Woodhouselee (Reg. P. C. Scotl. iv. 711), in accordance with the act of parliament passed in favour of the Hamiltons in 1585. Lord-justice Bellenden still, however, continued to hold the lands, and for threatening his servants during their work David Hamilton was on 9 Feb. 1601 summoned before the council (ib. vi. 211). They were finally restored by act of parliament in 1609 (Acta Parl. Scot. iv. 450). John Hamilton, provost of Bothwell, returned to Scotland after the death of Morton. David Hamilton, sometimes confounded with his brothers, with whose plots he had no connection, died on 13 March 1613.
[Reg. P. C. Scotl. vols. ii–v.; Acta Parl. Scot. vols. iii. iv.; Pitcairn's Criminal Trials; Hist. of James the Sext (Bannatyne Club); Histories of the Church of Scotland by Calderwood and Spotiswood; Letters of Mary Stuart, ed. Labanoff; Teulet's Relations politiques, 1862 ed., and Papiers d'État (Bannatyne Club); Records of the Burgh of Prestwick (Maitland Club); Anderson's Genealogical Hist. of the Hamiltons; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. xi. 452, 502, xii. 10, 69, 4th ser. xii. 406, 5th ser. xii. 386, 512.]
HAMILTON, JAMES, third Earl of Arran (1530–1609), was the eldest son of James, second earl of Arran and duke of Chatelherault [q. v.], by his wife Lady Margaret, eldest daughter of James Douglas, third earl of Morton. While negotiations were in progress in May 1543 for the arrangement of a marriage between the Princess Mary and Edward, prince of Wales, Henry VIII made a supplementary proposal to the second earl of Arran, then governor of Scotland, for a marriage between his eldest son and the Princess Elizabeth of England. Arran appointed the Earl of Glencairn and Sir George Douglas to thank King Henry for his proposal, and himself wrote to Henry that he had given them full powers to 'perfect the said contract' (Cal. State Papers, Scott. Ser. i. 43). Through the influence of Cardinal Beaton, he, however, soon entirely changed his policy, and on 7 July refused to confirm the treaty which had been concluded by the commissioners. The son was presumptive heir to the Scottish throne, and even a marriage with a princess of England would not compensate him for the marriage of the Princess Mary to another suitor than himself. When the son was in 1546 detained in the castle of St. Andrews as a hostage by the murderers of Cardinal Beaton, Henry promised them assistance provided they 'should keeape the governor's son, my Lord of Errane, and stuid freindlie to the contract of marriage' (Knox, i. 183). In view of the possibility of his falling into the hands of the English, the estates passed an act debarring him from all right of succession to the family estates and to the crown while he remained in captivity (Acta Parl. Scot. i. 474). He was released on the surrender of the castle to the French in the following year. His father, after the failure of the marriage treaty with England, had obtained a bond from some of the principal noblemen of Scotland obliging themselves to support a marriage with the Princess Mary, but he nevertheless did not venture to oppose the betrothal in 1548 of Mary to the dauphin of France.
Hamilton shortly after left for France, and in 1550 was appointed to the command of the Scots guards in France (list in Forbes-Leith's Scotsmen at Arms in France, i. 189-190). After his father was in 1553 created Duke of Chatelherault the son was usually styled the Earl of Arran. In 1557 he marched with Admiral Coligny to La Fere in Picardy, and with his regiment distinguished himself in the defence of St. Quentin (ib. p. 99). In France he kept up an acquaintance with Mary Stuart In May 1557 she wrote to the queen-dowager, asking her consent to a marriage between him and Mademoiselle de Bouillon, and proposing that on the marriage he be created Duke of Arran (Lettres de Marie Stuart, Labanoff, i. 43). The date of Arran's conversion to protestantism is uncertain. The story that he had with him in France a protestant chaplain, who in 1559 openly preached the reformed doctrines, first in Scotch and afterwards in French (Hubert Languet to Ulric Mordesius, quoted in Cal. State Papers, For. Ser. 1559-60, entry 45), and that on this account the Guises resolved to have his life, is termed by Hill Burton a 'romantic fable' (Hist. Scotl. iii. 358) ; but in all its main features it is amply corroborated. The French king himself, in a letter to M. de Noailles, states that as the zeal of Arran for the new doctrines had caused great scandal, Arran's arrest had been ordered, but timely information enabled him to escape (Teulet, i. 320). Arran was in communication with Throckmorton, the English ambassador at Paris, and probably by his advice he went to Geneva. On learning from Throckmorton whither he had gone, Cecil sent Killigrew to bring him through Germany to Emden, and thence by ship to England. In this Cecil seems to have been acting on the advice of Knox, who desired that the Earl of Arran should be sent for into England, where he might be secretly detained until Elizabeth's advisers might 'consider what was in him,' and whether he or Lord James Stuart (afterwards Earl of Moray) were the more suitable person to supersede the queen-dowager in the
