James Hamilton (English army officer)

James was born about 1638[lower-alpha 1] 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, and would in 1660 be created baronet of Donalong and Nenagh.[3]

James's mother was the third daughter of Thomas Butler, Viscount Thurles, and a sister of the future 1st Duke of Ormond.[4] Her family, the Butler dynasty, was Old English and descended from Theobald Walter, who had been appointed Chief Butler of Ireland by King Henry II in 1177.[5] His parents had married in 1635.[1] He was one of nine siblings,[6] who are listed in his father's article.

James's parents have often been confused with another George Hamilton, married with another Mary Butler. These are his father's uncle Sir George Hamilton of Greenlaw and Roscrea and his wife Mary, sixth daughter of Walter Butler, 11th Earl of Ormond. This other George Hamilton lived in Roscrea.[8]

Both his parents were Catholic, but some relatives on his father's as on his mother's side were Protestants. His grandfather, James Hamilton, 1st Earl of Abercorn, had been a Protestant,[9] but his father and all his paternal uncles were raised as Catholics due to the influence of his paternal grandmother, Marion Boyd, a Scottish recusant.[10] Some branches of the Hamilton family were Protestant, such as that of his father's second cousin Gustavus (1642–1723), who would become the 1st Viscount Boyne. His mother's family, the Butlers, were generally Catholic with the notable exception of the future 1st Duke of Ormond, his maternal uncle. He himself would later turn Protestant as will be seen below. His brother Thomas seems to have made the same choice as he became a captain in the Royal Navy.[11]

His 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.[12] This confusion was already made by Carte (1737) and repeated by later authors.[13][14]

On 28 July 1647 Ormond abandoned Dublin to the parliamentarians and left Ireland.[15] In 1648 Phelim O'Neill stormed Nenagh taking it for O'Neill and Rinuccini,[16] but it was still in the same year recaptured by Inchiquin,[17] who was now allied with the royalists. What role James and his father played in these events is not known.

In 1650, his 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.[18]

Early in 1651, when he was about 21, his family followed Ormond into French exile.[19][20] They first went to Caen[21] 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,[22] whereas his mother went to Paris, where she lived in the convent of the Feuillantines, together with her sister Eleanor Butler, Lady Muskerry.[23] He 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 3]

James returned with his parents and siblings from France to London in 1660 with the advent of the English Restoration. They were now well connected at court. His father was created Baronet Donalong in 1660 by Charles II.

The king himself obtained for him the hand of Elizabeth, daughter of John Colepeper, 1st Baron Colepeper,[35] one of the maids of honour to Mary, the Princess Royal.[36] 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.[37]

James and Elizabeth had three sons:

1. James (c. 1661 – 1734), succeeded a second cousin as the 6th Earl of Abercorn[38]
2. George (died 1692), became a colonel in the foot guards and fell in the Battle of Steenkerque[39]
3. William (after 1662 – 1737), married his cousin Margaret Colepeper and became the ancestor of the Hamiltons of Chilston[40]

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[41] 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.[42][43][44]

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.[45]

On 21 August 1667 he was appointed Provost Marshal-General of Barbados.[46] This was a sinecure, which provided him an income without any duty. He never travelled to the island.

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.[47] He died three days later, on 6 June 1673, of the consequences of this wound.[48][49] 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[50] where his uncle James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond, erected a monument to his memory.[51] His wife died in 1709.[52]

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