to lead an English force to take possession of Aberdeen. Suspicions were abroad that he had acted as a traitor in the preceding year, and Dorset openly charged him with treason. Aberdeen having been lost to the royalists, Hamilton was ordered in April to transfer his expedition to the Forth, where he would threaten the rear of the Scottish army, while Charles faced it on the borders. Seizing Scottish shipping on the way, he reached the Forth on 1 May, only to find that Leith had been fortified and that the country was too hostile to give him a chance of success. He again wrote despairing letters to the king. After a short time he was recalled, and on 7 June he was in Charles's camp, once more urging him to give way to the covenanters.
After the signature of the treaty of Berwick (18 June 1639) Hamilton was sent to instal Patrick Ruthven as governor of the castle, and was there received with derisive shouts of 'Stand by Jesus Christ,' and treated as an enemy of God and his country. On 8 July he resigned his commissionership. Hamilton was always ready to take part in an intrigue, and on 16 July Charles authorised him to open friendly communications with the covenanters with the object of betraying their plans. Later in the year he supported Wentworth's proposal to summon the Short parliament. He took care, however, to ingratiate himself with the queen, and advocated the claims of her candidate for the secretaryship, the elder Vane. True to his dislike of violence, he persuaded Charles to attempt to conciliate the Scots by setting Loudoun free in June 1640, though it is said that he recommended the seizure of the Spanish bullion in the Tower to be used to .supply funds for the new expedition against Scotland, which had by that time been resolved on.
Hamilton was again designed for service on the east coast of Scotland. His troops, however, broke out into mutiny in consequence of the appointment of catholic officers to command them, and were disbanded before the end of August. It is not likely that he felt any good-will to the organisers of an expedition which threatened to bring him for a second time into collision with the bulk of his countrymen. Early in August he had dissuaded the king from going to York to take the command of the English army. After the rout of Newburn he offered to Charles to go among the covenanters, apparently as a friend, in order to betray their secrets. Charles accepted the proposal, and Hamilton had therefore an excellent opportunity of passing himself off as a friend of both parties. When the Long parliament met, Hamilton was anxious to be on friendly terms with the parliamentary leaders, whose policy of an alliance with the Scots exactly accorded with his own wishes. It was believed in Strafford's family that he joined with the elder Vane in sending for Strafford in order to work his ruin. At all events, in acting against Strafford he may have fancied himself to be reconciling patriotic with loyal sentiments, and to be aiming at the removal from the king's councils of the man who was most forward in injuring both the king and the Scots by stirring up enmity between them. Moreover, if he knew of the intention of the parliamentary leaders to add his own name to the list of those whom they proposed to impeach, his knowledge can only have served to drive him to make his peace with those who had such a terrible weapon at their disposal. He soon made his peace with Strafford's enemies, and in February 1641 it was upon his advice that Charles admitted their leaders to the privy council. Though he took no active part in bringing Strafford to death, there can be no doubt that he had no friendly disposition towards him.
Men of Hamilton's character never fail to find enemies among the generous and outspoken, and Strafford was no sooner dead than Hamilton found a fresh opponent in Montrose, with whom he had already come into collision [see Graham, James, first Marquis of Montrose]. When Walter Stewart was captured on 4 June 1641, a paper, which apparently emanated from Montrose, was found upon him, in which the king was warned against placing confidence in Hamilton. Hamilton in fact was busily employed on a scheme for reconciling Charles with Rothes and Argyll, apparently on the basis, on the one hand, of a complete acceptance of presbyterianism by the king, and on the other of armed assistance to be given by the Scots to Charles against the English parliament. He had, in short, already sketched out the design which brought his master and himself to the scaffold in 1649. On 10 Aug., when Charles set out for Scotland, he was one of the few who accompanied him.
At Edinburgh Hamilton attached himself entirely to Argyll, even when he found that any real understanding between Charles and Argyll was impossible. This desertion of the king was an object of bitter comment. On 29 Sept. Lord Ker challenged him. Hamilton gave information to Charles, and extracted an apology from Ker. He soon discovered that Charles himself was displeased with him on account of the course which he had taken, and had spoken of him to his brother
