DALRYMPLE HAMILTON (formerly DALRYMPLE), Sir Hew Hamilton, 4th bt. (1774-1834), of North Berwick, Haddington and Bargany, Ayr

In this period Dalrymple Hamilton, whose succession to Bargany had been fraught with costly litigation and hopes of a peerage repeatedly dashed, used his considerable political influence as one of the largest landowners in Ayrshire and Haddingtonshire, where he commanded the contributory burgh of North Berwick, to boost his bids for preferment and to safeguard the succession to his estates of his only daughter Henrietta. NAS GD110 [microfilm RH4/57] RH4/57/1, bdle. 2, corresp. 1809-22. He was a committed advocate of Catholic relief, who hitherto had flitted between the Whigs and his wife’s kinsmen the Dundases with a view to obtaining patronage and reducing his election costs; but he corresponded and identified himself politically with Lord Grenville. Few speeches were attributed to him in the House, where his preference for spending time with his family on the continent made him a frequent absentee. He had stood down in 1818 to avoid a costly contest in Ayrshire and was talked of as candidate there in 1820, but instead he tested his interest in Haddington Burghs, where, to his consternation (he blamed the Liverpool ministry’s Scottish manager Lord Melville for the debacle) he was almost defeated by the Tory Henry Home Drummond, a government nominee, who in 1821 came in for Stirlingshire. He lobbied on behalf of Lord Cassillis in the representative peerage election. Ibid. RH4/57/5/13, 41; HP Commons, 1790-1820, iii. 560-1; NAS GD51/1/198/9/26; NLS mss 11, ff. 24, 41, 47; Add. 58999, f. 186; Scotsman, 11 Mar., 8 Apr. 1820.

The leader of the Grenvillites in the Commons, Charles Williams Wynn, considered Dalrymple Hamilton their ‘one regular recruit’ to the 1820 Parliament, but he was almost perpetually absent. NLW, Coedymaen mss, bdle. 29, Williams Wynn to Phillimore, 10 Apr. 1820. No speeches by him were reported and his only recorded vote was for considering reform of the Scottish county representation, 10 May 1821. Following their daughter’s marriage to the duc de Cogne in June 1822, Dalrymple Hamilton and his wife made a great play of settling at Bargany, to which they returned in 1824. Arbuthnot Jnl. i. 376. Now in poor health on account of a stomach disorder, he applied repeatedly to the duke of Wellington for military honours for his only surviving brother John, and, reviving his interest in Ayrshire, he made it a ploy in negotiations with Melville before and after the general election of 1826, when with the treasury and Lord Lauderdale’s acquiescence, he quietly made way in the Burghs for his kinsman Colonel Augustus John Dalrymple. Wellington mss WP1/782/11; 790/12; 954/28; NAS GD51/1/198/3/80; RH4/57/1, bdle. 18, corresp. re. Ayrshire elections; Scotsman, 5 July 1826.

He did not stand for Parliament again, but maintained privately that, if elected, he would have supported Canning’s ministry. NLS mss 2, f. 101. From the continent, where he travelled between 1828 and 1830 for his wife’s health, he sent documents on Catholic emancipation by special courier to Wellington, who in April 1830 turned down his application for a peerage. Wellington mss WP1/954/28; 990/2; 993/38; 998/18; 1069/20. Remaining in Paris, he delayed making his interest available to the duke at the general election that year and his Haddintongshire friends opposed the ministerial candidate. Ibid. 1126/18; 1127/6; 1131/42, 44, 45, 48; 1132/8; 1133/38; 1137/20. Aligning with Lauderdale for the next two elections, he supported the reformer Richard Oswald† in Ayrshire, but the anti-reformers James Balfour* and Dalrymple in Haddingtonshire and the Burghs, where he attended to vote as the delegate for North Berwick at the general election of 1831, and for the Conservatives in 1832. Ibid. 1181/14; 1182/9; Scotsman, 30 Apr., 28 May 1831. Denying the anti-reformer Henry Hepburne Scott* his interest in Roxburghshire in April 1831, he referred to his previous support and votes for Scottish parliamentary reform. NAS GD157/2979/5. He died in February 1834 at Bargany, which he had devised to his daughter and her heirs, and was succeeded in the baronetcy and his North Berwick estate by his brother. Gent. Mag. (1834), i. 553; Scotsman, 1 Mar. 1834; Services of Heirs in Scotland (1700-1850), iii. 37.