To trace the progress of this heroic and inestimable character, through the various vicissitudes of his eventful life, from it’s commencement to it’s close, with all the accuracy and minuteness which circumstances will admit; contemplating and comparing the several causes and effects which may have retarded or accelerated the progress of his public career, which may have blessed or embittered his private comforts; is the arduous task of the present biographer:  who holds, with a trembling; hand, the pen that would presumptuously aspire to record, with suitable dignity, the history of one of the very greatest and most successful naval heroes that has ever yet astonished and adorned the world.

Lord Nelson, Duke of Bronte—­for he always, very properly, signed with both these titles, from the moment of obtaining them—­was the offspring of parents on each side highly respectable.

The family of the Nelsons had been long resident in the county of Norfolk:  they possessed, for many years, and their posterity still possess, a small patrimony at Hilborough, with the patronage of that rectory.

The Sucklings, likewise a Norfolk family, of lofty alliances, have been resident at Wooton nearly three centuries.

On the 11th of May, in the year 1749, the Reverend Edmund Nelson, son of the then venerable Rector of Hilborough, and himself Rector of Burnham-Thorpe, was married to Catharine daughter of Dr. Maurice Suckling, Rector of Basham in Suffolk, as well as of Wooton in Norfolk, and a Prebendary of Westminster.

By this union the Nelson family gained the honour of being related to the noble families of Walpole, Cholmondeley, and Townshend:  Miss Suckling being the grand-daughter of Sir Charles Turner, Bart. of Warham, in the county of Norfolk, by Mary, daughter of Robert Walpole, Esq. of Houghton, and sister to Sir Robert Walpole, of Wolterton, whose next sister, Dorothy, was married to Charles, second Viscount Townshend.

The honour, however, so conferred, has since been abundantly recompenced to all these illustrious families, by a single Nelson, the offspring of this very union; to whom, in their turn, they may now proudly boast their alliance, without any degradation of dignity.

Of these virtuous and most respectable parents, was Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson born, at the parsonage house of the rectory of Burnham-Thorpe, on Michaelmas-day 1758:  a place which will be ever renowned for having given him birth; and a day of annual festivity, which every Briton has now an additional motive to commemorate.

He was their fifth son, and their sixth child:  his eldest sister, Mrs. Bolton, the amiable lady of Thomas Bolton, Esq. by whom she has a son and four daughters, being about three years older than her renowned brother.

There had been a former son christened Horatio, who only survived about twelve months; and another, named Edmund, after the father, who also died in early infancy:  both of whom are entombed in Hilborough church.