NELSON, Robert, the author of several works on practical religion, was the son of a wealthy London merchant, and was born in 1656. After attending St Paul's School, he studied at Cambridge as a fellow-commoner of Trinity College. On his entrance into active life, his worth and accomplishments raised him to a high place in the estimation of the learned. He became the bosom-friend of Tillotson; and in 1680 was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. But not until 1691, at the conclusion of a series of visits to the Continent, did his character as an earnest friend of religion and philanthropy begin to appear in its full excellence. He became a liberal patron of charity-schools; and there was not a scheme for propagating religion, either at home or abroad, to which he did not afford substantial encouragement; while at the same time his pen was perseveringly employed in advocating practical religion. It was while engaged in performing the pious task of writing the life of his old tutor, Bishop Bull, that he contracted his last illness. His death took place in 1715. Nelson's best-known works are,—A Companion for the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England, 8vo, 1704; The Great Duty of Frequenting the Christian Sacrifice, 8vo, 1707;
1 Lord Nelson's brother, the Rev. William Nelson, D.D., was created Earl Nelson of Trafalgar and of Merton on the 20th November 1805, with an annual grant of £6000, and with permission from his Majesty to inherit his deceased brother's Sicilian dukedom of Bronté. Besides £1,100,000 for the purchase of an estate, £1,10,000 were voted to each of the hero's sisters. His dying request in behalf of Lady Hamilton and his "adopted daughter Horatia Nelson Thompson," the British nation saw fit to utterly disregard. The one he left, in a codicil to his will, written a few hours before his fall, "a legacy to my king and country;" and the other "to the beneficence of my country." "These," continues the document, "are the only favours I ask of my king and country at this moment, when I am going to fight their battle;" yet it appears from Pettigrew's Memoirs of Nelson, vol. II., that this codicil was virtuously concealed by the hero's reverend brother until the parliamentary grant to himself was duly completed. The subsequent years of the unfortunate Lady Hamilton's life one had rather pass over. She died at Calais in extreme poverty and great distress on the 6th January 1814. Nelson's daughter, Horatia,—respecting whose maternal extraction Sir N. H. Nicolas has diligently collected so much unsatisfactory information (Nelson's Dispatches, &c., vol. VII., pp. 369-396), in his attempt to remove the generally received and most obvious opinion on the point,—was married in February 1822 to the Rev. Philip Ward, an English clergyman. Some endeavour has recently been made, it seems, to assist her children in entering upon life, with the design, probably, of atoning in some measure for the neglect shown to the dying request of the hero of Trafalgar.
The Practice of True Devotion, 8vo, 1708; and The Whole Duty of a Christian, 8vo, 1718. They have all passed through several editions.