Family and Education

bap. 24 Nov. 1682, 1st surv. s. of Sir Archibald Hamilton, 1st Bt., of Rosehall by his w. Anne Murray of Deuchar, Forfar. m. 2 Mar. 1707, his cos. Frances, da. of Alexander Stuart, 5th Lord Blantyre [S], s.p. suc. fa. 1709.

Offices Held

Biography

Hamilton, whose father had purchased Rosehall in 1691,1 represented Lanarkshire as a Tory under Queen Anne. At the time of the Swedish plot in 1717 (see Caesar, Charles), he undertook to join Lord Mar, the Pretender’s secretary of state, should he land in Scotland.2 Returned for Lanarkshire in 1735 he voted with the Opposition in every recorded division. In 1741 the Duke of Hamilton, his distant kinsman, advised Murray of Broughton, the Jacobite agent in Scotland, to apply to him for funds towards the preparations for a rising. In 1744 Murray suggested that the Young Pretender should write to him as he seemed well disposed,3 but he took no active part in the Forty-five. He died 15 Mar. 1750.

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

• 1. Heraldry of the House of Hamilton, 56, 79.
• 2. HMC Stuart, iv. 556-7.
• 3. Mems. (Sc. Hist. Soc. xxvii), 21, 376.