first Earl Nelson, and now in the British Library. Fifty-eight such rings were distributed ahead of Nelson’s funeral in January 1806 to friends and family. Some wear to enamel.