James Hamilton (English Army officer)

James was born about 1638[lower-alpha 2] in Ireland. He was the eldest son of George Hamilton and his wife Mary Butler.[2] His father was Scottish, the fourth son of James Hamilton, 1st Earl of Abercorn.[3] His father supported the Marquess of Ormond in the Irish Confederate War and the Cromwellian conquest[4] and called himself a baronet.[5][6][lower-alpha 3]

James's mother was Irish, the third daughter of Thomas Butler, Viscount Thurles (courtesy title), who predeceased his father, Walter Butler, 11th Earl of Ormond, and therefore never succeeded to the earldom. She also was a sister of James Butler,[7] marquess of Ormond and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.[8] Her family, the Butlers, were Old English.[9]

James's place of birth and the date of his parents' marriage are affected by errors caused by confusing his father with his granduncle, George Hamilton of Greenlaw and Roscrea. Both are called George and both married a Mary Butler.[10] In 1640 Ormond had granted James's father Nenagh for 31 years.[11] James was probably born there,[10]. Hamilton's parents had married in 1635, despite earlier dates reported in error due to the mistaken identity.[12][13][lower-alpha 4]

James was one of nine siblings.[14] See George, Elizabeth, Anthony, Richard, and John.[lower-alpha 5] James's parents were both Catholic.[lower-alpha 6]

Hamilton's father served in the Irish army under his brother-in-law James Butler, Earl of Ormond, in the Irish Confederate Wars (1641–1648) and the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland (1649–1653). It has long been believed that James, aged about 16 or 17, his mother and siblings lived in Roscrea, County Tipperary, and were spared when on 17 September 1646, the Confederate Ulster army under Owen O'Neill captured Roscrea Castle from the Munster confederates and killed everybody else in the castle. It seems that this Lady Hamilton was not James's mother but his aunt, the wife of Sir George Hamilton of Greenlaw and Roscrea, while James, his mother, and siblings were safe in Nenagh, 30 kilometres (19 mi) west of Roscrea.[15] This confusion was already made by Carte (1737) and repeated by later authors.[16][17]

On 28 July 1647 Ormond abandoned Dublin to the parliamentarians and left Ireland.[18] In 1648 Phelim O'Neill stormed Nenagh taking it for O'Neill and Rinuccini,[19] but it was still in the same year recaptured by Inchiquin,[20] who was now allied with the royalists. What role James and his father played in these events is not known.

In 1650, Hamilton's father was governor of Nenagh Castle when the Parliamentarian army under Henry Ireton attacked and captured the castle on the way back from the unsuccessful siege of Limerick to their winter quarters at Kilkenny.[21]

Early in 1651, when Hamilton was about 21, his family followed Ormond into French exile.[22][23] They first went to Caen[24] where they were accommodated for some time by Elizabeth Preston, the Marchioness of Ormond. He seems then to have been employed at Charles II's wandering exile court in some ways,[25] whereas his mother went to Paris, where she lived in the convent of the Feuillantines, together with her sister Eleanor Butler, Lady Muskerry.[26]

Hamilton seems to have been the "Sir James Hamilton" who together with William Armorer, brother of Nicholas Armorer, executed the traitor Henry Manning near Cologne in December 1655.[lower-alpha 7]

In the late 1650s before the Battle of the Dunes (1658), Hamilton was lieutenant-colonel of Middleton's Scottish regiment of foot, which was part of James II's Royalist Army in Exile,[29][30] but he seems to have lost his post to William Urry when Newburgh became colonel.

The Restoration in May 1660 brought Charles II on the English throne.[31] Hamilton, his father and his elder siblings moved to the court at Whitehall.[32] James and George, became courtiers.[33] Charles restored James's father to his estates at Donalong, Ulster.[34] About that year Charles allegedly also created Hamilton's father baronet of Donalong and Nenagh,[lower-alpha 3] but the king if he really went that far, refused to go further because the family was Catholic.[35]

The king himself obtained for him the hand of Elizabeth, daughter of John Colepeper, 1st Baron Colepeper,[45] one of the maids of honour to Mary, the Princess Royal.[46] As the bride was a Protestant, he changed religion just before the marriage, which took place in 1661. His mother, a devout Catholic, had in vain tried to dissuade him.[47]

James and Elizabeth had three sons:

1. James (c. 1661 – 1734), succeeded a second cousin as the 6th Earl of Abercorn[48]
2. George (died 1692), became a colonel in the foot guards and fell in the Battle of Steenkerque[49]
3. William (after 1662 – 1737), married his cousin Margaret Colepeper and became the ancestor of the Hamiltons of Chilston[50]

His conversion opened him a career in the English Army. He was appointed colonel of a regiment of foot. Compliance avoided him problems similar to those experienced by his younger brother George, who was dismissed from the Life Guards in 1667 due to his religion[51] and then took French service. Anthony and Richard, the third and the fifth of the brothers, followed George into French service.

He was appointed groom of the bedchamber on 28 October 1664, taking the place of Daniel O'Neill who had died on 24 October.[52][53][54]

He was elected to the House of Commons of the Parliament of Ireland for the Strabane borough and sat as Member of Parliament (M.P.) in the Irish Parliament of 1661 to 1666 at Chichester House between 3 July and 7 August 1666.[55][56]

On 21 August 1667 he was appointed Provost Marshal-General of Barbados.[57] This was a sinecure, which provided him an income without any duty. He never travelled to the island.

In June 1670 he was present at the conclusion of the Secret Treaty of Dover,[58] together with Henrietta of England, called Minette, duchess of Orléans. He was one of the witnesses at her post mortem after her sudden death.[59][60]

He was killed in the Third Anglo-Dutch War. One of his legs was hit by a cannonball on 3 June 1673 when the ship on which he and his regiment were embarked came under fire from the Dutch.[61][62] He died three days later, on 6 June 1673, of the consequences of this wound.[63] The incident happened four days before the first Battle of Schooneveld, which was fought on 7 June 1673. He was buried on 7 June in Westminster Abbey[64] where his uncle James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond, erected a monument to his memory.[65] His wife died in 1709.[66]

Despite being the eldest son, he never inherited his father's titles and land as his father outlived him by six years. However, on 2 December 1701 his eldest son, James, on the death of a second cousin, the last heir-male of the main line of the Abercorns, became the 6th Earl of Abercorn.

• The lost Settlement of Dunnalong
• Robert O. Bucholz Database of Court Officers 1660 – 1837, Loyola University of Chicago