Overall: 62cm (24.3in) x 47cm (18.5in)
Provenance: George Nelson Matcham (1789-1877)
Printed card with inked inscriptions and wax seal of Sir Isaac Heard, Garter King of Arms. Ticket for the ‘Funeral of the late Vice Admiral Horatio Viscount Nelson to admit George Matcham Esq, nephew of the late Viscount into the Procession from the Admiralty to St Paul’s Cathedral’. No. 416. Ticket: 15cm x 18cm. Framed and glazed with a contemporary flyer, published 9 January 1806 and printed with a depiction Nelson’s funeral car and a verse from ‘Nelson’s Tomb’ by the Naval Pay Office employee and poet W.T. Fitzgerald.
Nelson's lying in state and funeral that took place between 6 and 9 January 1806 was an elaborate, well planned and expensive affair. In the wake of the European Allies recent defeat at the hands of Napoleon at Austerlitz it provided newly created Great Britain with an opportunity to put on a display of national unity. The huge military presence gave confidence to the crowd and served as a deterrent to the enemy across the Channel. Moreover Nelson’s burial in St Paul's confirmed the intimate connection between the City of London, the sea and the Royal Navy. For Nelson’s elder brother, on whom the Nelson Earldom had been bestowed, it was an especially important opportunity to establish the family name in British life over that of the admiral’s bequest to the nation - Lady Hamilton.
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To that end William, 1st Earl Nelson complained to the chief organiser Sir Isaac Heard that impostors were pretending to be relations and that all applications to join the Procession, must be vetted by him. One John Stevens Esq of 71 Paradise Row, Chelsea, claiming to be a cousin, was struck from the list of tickets issued by the College of Arms. Bona fide Nelson relatives received ticket numbers 414 to 422.
George Matcham junior, fifteen years of age at the time of the funeral, was allotted present ticket 416. He and his father spent the night before the funeral in an hotel in Clarges Street, off Piccadilly with the admiral’s other brother-in-law Thomas Bolton and other nephew eighteen year-old Tom Bolton (ticket 415). The four went together to Earl Nelson’s house at nearby 18 Charles Street off Berkeley Square on the morning of the funeral. Their distant Norfolk cousins, George Walpole MP and Horatio Walpole MP (tickets No. 421 and 422), had already arrived. After breakfasting together they departed for Hyde Park in three of the nine family mourning coaches demanded by Earl Nelson from the heralds.
George Nelson Matcham (1789-1877), son of George Matcham, an East India Company official, traveller and author, and his wife, Catherine, sister of the admiral, was born at Barton Hall, Norwich. He was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, and was in Portsmouth on 14 September 1805 to bid farewell to his famous uncle, when he sailed for the Mediterranean to take on the Combined Fleets of France and Spain in the epoch making showdown that ensured British naval supremacy for a century or more. After Trafalgar, George and his parents were among the fifty-eight recipients of the celebrated Nelson mourning rings from the executors 1st Earl Nelson and J. Haslewood (thirty-one were assigned to relatives and twenty-seven to close associates including the admiral’s brother officers, lawyers and prize agents). Evidently deeply effected by the funeral service itself, the teenager recalled the moment the pall covering the highly decorated coffin was removed when placed on the bier in front of the high altar as ‘the most awe-ful [sic] sight I ever saw.’