A letter to the Right Hon. Spencer Percival [sic], Chancellor of the Exchequer, &c. &c. on the subject of certain claims upon government; together wth some observations on the motives which appear to have actuated his conduct in resisting them; and containing an appeal to the British nation, on the most wanton and invidious aspersion made by him, in his ministerial capacity of the character of the late, ever to be lamented, Lord Nelson. /
Glencairn, Isabella Cunningham,Countess of,-1824.
Great Britain.Treasury
Bristol: : Printed by Philip Rose.,
1812..
Lady Isabella Erskine (1734-1824) was the second daughter of Henry, 10th Earl of Buchan. In 1770, she married William Leslie Hamilton, Attorney-General of the Leeward Islands, who died in 1780. She married secondly, in 1785, the Hon. and Rev. John Cunningham, later 15th Earl of Glencairn, who died in 1796. Living in very reduced circumstances, the Countess petitioned the Treasury for £15,000 for money spent in public service by her first husband during his time in the Leeward Islands. To back up her claim she cited the support of Horatio (Viscount) Nelson who had supported her financial claims as a widow in the 1780s, and did so again in 1805, shortly before his death at Trafalgar. After unsuccessfully petitioning Spencer Perceval by letter, who from 1809 onwards was serving as both Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, she was finally granted an audience with him in Downing Street in early 1812, only to have her claims dismissed once again. In her version of that meeting, which is published in this pamphlet along with previous correspondence relating to her claim, the Countess claims that Perceval said that he never thought much of Nelson or his services to the nation and that his death "was the salvation of the country" as Nelson would have bankrupted the Treasury if he had lived.
Glencairn, Isabella Cunningham, Countess of, -1824.
Perceval, Spencer, 1762-1812
England Bristol.