A GOLD AND ENAMEL MOURNING RING FOR LORD NELSON, BY...

A GOLD AND ENAMEL MOURNING RING FOR LORD NELSON, BY JOHN SALTER, 1806,
The black and red enamelled mounted ring lettered TRAFALGAR and in gothic letters with 'N B', surmounted with coronets for a duke and a viscount, applied to a plain gold band engraved on the inner edge Lost to his Country 21 Octr 1805 Aged 47 and on the outer with Nelson's motto PALMAM QUI MERUIT FERAT (Let he who has earned it bear the palm); together with a brass and glass pendant enclosing a lock of hair and a book of music with tooled leather covered lettered REVD. A.J.SCOTT
Provenance
The ring, lock or hair and music book were gifted by the direct descendants of the Reverend Alexander John Scott's family to the present owners.

The Reverend Alexander John Scott (1768-1840) was a British naval chaplain. He was appointed to the flagship H.M.S. Victory in 1803 where he served as private secretary to Lord Nelson. He was with Nelson when when he was shot on the quarter-deck of the Victory at the battle of Trafalgar on the 21st October 1805. Scott attended his dying chief in the cockpit of the flagship, receiving his last wishes. He refused to leave Nelson's body until it was brought back to England and placed in the coffin to lie in the Painted Hall Greenwich.

Of the fifty-eight examples of this ring made by Salter, thirty-one were for Nelson's close family and friends, the rest for pall-bearers and other dignitaries present at the funeral.