Nelson & His World

Further to Margarette Lincoln's comment in 'Naval Wives and Mistresses' that unhappily married couples often resorted to a Deed of Separation rather than divorce which was difficult to obtain, I wondered about Nelson's separation from Fanny. Was there ever a formal deed drawn up by a lawyer or was it a totally informal arrangement?

The arrangements for their separation seem to consist of little more than Nelson authorising maintenance payments to Fanny. All Nelson's correspondence about this appear to have been made through Alexander Davison who was a businessman and Nelson's agent, not a lawyer. Though Nelson's solicitor, Mr Haselwood, visited Nelson and Fanny during the fraught period before their separation and described a sharp exchange between them, I have not found any reference to his involvement in any legal arrangements. I recall from my days in the old PRO (the National Archives) that properly constituted Deeds of Separation were usually entered in the Close Rolls of Chancery. (These really are vellum rolls many yards long and written in the distinctive 'Chancery hand'), so if there was a proper deed drawn up, the record should be there.

In September 1801, the Times ran a short piece relating to the separation:



I'm not sure whether this refers to a formal agreement, or whether the paper was simply printing information it had got hold of. But it's clear that the separation and the financial arrangement attending it were in the public domain.

The increase to L2000 had me wondering. Wasn't that the original amount stated from the first?

If that's the case, there doesn't appear to be an increase here.

Mira:

Fanny’s allowance seems to have varied. Edgar Vincent says (p 381) ‘By the middle of January 1801 he would arrange for Fanny to have an allowance of £1600 a year’.

In March 1802, Nelson prepared details of his income and his outgoings and assets for Davison. (Vincent p 473):

My Exchequer Pension for the Nile £2000
Navy pension for loss of arm and eye £ 923
Half-pay as Vice-Admiral £ 429
Interest of £1000 3 per cents £ 30
____________
£3418

To Lady Nelson £1800
Interest of money owing £ 500
Pension to my brother’s widow £ 200
To assisting in educating my nephews £ 150
___________
£2650

Lord Nelson is free of house rent but has to pay charities necessary for his station in life, taxes, repairs, servants and live upon £763 per annum. '

But The Times reports that he is paying £2000 in September 1801, confirmed in a letter from Nelson to Emma of 15 October 1801. Maybe this is a little Nelsonian exaggeration, but it seems pointless since it would be so easily contradicted. Perhaps the payment varied according to his Vice-Admiral’s pay? He was on ‘Admiralty Leave’ from 15 October 1801, so his Navy pay would have dropped by a half when he prepared the memorandum the following March. Maybe Fanny’s payment was adjusted accordingly.

£2,000 was the original figure stated from the first.

One possible source of confusion arises from income tax and whether the figures quoted are gross or net of tax. The top bracket of income tax in 1801 was 10%, so £2,000 would reduce to £1,800 net of tax.

(Income tax disappeared in 1802 and returned in 1803 at 5%.)

Roger Knight has a footnote saying "Nelson made generous allowance for Fanny at £1800 a year, consisting of £400 a quarter and 5 per cent interest on the £4000 that had been given to him by her uncle and that he later returned to her". So whether the figure was £1,800 or £1,600 depends on whether you count the interest on her own money (which of course now belonged to Nelson).

One other point to bear in mind is that in English law, an agreement is legally binding whether it is verbal, written on a fag packet, or drawn up by a solicitor, so I wonder whether it makes any difference whether it was an informal arrangement.

Thanks, Tony, for the clarification.

Regarding the legality of agreements: Margarette Lincoln says of deeds of separation that they 'were not enforceable in common law but kept the domestic situation out of the courts and the public eye.'

According to BM. Add. MSS. 28333, quoted in 'Nelson's Letters to his Wife,' Naish, p580:

Nelson sets out his instructions to his banking agents (Marsh, Page & Creed) to pay Lady Nelson’s allowance of £1800 per year neat money.

This includes Lady Nelson’s £200 per year interest/annuity on her £4000 dowry.

Nelson, or Emma, or both of them contributed to a letter sent to Edmund Nelson in September 1801 which states that Lady Nelson receives £2,000 and £4,000 in money.

In the same month one of Lady Nelson's ex-servants said that Samuel Norman, the butler, had told her Lord Nelson's allowance was £2,000.

The Times mentions an increase to £2,000, also in September.

From this, it looks like she did receive an increase. But when did Nelson give her the £4,000 dowry back if it was in his hands in January/March 1801, but back with Fanny by September 21st?

On 6 March 1801 Nelson wrote 'And I having in my lifetime made her a present of £4000 I think I have done very handsomely towards her.' This suggests it had then been paid, although I wonder whether this could be a statement of intention rather than of fact.

But should we believe there was an increase? Nelson/Emma, the servants and The Times all say the allowance was £2,000 - but what payments did he actually make?

In 1803 the statement of income & expenditure that Nelson compiled for Addington showed £1800 per year to Lady Nelson, but Oliver Warner points out that his bank statements for 1802 show payments of £400 per quarter and not £450 [let alone £500].

How much did the payments vary before and after 1802?

Were Nelson, Emma, servants and newspapers ever prone to exaggeration?

Just come under the radar are documents that would appear to clarify Nelson's financial disbursements to Fanny in the threads above.

I'm not sure if this particular memo has been explored before. I'd be delighted to know if it has.

Regarding Fanny's share of Nelson's income, an undated memo that belonged to Alexander Davison states:



It appears that the Deed of Trust, or 'Deed Poll' to give it its proper title, mentioned in this memo and in Tycho's enquiry above does exist.

But was this memo written before or after Nelson left London on 13th January 1801?

That is all very interesting, Mira.

So it would appear that Fanny was indeed very well-provided for. Margarette Lincoln mentioned that a separated wife might look to one third of her husband's income, whereas Nelson provided half. She also gets the capital and interest on the £4000 her uncle left her, which was in law, Nelson's, I believe. It was only in 1870 that the Married Woman's Property Act gave a wife control of her inherited income. Could Nelson, had he been so minded, have hung on to the capital sum and the interest?

I wonder whether the 'Deed Poll' is significant. Today, a deed poll usually refers to a change of name. In fact, (though I'm not a lawyer), it means a signed statement in which a single signer is bound by the agreement in the deed. (The responsibility is on his/her head or 'poll'). A deed poll is legal, if signed and witnessed. It does not need to be drawn up by a lawyer and need not be registered anywhere else, though if lawyers are involved, the details can be officially registered as a precaution lest the original deed be lost.

I remember from my days in the PRO that the class J18 was the location of the registration of deeds poll. We often got anxious requests for a copy of a lost deed poll, but if the lawyer drawing up the original deed had not bothered to register it, then there was no way of providing a copy to confirm a change of name. (One woman had had her deed poll burned by an irate partner during a domestic upset and nearly hit me when I had to tell her it had not been registered!)

The point of all this witter is - did Nelson arrange a deed poll in order to preserve a measure of privacy about his financial arrangements with regard to the separation since this procedure need not involve lawyers, merely witnesses, and need not be publicly registered?

It appears to be more than half if he was also paying around 10% tax on top.

And considerably more than half when on half pay.

As the disbursements came from three different soucres:

Income - pension - Fanny's coverture -

Would all of these have been subject to the tax?

Another point to remember is that Nelson actually paid the sums he had agreed to.

It was by no means unheard of for a husband to renege on an agreement and a penurious wife would not have the means to go to law to rectify the position. This was true of Lady Elizabeth Foster, for example, whose husband did not pay the allowances he had agreed to. (See p. 29, 'Elizabeth & Georgiana' by Chapman & Dormer - full details on Book Reports thread)

I think the memo explains the tax situation. There is a word missing from the memo (in the way we would write it, anyway):-

'The amount of Income tax to be paid by His Lordship is - 200'

The memo is a balancing statement showing how the income of £2,000 (before tax) is to be paid.

Viz
£200 income tax to the Government
£1600 to Fanny from his account at Marsh & Creed (in quarterly instalments of £400)
£200 to Fanny from the interest from Fanny's own £4000 invested in trust

Total: £2,000

i.e. Fanny receives £1,800 after tax, of which £200 is the interest on her own £4,000

I am getting a bit confused about these deeds! Tycho's original query was whether a formal Deed of Separation was ever drawn up. The memo above refers to a Trust, which would have required a Deed of Trust to set up the trust fund with Davison and Maurice Nelson as trustees. These two things are surely not the same? The Deed of Trust certainly existed - see Downer, Nelson's Purse, pages 214, 301 and 397. However although it may have been part of Nelson's arrangements for the separation, it was not a Deed of Separation and related only to the Trust Fund for Fanny's £4,000 legacy from her uncle (paid to Nelson). I do not believe it related to the other elements of the allowance to be paid to Fanny, and it would not imply a separation.

An agreement setting up a trust fund to allow a wife to retain control of her own money seems to have been a normal arrangement, even when there were no marriage difficulties. One example I have come across is my ancestor's second sister who married late in life (to 'the boy next door', now the local vicar and dockyard chaplain) and had inherited from her father. Before her marriage she entered into an agreement with her husband and two other trustees that she would retain full control over the money from her father. It seems that pre-marital agreements are not the exclusive remit of rock-stars, footballers and tycoons.

Nelson certainly was not obliged in law to hand over Fanny's legacy to her, but you can imagine the reaction of friends, family and newspapers if he was seen to keep it for himself.

Downer also refers to the other arrangements listed in the memo above (although he mentions a quarterly payment of £500 which may be an error), and seems to imply the arrangements were made before Nelson left London. In his notes on sources, he provides Lot 86 in the sale of the Alexander Davison Collection as the source (these are described as documents from c.1812-14 relating to the earlier Deed of Trust and other arrangements). Downer also explicitly refers to the word 'absence' also in the memo above: 'Lord Nelson during his absence...'. His conclusion (which I tend to agree with in this instance) is that Fanny (naively in my view) believed these arrangements were for Nelson's temporary absence at sea, rather than for a permanent separation.

Fanny's choice of trustees in the Deed of Trust was unfortunate, as Maurice Nelson died soon afterwards and Davison caused her difficulties for years by not sorting out arrangements for another trustee. Ironically, for many years the trust did not give Fanny the control over her legacy that Nelson had intended. Davison, for some unkown reason, thwarted Nelson's intentions until 1814, when Fanny finally got control over the legacy.

If Fanny had known there was to be a permanent separation, her choice of trustees would seem to me to be somewhat naive - although they were friends she trusted, surely she would have recognised that ultimately, if put to the test, both Maurice's and Davison's loyalties would have to be to Nelson.

Downer comments that Nelson's provisions for Fanny were generous and represented to a little over half his income at that time. I'm not sure whether that is true because the £200 income from Fanny's legacy is included as part of Nelson's £2,000 allowance to her, but is always omitted from Nelson's own statements of his income. Also I'm not sure what his full pay would have been. Half pay, despite its name, was not in fact half of what he earned on full pay. I am not sure if it was more or less. There are also allowances in lieu of Captain's/Admiral's servants to remember. And there was prize money - considerable amounts were still outstanding from previous years, and even his claim against St Vincent was ultimately successful on appeal in 1803, netting him £14,000. But the provisions still seem generous to me.

However it does seem to me that the legal agreement protected only the £200 income and £4,000 principal from Fanny's legacy, and that there is no evidence for any legal agreement or protection for her allowance out of Nelson's income. Legally, as Tycho points out, her position was precarious.