levying men in Scotland for the German expedition, but Charles gave no credence to it and showed his trust in Hamilton by causing him to share his own room. The charge, however, always clung to him, and his intriguing character and hopeless management of the king’s affairs in Scotland gave colour to the accusation. There seems, however, to be no real foundation for it. His career is sufficiently explained by his thoroughly weak and egotistical character. He took no interest whatever in the great questions at issue, was neither loyal nor patriotic, and only desired peace and compromise to avoid personal losses. “He was devoid of intellectual or moral strength, and was therefore easily brought to fancy all future tasks easy and all present obstacles insuperable.”[1] A worse choice than Hamilton could not possibly have been made in such a crisis, and his want of principle, of firmness and resolution, brought irretrievable ruin upon the royal cause.
Hamilton’s three sons died young, and the dukedom passed by special remainder to his brother William, earl of Lanark. On the latter’s death in 1651 the Scottish titles reverted to the 1st duke’s daughter, Anne, whose husband, William Douglas, was created (third) duke of Hamilton.
Bibliography.—Article in the Dict. of Nat. Biog. by S. R. Gardiner; History of England and of the Civil War, by the same author; Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton, by G. Burnet; Lauderdale Papers (Camden Society, 1884–1885); The Hamilton Papers, ed. by S. R. Gardiner (Camden Society, 1880) and addenda (Camden Miscellany, vol. ix., 1895); Thomason Tracts in the British Museum, 550 (6), 1948 (30) (account of his supposed treachery), and 546 (21) (speech on the scaffold). (P. C. Y.)
HAMILTON, JOHN (c. 1511–1571), Scottish prelate and
politician, was a natural son of James Hamilton, 1st earl of
Arran. At a very early age he became a monk and abbot of
Paisley, and after studying in Paris he returned to Scotland,
where he soon rose to a position of power and influence under
his half-brother, the regent Arran. He was made keeper of the
privy seal in 1543 and bishop of Dunkeld two years later; in
1546 he followed David Beaton as archbishop of St Andrews, and
about the same time he became treasurer of the kingdom. He
made vigorous efforts to stay the growth of Protestantism, but
with one or two exceptions “persecution was not the policy of
Archbishop Hamilton,” and in the interests of the Roman
Catholic religion a catechism called Hamilton’s Catechism
(published with an introduction by T. G. Law in 1884) was
drawn up and printed, possibly at his instigation. Having
incurred the displeasure of the Protestants, now the dominant
party in Scotland, the archbishop was imprisoned in 1563. After
his release he was an active partisan of Mary queen of Scots;
he baptized the infant James, afterwards King James VI., and
pronounced the divorce of the queen from Bothwell. He was
present at the battle of Langside, and some time later took
refuge in Dumbarton Castle. Here he was seized, and on the
charge of being concerned in the murders of Lord Darnley and
the regent Murray he was tried, and hanged on the 6th of April
1571. The archbishop had three children by his mistress,
Grizzel Sempill.
HAMILTON, PATRICK (1504–1528), Scottish divine, second
son of Sir Patrick Hamilton, well known in Scottish chivalry,
and of Catherine Stewart, daughter of Alexander, duke of Albany,
second son of James II. of Scotland, was born in the diocese
of Glasgow, probably at his father’s estate of Stanehouse in
Lanarkshire. He was educated probably at Linlithgow. In 1517
he was appointed titular abbot of Ferne, Ross-shire; and it
was probably about the same year that he went to study at
Paris, for his name is found in an ancient list of those who
graduated there in 1520. It was doubtless in Paris, where
Luther’s writings were already exciting much discussion, that
he received the germs of the doctrines he was afterwards to
uphold. From Alexander Ales we learn that Hamilton subsequently
went to Louvain, attracted probably by the fame of
Erasmus, who in 1521 had his headquarters there. Returning
to Scotland, the young scholar naturally selected St Andrews,
the capital of the church and of learning, as his residence. On
the 9th of June 1523 he became a member of the university of
St Andrews, and on the 3rd of October 1524 he was admitted
to its faculty of arts. There Hamilton attained such influence
that he was permitted to conduct as precentor a musical mass
of his own composition in the cathedral. But the reformed
doctrines had now obtained a firm hold on the young abbot,
and he was eager to communicate them to his fellow-countrymen.
Early in 1527 the attention of James Beaton, archbishop
of St Andrews, was directed to the heretical preaching of the
young priest, whereupon he ordered that Hamilton should be
formally summoned and accused. Hamilton fled to Germany,
first visiting Luther at Wittenberg, and afterwards enrolling
himself as a student, under Franz Lambert of Avignon, in the
new university of Marburg, opened on the 30th of May 1527 by
Philip, landgrave of Hesse. Hermann von dem Busche, one of
the contributors to the Epistolae obscurorum virorum, John
Frith and Tyndale were among those whom he met there. Late
in the autumn of 1527 Hamilton returned to Scotland, bold in
the conviction of the truth of his principles. He went first to
his brother’s house at Kincavel, near Linlithgow, in which town
he preached frequently, and soon afterwards he married a young
lady of noble rank, whose name has not come down to us.
Beaton, avoiding open violence through fear of Hamilton’s high
connexions, invited him to a conference at St Andrews. The
reformer, predicting that he was going to confirm the pious
in the true doctrine by his death, resolutely accepted the invitation,
and for nearly a month was permitted to preach and dispute,
perhaps in order to provide material for accusation. At length,
however, he was summoned before a council of bishops and
clergy presided over by the archbishop; there were thirteen
charges, seven of which were based on the doctrines affirmed
in the Loci communes. On examination Hamilton maintained
that these were undoubtedly true. The council condemned
him as a heretic on the whole thirteen charges. Hamilton was
seized, and, it is said, surrendered to the soldiery on an assurance
that he would be restored to his friends without injury. The
council convicted him, after a sham disputation with Friar
Campbell, and handed him over to the secular power. The
sentence was carried out on the same day (February 29, 1528)
lest he should be rescued by his friends, and he was burned at
the stake as a heretic. His courageous bearing attracted more
attention than ever to the doctrines for which he suffered, and
greatly helped to spread the Reformation in Scotland. The
“reek of Patrick Hamilton infected all it blew on.” His
martyrdom is singular in this respect, that he represented in
Scotland almost alone the Lutheran stage of the Reformation.
His only book was entitled Loci communes, known as “Patrick’s
Places.” It set forth the doctrine of justification by faith and
the contrast between the gospel and the law in a series of clear-cut
propositions. It is to be found in Foxs’s Acts and Monuments.
HAMILTON, ROBERT (1743–1829), Scottish economist and
mathematician, was born at Pilrig, Edinburgh, on the 11th of
June 1743. His grandfather, William Hamilton, principal of
Edinburgh University, had been a professor of divinity. Having
completed his education at the university of Edinburgh, where
he was distinguished in mathematics, Robert was induced to
enter a banking-house in order to acquire a practical knowledge
of business, but his ambition was really academic. In 1769 he
gave up business pursuits and accepted the rectorship of Perth
academy. In 1779 he was presented to the chair of natural
philosophy at Aberdeen University. For many years, however,
by private arrangement with his colleague Professor Copland,
Hamilton taught the class of mathematics. In 1817 he was
presented to the latter chair.
Hamilton’s most important work is the Essay on the National Debt, which appeared in 1813 and was undoubtedly the first to expose the economic fallacies involved in Pitt’s policy of a sinking fund. It is still of value. A posthumous volume published in 1830, The Progress of Society, is also of great ability, and is a very effective treatment of economical principles by tracing their natural origin and position in the development of social life. Some minor works of a practical character (Introduction to Merchandise, 1777; Essay on War and Peace, 1790) are now forgotten.
- ↑ See S. R. Gardiner in the Dict. of Nat. Biography.
