Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hamilton, Hugh (d.1679)

1340761Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 24 — Hamilton, Hugh (d.1679)1890Henry Manners Chichester

HAMILTON, HUGH or HUGO, first Lord Hamilton of Glenawley, co. Fermanagh (d. 1679), was, according to the ‘Svenska Adelns Attartaflor’ (genealogies of the Swedish nobility), second son of Malcolm Hamilton, archbishop of Cashel and Emly (d. 1629), by his first wife Mary, daughter of Robert Wilkie of Sachtonhill. His grandfather was Archibald Hamilton of Dalserf, Lanarkshire, who is said to have been grandson of James Hamilton, second earl of Arran [q. v.], but this relationship is not clearly proved. The Swedish authorities state that Hugh was sent by his father to join the Swedish army in 1624; became colonel of a regiment in Ingermanland in 1641; colonel of the Upland infantry regiment in 1645; and commander in Greifswald in 1646. He was naturalised as a Swedish noble in 1648, and, with his younger half-brother Louis Hamilton, was ennobled in Sweden as barons Hamilton de Deserf (i.e. Dalserf). After the Restoration, on 2 March 1660 he was created by Charles II baron Hamilton of Glenawley, co. Fermanagh, in the peerage of Ireland; returned to Ireland in 1662, and settled, as heir of his elder brother, Archibald, on the estate which had belonged to his father, at Ballygally, co. Tyrone. In 1678 he gave the interest of 20l. in perpetuity to the parish of Erigilkeroy, to be disbursed annually by the rector and churchwardens. He died in April 1679. He was thrice married and left issue. The title became extinct on the death, at the age of twenty, of William, his surviving son, the second baron. Letters from the first Lord Glenawley to Lord Lauderdale, in 1660–1672, are in Brit. Mus. Addit. MSS. 23117, 23124, 23131, 23132, 23134.

[Information kindly supplied by Professor Hjärne of Upsala; Burke's Extinct Peerage, 1883 ed.; Svenska Adelns Attartaflor, ed. Gabriel Anrep, Stockholm, 1861, ii. 181 sq.; Svenska Adelns Attartaflor, ed. Schlegel and Klingspor, Stockholm, 1875, pp. 111 sq.; John Anderson's Hist. and Genealog. Memoirs of the House of Hamilton, 1825, p. 446. None of these authorities agree as to the genealogy, but the account given above seems most consistent with established facts.]

H. M. C.