On their journey to the Principality Nelson was presented with the freedom of Oxford, and both Sir William and the Admiral had the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws conferred upon them by the University. A visit was also paid to Blenheim, the ancestral seat of the Dukes of Marlborough. Gloucester, Ross, Monmouth, Brecon, Milford, Haverfordwest, Swansea, Worcester, Birmingham, Warwick and other provincial cities and towns each accorded its distinguished visitor a most enthusiastic welcome. He afterwards drew up an elaborate report on the Forest of Dean for Mr Addington’s inspection. Properly cultivated it would, in Nelson’s opinion, “produce about 9200 loads of timber, fit for building Ships-of-the-line, every year.” Collingwood, it may be added, was also deeply interested in afforestation. During the rare occasions he was on shore he would walk about his estate and stealthily take an acorn from his pocket and drop it in the earth for later service in his Majesty’s Navy.
On his return to Surrey Nelson vegetated. “I am really so very little in the world,” he tells Davison in October, “that I know little, if anything, beyond [what] Newspaper reports say respecting our conduct on the affairs of the Continent. It is true, I have seen Mr Addington and Lord St Vincent several times; but our conversations were like Swift’s and Lord Oxford’s. Yet it was not difficult to discover, that _we_ felt our importance in the scale of Europe degraded, if Buonaparte was allowed to act as he has lately done; and that it was necessary for us to speak a dignified language.... By the meeting of Parliament many things must come forth.”
The Hamilton-Nelson family forsook Merton for Piccadilly at the beginning of 1803, and there Sir William died on the 6th April, after having been tenderly nursed by his wife and her more than intimate friend. It is impossible to think that the Admiral had any heartfelt sorrow when the former Ambassador breathed his last, but his emotional nature led him to write the kindest things of the dead man. “The world never, never lost a more upright and accomplished gentleman” is one of his expressions at the event.