HAMILTON, William (1616-51), earl of Lanark, of Charing Cross, Westminster.

William Hamilton was only nine when his father died in 1625, and his early life was dominated by his elder brother, James, 3rd marquess and later 1st duke of Hamilton, and their mother, who was the daughter of James Cunningham, earl of Glencairn. In 1630 Hamilton was admitted to Glasgow University, and in March 1633 he went to France with his tutor, Henry Maule. When they reached Paris, Hamilton enrolled in the academy there, and his tutor’s account book gives a detailed description of his activities, which included lessons in dancing, fencing and skill at arms, as well as French and mathematics. He frequented playhouses and the ‘comedy house’, went hunting, played pell mell and ‘running at the ring’, and began an enduring passion for the Spanish guitar. His friends at Paris were mostly Scots, including Lord Montgomerie and the sons of Lord Gordon, and when he left the capital to tour the sieges of Flanders he was entertained by Colonel Hepburn and Sir James Ramsay. Each year, Hamilton went on a brief tour of other parts of northern Europe, visiting Strasbourg, Metz and Verdun in 1634, and the Huguenot academy of Saumur in 1635. Hamilton also attended the son of the prince of Orange, joining in the extravagances of Lord Feilding’s embassy in October 1634, and waited on Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu shortly afterwards. Hamilton left Paris for London in May 1635, and after a summer at the royal court, in late July travelled north to Scotland.19NRAS 332, F.1/56/1-2. At Edinburgh, Hamilton associated with his relatives, especially the earl of Glencairn and the earl of Abercorn, and made a cursory visit to Glasgow, before heading south to London, where he took chambers in King Street, Westminster.20NRAS 332, F.1/56/2. Over the next few years, Hamilton mostly lived in London, apart from brief trips to Scotland, and his life revolved around hunting, racing, visiting plays and masques and playing his guitar.21NRAS 332, F. 1/56/2-5. He was a welcome guest at the court in its peregrinations to Newmarket, Theobalds, Hampton Court and Windsor, and, through his brother’s influence, he was made master of horse in the Prince of Wales’s household, established in 1637.22NRAS 332, F.1/56/2-3; Oxford DNB.

The costs of Hamilton’s luxuries were at first met by his brother and mother, but in May 1638 Hamilton married Elizabeth Maxwell, eldest daughter of another Scottish courtier, the earl of Dirleton - a marriage that brought him £10,000 and lands in Scotland, as well as a royal pension.23Scots Peerage, iv. 380; Oxford DNB. The marriage was certainly lucrative, but it was not socially elevated. George Garrard*, commenting a year later on Lord Cranborne’s match with another of the Maxwell sisters, described it as ‘made for money’ at the loss of the ‘reputation’ of the groom and his father (the earl of Salisbury), and the same may have held for Hamilton.24CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 622. Hamilton’s relationship with the court was also becoming strained because of the Scottish Covenanters’ resistance to Charles I. The king had intended to make Hamilton earl of Rosebery, but then cancelled the grant as a sign of his displeasure at Hamilton’s mother and her support for the Covenant.25NRS, GD 406/1/6598. The earldom had to wait until March 1639, when Charles, no doubt influenced by the elder brother’s loyalty to the crown during the first bishops’ war, made Hamilton earl of Lanark.26Oxford DNB.

The failure of the first bishops’ war in the summer of 1639, and the king’s determination to get his revenge on the rebellious Scots, put the marquess of Hamilton in an awkward position. As one commentator put it, he knew ‘that the time was not far off when every man of the junta [including himself] … would be questioned in Parliament, for he well knew the king’s coffers could not long fence against it’; and this encouraged him to act as a mediator more than as the king’s agent in the early months of 1640.27Hamilton Papers ed. Gardiner, 265. Part of this manoeuvring involved his brother, the new earl of Lanark, who was made secretary of state for Scotland in March 1640.28Oxford DNB. In the same month, Lanark was also provided with a safe parliamentary seat, as burgess for his brother’s pocket borough of Portsmouth. The correspondence between the borough and the marquess is revealing. The corporation first approached him to ‘tender your honour the first place of one of our burgesses’ on 10 December 1639.29NRS, GD 406/1/882. Having received no reply, on 2 March 1640 they tried again, and on 5 March the marquess wrote to them from Hampton Court.30NRS, GD 406/1/797-8. The draft of his letter shows that at first the marquess had no candidate in mind (telling the corporation that ‘you shall in good time have such a one from me recommended for that purpose’), but then he had second thoughts, crossed the first version through, and recommended ‘for that purpose my brother, the earl of Lanark … who I dare promise will be both careful to preserve the privileges and immunities of your town’.31NRS, GD 406/1/798. Lanark did little to justify his brother’s trust in him. He spent the spring of 1640 in his usual manner, attending playhouses, buying clothes, and undertaking an expensive renovation of his new house in Charing Cross.32NRAS 332, F.1/56/5. According to the Journal and the surviving parliamentary diaries, he made no appearance in the nearby House of Commons during the Short Parliament.

The aftermath of the second bishops’ war, which had ended with the disastrous defeat of the English forces outside Newcastle, roused Lanark from his lethargy, and he was pressed into service in support of his brother during the peace negotiations that led to the treaty of Ripon. He continued to act as his brother’s acolyte in 1641, and was confirmed as secretary of state when Charles visited Scotland in the summer. In 1642 and 1643 Lanark supported Hamilton in his opposition to schemes by the marquess of Argyll (Archibald Campbell*) and other hardliners to bring Scottish troops into the English civil war on Parliament’s side, and when they failed to sway the government in Edinburgh, the brothers fled to the king at Oxford. By this stage, however, the king, advised by James Graham, marquess of Montrose, and other Scottish royalists, had grown suspicious of the Hamilton brothers, and they were arrested.33Clarendon, Hist. iii. 317-8. While Hamilton languished in prison, Lanark managed to escape, and went first to London and then to Edinburgh, where he subscribed the Solemn League and Covenant and became reconciled to the covenanting regime. Between 1644 and 1646 Lanark was a leading member of the Edinburgh government, and in May 1646 he was one of those sent to negotiate with Charles I, now under the protection of the Scottish army at Newcastle.34Oxford DNB. Lanark was eager to bring his brother, newly released from prison, back into the political process, telling him that ‘the distracted condition of these kingdoms calls for help from every honest heart’.35HMC Hamilton, ii. 70. By the end of July Hamilton had been persuaded to attend the king at Newcastle, and the brothers led the peace talks, albeit without success. When the Scottish Parliament voted in January 1647 to hand Charles over to its English counterpart, Lanark and Hamilton resisted the move, but it was only in the autumn that Lanark, as commissioner in London, was able to present new conditions to the king. On 26 December he persuaded Charles to sign the Engagement agreeing to all but the religious clauses of the Scots’ demands. In the spring and summer of 1648, while Hamilton raised an army and marched to defeat at Preston, Lanark was co-ordinating the war effort in Edinburgh. With the failure of the Engagement, Lanark fled to Holland, fearing arrest. In January and February 1649 he was stripped of all his offices by the radical ‘Kirkist’ party led by Argyll. In March, on the execution of his brother in England, he became 2nd duke of Hamilton and earl of Cambridge.36Oxford DNB.

As an exile in Holland, Hamilton was welcomed by the king, who made him a knight of the garter in January 1650, and accepted him back into the privy council in April.37HMC Hamilton, i. 131. But when Charles II signed the treaty of Breda with the ‘Kirkists’, and sailed for Scotland in June 1650, the new duke of Hamilton was excluded from court, and remained in retirement until the defeat of the Scottish army at Dunbar in September, when, with another former Engager, John Maitland, earl of Lauderdale, he became ‘welcome to the king, and nearest his confidence’.38Clarendon, Hist. v. 172. With most of his enemies now out of favour, Hamilton became more important in royal circles, and busied himself raising troops to resist the English forces in Scotland, before joining the expedition into England which culminated in defeat at Worcester on 3 September 1651. He had not been enthusiastic about the English campaign, as he ‘presaged a sad catastrophe of the business’, but he fought with great bravery in defence of the city, and was severely wounded by a musket shot through the leg.39HMC Hamilton, ii. 79. He died from gangrene on 12 September and was buried in Worcester cathedral.40Scots Peerage, iv. 379.

Contemporaries were at pains to emphasise the difference in temperament between the Hamilton brothers. Clarendon said the 2nd duke ‘was in all respects to be much preferred before the other, a much wiser, though it may be a less cunning, man’.41Clarendon, Hist. v. 191. Yet such differences did not affect the close relationship between the two men. Apart from the period between 1644 and 1646, when the 1st duke was in prison, the two brothers worked together as a political unit. This was a manifestation of their close friendship. Before his execution, the 1st duke begged his brother to be a ‘father’ to his daughters, and the 2nd duke readily acceded to the request.42HMC Hamilton, i. 129. When he came to write his will in March 1650 he made his niece, Anne, sole executor, putting his own daughters into her care; and his son, Lord Polmont, having died as an infant in 1648, he was scrupulous not to obstruct the reversionary interest which allowed his niece to succeed as duchess in her own right after his death.43HMC Hamilton, i. 58; Scots Peerage, iv. 380.