Earl of Arran, 1678-98
Hamilton came from the premier noble family of Scotland, the dukedom of Hamilton being the senior dukedom in the kingdom’s peerage. The family enjoyed great prestige as hereditary keepers of the royal palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, the ducal chambers in the complex occupying more space than the royal ones, and vast estates in Lanarkshire, centred on the grandiose Hamilton Palace. Through his mother Hamilton could claim descent from the Scottish house of Stewart and thus nursed pretensions to the Scottish throne, which always added another level of ambiguity and suspicion to his unpredictable political actions. To his protégé George Lockhart‡ of Carnwath, however, he seemed to display every signal virtue: ‘a heroic and undaunted courage, a clear, ready, and penetrating conception’, plus a necessary degree of political cunning, and an oratorical style that was powerful, if not necessarily eloquent, for:
he had so nervous, majestic, and pathetic a method of speaking, and applying what he spoke, that it was always valued and regarded. Never was a man so well qualified to be the head of a party; for he could, with the greatest dexterity, apply himself to and sift through the inclinations of different parties, and so cunningly manage them, that he gained some of all to his.Lockhart Pprs. i. 55-6.
But even Lockhart found Hamilton’s political opportunism hard to excuse, while others ironically termed him ‘the hero’ for his flair for dramatic flamboyance, and were alienated by the exalted sense of entitlement that fuelled his restless ambition.
The young Lord Arran, as he was styled, returned from his travels abroad in France in November 1678 and despite the fears of his censorious father that ‘he retains too much of the way he had when he was a child’, he made a good impression on Charles II, who became his protector. To ensure that he would have to stay in the English capital and not be forced to return to Scotland, Arran in the first weeks of January 1679 was able to procure from the king an appointment as an extra gentleman of the bedchamber.
Arran was forced to return to England upon Charles II’s death. The new king James VII and II continued to extend royal favour to him. He was made a full gentleman of the bedchamber ‘in ordinary’ in May 1685 and in July received a commission as colonel of a newly established regiment of horse in order to help suppress the revolt of James Scott, duke of Monmouth.
Arran showed his continuing adherence to James’s cause when, at a gathering of Scottish magnates in London in early January 1689, he proposed that the king be recalled from France. For this and other ‘treasonable practices’ he was committed to the Tower in the first days of March.
During the first half of the 1690s Arran continued to involve himself in Jacobite conspiracy in Scotland, including the abortive ‘Montgomerie’s plot’, and conducted a furtive correspondence with James II concerning a proposed invasion.
‘Country’ opposition, 1699-1707
The new duke of Hamilton did not take his place in the Scottish Parliament until the session which met on 21 May 1700, where he quickly showed himself as a Scottish ‘patriot’, agitating for the rights of the Company of Scotland and its abortive colony at Darien against what he saw as the attempts of the English government to thwart Scottish trade and its ‘national interest’. The commissioner of the Scottish Parliament, James Douglas, 2nd duke of Queensberry [S], was forced to adjourn parliament prematurely in the face of Hamilton’s obstructionism. Queensberry had long nurtured a deep enmity towards Hamilton, derived from his and his father’s bitter political rivalry with the 3rd duke. The animosity was mutual, and was to colour much of Hamilton’s political career.
After William III’s death Hamilton made his way to London to profess loyalty to Queen Anne and also argued to all who would listen the case for an immediate general election in Scotland, made legally necessary by the accession of the new monarch.
From 1702 Hamilton was also preoccupied with lawsuits against Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun, the executor and chief beneficiary of the will of Charles Gerard, 2nd earl of Macclesfield, his wife’s maternal uncle. The dispute, which was to rumble on for the next several years and to lead indirectly to Hamilton’s death in 1712, arose from Macclesfield’s controversial decision to bequeath the entirety of his estate to his brother-in-law and military colleague Mohun, thereby disinheriting his heirs-at-law, among whom was his niece. As Hamilton had married principally for the prospect of this inheritance, this was a serious blow and recovering his wife’s legal right to the estate became an obsession.
By the autumn of 1702 there was also talk that Hamilton’s ‘country party’ was to be brought into the new Scottish ministry.
As none of the promises of favour made to him were realized, either in 1702 or subsequently, Hamilton became the leader of the opposition against the insistence of the court party that the Scottish parliament vest the succession to the throne in the Hanoverians. There was undoubtedly a strong element of self-interest in this position for, upon the queen’s death, Hamilton would (after the Pretender himself) have the strongest claim to the Scottish throne through his descent, via his mother, from the house of Stewart. In the first session of the new Scottish parliament beginning in 1703 he argued for limitations to be placed on any future monarch before the succession to the Scottish throne was determined.
Hamilton’s own actions, and their motivations, in the two sessions of 1704 and 1705 (as in much the rest of his career) are difficult to fathom, but much depended on his expectations of reward from the English ministers. When the Scottish ministry was being reconstructed in the spring of 1704, he was again passed over while his country colleague John Hay, 2nd marquess of Tweeddale [S], replaced Queensberry as commissioner. Godolphin may have tried a direct approach to placate Hamilton, with promises of future favour for present good behaviour, but this also came to naught. Thus at the start of the session of the Scottish parliament beginning in July 1704 Hamilton was furious at his continued exclusion and determined once again to oppose any attempt to name a successor to the Scottish throne. Yet, for whatever reason or calculation, on 13 July he performed a stunning volte-face, the first of many, by proposing that the parliament ‘not proceed to the nomination of a successor until we have had a previous treaty with England in relation to our commerce and other concerns’, even though he had previously condemned any thought of a treaty of union as ‘damnation’. This proposal effectively blocked the immediate nomination of a Scottish successor, but did bring union that much closer. Hamilton then moved that the parliament refuse to consider granting a supply before it had confirmed conditions ‘for securing the independency and sovereignty of this kingdom’ through the passage of the Act of Security. This forced Godolphin to agree, highly reluctantly, to give the act the royal assent in August, in order to procure the necessary supply for continuing the war.
In the following session of 1705, Tweeddale was replaced as commissioner by John Campbell, 2nd duke of Argyll [S] (and earl of Greenwich). At first Hamilton and Atholl led a strong parliamentary campaign against the nomination of a successor or a treaty of union, but their obstructionist motions and proposals were defeated by the court with the assistance of members of the ‘Squadrone Volante’. With an act for a treaty now almost inevitable Hamilton performed perhaps his most astounding change of course when on 1 Sept. he moved that the nomination of commissioners ‘should be left wholly to the queen’. The vote on his motion was taken late in the day, in a thinly attended chamber, and won by a mere eight votes, including his own. This sudden and unexpected concession to the court enraged many of his followers and ‘made his whole party stare and look aghast’.
In writing to his own mother and to George Lockhart Hamilton blamed his opposition colleagues for abandoning him on positions he had originally set out and gave further specious explanations for his actions. He was adamant that ‘I can hold up my face and will value myself upon my conduct and show that if I had been followed and seconded, as I should have been, the country would have reaped more benefit from my endeavours than in any Parliament wherein I have yet appeared’. The Presbyterians under Tweeddale had deserted the cause first, while on many occasions the cavaliers had been content to sit silent. Lockhart probably came closer to the truth when he suggested that Hamilton had long been negotiating with Argyll and the Scottish secretary of state John Erskine, 22nd earl of Mar, who had promised him a place on the treaty commission. When the prospect of a treaty appeared inevitable, Hamilton may well have calculated that, as a local grandee in receipt of promises from the court, he had a better chance of being chosen a commissioner by the queen than by Parliament.
Hamilton was, however, again disappointed, for he was not named to the commission. In the following session of 1706-7, despite having been heavily wooed by Mar and the English secretary of state Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, Hamilton reverted to his former anti-unionism. He and Atholl led the opposition to any treaty through a variety of sometimes suspect parliamentary techniques. He also took delight in being lionized by the Edinburgh populace as a ‘patriot’ and saviour of the nation.
With the Squadrone and the Whigs, 1708-10
From 1704 at least Hamilton had been enmeshed in Jacobite plotting. As this was well known to the English government, Hamilton immediately fell under suspicion in March 1708 when a French fleet with the Pretender and a body of troops on board approached Scotland.
By 21 May 1708 Hamilton was back at Holyroodhouse to oversee on behalf of the Squadrone the peers’ election scheduled to take place there on 17 June.
Discharged from his bail, Hamilton took his seat in the House on the first day of the new Parliament, 16 Nov. 1708, and proceeded to attend 83 per cent of the sitting days of its first session. On the following sitting day, 18 Nov., he was placed on the committee to draw an address to the queen condoling with her on the recent death of the prince consort and also submitted to the House the petitions he and his colleagues had prepared against the election of the court members among the Scottish representative peers.
The necessary papers relevant to these petitions were not laid before the House until 23 Dec., and on 10 Jan. 1709 the House appointed a large select committee to consider them, including Hamilton himself. On 17 Jan. the committee submitted its report, in which Hamilton’s objection against Queensberry’s voting was prominent, and four days later Hamilton joined his Junto and Squadrone allies in voting that Queensberry could not participate in elections of the Scottish representative peers under his new British title. Hamilton was present the following day, when it was further determined that the proxy votes cast by Queensberry at the elections should also be invalidated. On 26 Jan. Hamilton gave evidence on the minority of Lord Forrester, in order to invalidate his proxy. The final result of these protracted hearings was minimal: after the votes cast in the election were recalculated on 1 Feb. according to the various resolutions of the House regarding the petitions, Hamilton himself was deducted a mere five votes and retained his seat while only one representative peer lost his place, William Kerr, 2nd marquess of Lothian [S], who was replaced by the principal petitioner William Johnston, marquess of Annandale [S].
Hamilton was again present for the opening day of the 1709-10 session, on 15 Nov. 1709, and on that day was named to the committee to draw up the address of thanks to the queen. There is little evidence of his activities in the House in the first part of the session, even though he attended 86 per cent of its sitting days. Throughout the winter of 1709-10 there were fears that Hamilton was becoming disaffected with the Squadrone-Whig alliance, most likely, as usual, because of a perceived lack of sufficient reward to him and other members of his family.
In the months following the prorogation of 5 Apr. 1710 Hamilton continued to feel aggrieved about Argyll’s Garter, as well as a host of other perceived snubs, as he and his brothers failed to receive the honours and offices he felt were due to them.
With the Tories, 1710-1712
Hamilton was present in the House when the new Parliament met on 25 Nov. 1710 and attended 71 per cent of sittings in its first session. On 13 Dec. he was rewarded for his efforts in the election by being sworn a privy councillor and made lord lieutenant of Lancashire and ranger of the five forests of Lancashire. Yet despite his services and his continuing importunities, he was not made chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster and the queen still refused to grant him a British peerage.
From 12 to 31 May 1711 Hamilton was one of the 15 peers who managed four conferences on the amendments to the bill for the preservation of game and on 14 May he received the proxy of his brother Orkney, which he maintained for the remainder of the session. Balmerino also recorded Hamilton’s surprising opposition to the Tory bill to establish a commission to consider the resumption of William III’s land grants, which was narrowly rejected by a tied vote on 20 May.
that whatever they had promised to Ireland [regarding the export of linen yarn] yet now that we were all one with England charity must begin at home, and that he hoped they would be as careful of our linen manufacture as they were of their own woollen manufacture, especially since our woollen manufacture was destroyed.
This prompted Sunderland to answer that ‘he did own that he would as soon prefer the interest of Ireland to that of any one county in England’.
By at least 6 June 1711 a warrant had been prepared to make Hamilton a British peer, and by 9 June Balmerino was referring to him as duke of Brandon, even though the patent had not yet passed the seals.
The patent creating Hamilton duke of Brandon was passed on 10 Sept. 1711, but the political battle was far from over, and became even more partisan after the Tory ministry signed peace preliminaries with France on 28 September. The Whigs saw the Brandon peerage as an easy way to attack the ministry, but were genuinely fearful that it was the thin edge of the wedge, the first of many such creations which would swamp the House with a corps of Scottish peers compliant with the ministry.
When the session opened on 7 Dec. 1711, Hamilton did not take his seat, awaiting the issue of his controverted patent. He was thus not present for the votes on the first two days of the session regarding the addition of the ‘No Peace without Spain’ clause in the Address, and could not bring his own vote, or his proxies, to help Oxford avoid defeat.
The Scottish peers met on 28 Dec. 1711 to discuss their response and on 1 Jan. 1712 presented the queen with a memorial of their grievances, drawn up by Hamilton, Mar and Argyll’s brother, Archibald Campbell, earl of Ilay [S], and signed by all the representative peers and Members, against what they saw ‘as a breach of the Union, and a mark of disgrace put upon the whole peers of Scotland’.
From the time of the last, inconclusive, meeting of the committee of the whole on 4 Feb. 1712, almost all the Scottish peers joined Balmerino, Annandale, and of course Hamilton himself, in a general boycott of the House. This broke down almost immediately, however, as at another meeting in Hamilton’s house on 8 Feb. seven representative peers resolved to return to Parliament to assist the passage of the Episcopal communion toleration bill.
At almost exactly the same time Hamilton brought his long-running dispute with Mohun to the attention of the House. In October 1711 chancery had issued a decree ordering Mohun to pay Hamilton’s wife £15,000, but from November Mohun had sought to obstruct and delay its enactment by convincing the lord keeper to establish a commission to examine witnesses. None were produced and Hamilton decided to proceed upon the report. Mohun, though, warned him through his counsel on 24 Jan. 1712 that he would insist on his privilege. Five days later a petition was presented to the House on Hamilton’s behalf insisting that in his initial proceedings in this matter Mohun had waived his privilege and requesting liberty to proceed with the suit.
Despite the frustration of the failure of his patent, Hamilton, true to form, continued to press for further honours and offices. Throughout January 1712 there were rumours that he would be given the office of master of horse, to replace the disobedient court Whig Charles Seymour, 6th duke of Somerset.
Before he could fully enter into any of these posts, or even be installed at Windsor, Hamilton was challenged to a duel by a drunken Mohun after ‘brutal’ words were exchanged between them during a meeting in the rooms of a master in chancery.
While his widow and sister-in-law Lady Orkney wrangled over where in England he should be buried, Hamilton’s body, after a temporary burial in Westminster Abbey, was transported back to Scotland in 1718 for interment with his ancestors at Hamilton.