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. Having produced no heirs and having no claim to her second husband's estate, she found herself living in very reduced circumstances. The Countess therefore 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 sending letters petitioning Spencer Perceval, 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. 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. Perceval allegedly went on to say that his death "was the salvation of the country" as Nelson would have bankrupted the Treasury if he had lived. Perceval was astounded at the claims, writing to his political ally William Wilberforce that it was if he had "damned the King and blasphemed My Maker in the same conversation". He was assassinated in the House of Commons later that year and presumably the Countess's campaign came to nothing. She is recorded as having died in debt in Boulogne in 1824.

D. Gray, Spencer Perceval: The Evangelical Prime Minister, 1762-1812, Manchester, 1963, p. 125-126.