James Hamilton (English Army officer)

Colonel James Hamilton (died 1673) was a courtier to Charles II after the Restoration. He appears in the Mémoires du Comte de Grammont, written by his brother Anthony.

In 1651 when about 21, James and his family fled Ireland during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. Hamilton then joined the exile court on its wanderings and returned to England with the king at the Restoration. The king appointed him ranger of Hyde Park. Hamilton left the Catholic church to marry a Protestant and the king then appoiinted him a groom of his bedchamber. In 1666 Hamilton represented Strabane in the Irish Parliament. In 1673, during the Third Anglo-Dutch War, Hamilton lost a leg in a sea-fight with the Dutch and died from the wound a few days later. In 1701 his eldest son succeeded a cousin as 6th Earl of Abercorn.

Birth and origins
James was born about 1638 in Ireland. He was the eldest son of George Hamilton and his wife Mary Butler. His father was Scottish, the fourth son of James Hamilton, 1st Earl of Abercorn. His father supported the Marquess of Ormond in the Irish Confederate War and the Cromwellian conquest and called himself a baronet.

James's mother was half Irish and half English, the third daughter of Thomas Butler, Viscount Thurles and his English Catholic wife Elizabeth Poyntz. Viscount Thurles (courtesy title) predeceased his father, Walter Butler, 11th Earl of Ormond, and therefore never succeeded to the earldom. The Butlers were Old English. James's mother also was a sister of James Butler, making her husband a brother-in-law of the lord lieutenant.

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. In 1640 Ormond had granted James's father Nenagh for 31 years. James was probably born there,. Hamilton's parents had married in 1635, despite earlier dates reported in error due to the mistaken identity.

James was one of nine siblings. See George, Elizabeth, Anthony, Richard, and John. James's parents were both Catholic.

Irish wars and exile
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 km west of Roscrea. This confusion was already made by Carte (1737) and repeated by later authors.

On 28 July 1647 Ormond abandoned Dublin to the parliamentarians and left Ireland. In 1648 Phelim McTuoll O'Neill stormed Nenagh taking it for Owen Roe O'Neill and Rinuccini, but it was still in the same year recaptured by Inchiquin, who was now allied with the royalists.

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

Early in 1651, when Hamilton was about 21, his family followed Ormond into French exile. They first went to Caen 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, whereas his mother went to Paris, where she lived in the convent of the Convent of the Feuillantines, together with her sister Eleanor Butler, Lady Muskerry.

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.

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, but he seems to have lost his post to William Urry when Newburgh became colonel.

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

Hyde Park
Hamilton was appointed ranger of Hyde Park on 19 September 1660 following the death, on 13 September 1660, of Henry, Duke of Gloucester, the king's brother, who had held this office. While ranger, he built a partial enclosure of Hyde Park and re-stocked it with deer.

He was given a triangular piece of ground at the southeast corner of the park where the street called Hamilton Place, named after him, is now. During the Interregnum buildings were erected for the first time between what is now Old Regent Street and Hyde Park Corner. After the Restoration they were leased to Hamilton. A new lease of 99 years would be obtained by Elizabeth, his widow, in 1692.

Courtier
Hamilton was known for his fine manners, his elegant dress, and his gallantry. His brother, Anthony Hamilton, describes him in the Mémoires du comte de Grammont as follows (translated by Horace Walpole): The elder of the Hamiltons, their cousin, was the man who of all the court dressed best: he was well made in his person, and possessed those happy talents which lead to fortune, and procure success in love: he was a most assiduous courtier, had the most lively wit, the most polished manners and the most punctual attention for his master imaginable: no person danced better, nor was any one a more general lover: a merit of some account in a court entirely devoted to love and gallantry.

An admirer of the Countess of Chesterfield, his first cousin, he carried on a romance with her by turning her husband's suspicion on the Duke of York, the future King James II, only to discover that York was courting her as well.

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

James and Elizabeth had three sons:
 * 1) James (c. 1661 – 1734), succeeded a second cousin as the 6th Earl of Abercorn
 * 2) George, became a colonel in the foot guards and fell in the Battle of Steenkerque
 * 3) William (after 1662 – 1737), married his cousin Margaret Colepeper and became the ancestor of the Hamiltons of Chilston

Later life, death, succession, and timeline
Hamilton's 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 and then took French service. Anthony and Richard, the third and the fifth of the brothers, followed George into French service.

Hamilton was appointed groom of the bedchamber on 28 October 1664, taking the place of Daniel O'Neill who had died on 24 October.

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.

On 21 August 1667 Hamilton was appointed Provost Marshal-General of Barbados. This was a sinecure, which provided him an income without any duty. He never went there.

On 1 June 1670 at Dover, Hamilton was present at the conclusion of the Secret Treaty of Dover, together with Henrietta of England, called Minette, duchess of Orléans. Minette returned to France where she suddenly died on the 30th. Hamilton was one of the witnesses at her post mortem.

Hamilton was killed in the Third Anglo-Dutch War (1672–1674) while embarked with his regiment on the new ship-of-the-line Royal Charles, Prince Rupert's flagship. One of Hamilton's legs was hit by a cannonball on 3 June 1673 when the ship came under fire from the Dutch. He died three days later, on 6 June 1673, of the consequences of this wound. 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 where his uncle James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond, erected a monument to his memory. His widow died in 1709.

Despite being the eldest son, Hamilton never inherited his father's titles and land as his father outlived him by six years. However, in 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.