majesty's kind patronage and care' (Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. pt. vi. p. 68). By his wife, the widow of the fourth Earl of Cassilis, he had in addition to this son James, second marquis [q. v.], an elder son Edward, who died young, and a daughter, Lady Margaret, married to John, eighth lord Maxwell. He had also a natural son, Sir John Hamilton of Lettrick, father of the first Lord Bargeny, and a natural daughter, Jean, who married Sir Umfra Colquhoun of Luss.
[Hamilton Papers in Maitland Club Miscellany, vol. iv.; Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. pt. vi.; Reg. P. C. Scotl. vols. ii–v.; Cal. State Papers, Scott. Ser.; ib. For. Ser., reign of Elizabeth, and Dom. Ser. 1603–4; Teulet's Relations politiques de la France et de l'Espagne avec l'Écosse, Paris ed.; Papiers d'État relatifs à l'histoire de l'Écosse au XVIe Siècle; Correspondance de Fénelon (Cooper and Teulet); Letters of Mary Stuart (Labanoff); Hist. of James the Sext (Bannatyne Club); Moysie's Memoirs (ib.); Sir James Melville's Memoirs (ib.); Gray Papers (ib.); Histories of Calderwood, Spotiswood, and Keith; John Anderson's Genealogical Hist. of the Hamiltons; Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), i. 702–3.]
HAMILTON, JOHN (fl. 1568–1609), anti-protestant writer, was the son of Thomas Hamilton of Orchartfield, and the brother of Thomas Hamilton, lord Priestfield, the father of Thomas Hamilton [q. v.], first earl of Haddington. In his ‘Catholik and Facile Traictise,’ Paris, 1581, he describes himself as the queen's ‘daily orator.’ He was probably identical with the John Hamilton thus referred to in the ‘History of James the Sext:’ ‘In 1570 the king of Spain being daily solicited by her (Mary's) orator, Mr. John Hamilton, persoun of Dunbar, sent commandment to his viceroy in the Low Countries, the Duc of Alva, to send sik supplie as he sould think expedient in Scotland to the queen's lieutenant; and he immediately directed the said orator with twa gentlemen of credence bi sea to the Earl of Huntly, the queen's lieutenant in the north,’ with money and arms (pp. 60–1). John Hamilton, either the same or else John Hamilton, provost of Bothwell, brother of Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh [q. v.], was sent to the Duke of Alva to Brussels in 1568 to demand money for Mary Stuart (Fénelon, ii. 215), and again in 1569 (ib. pp. 351–3), when he remained with the duke fifteen months. Richard Bannatyne mentions the arrival from Flanders of ‘two Spanish gentlemen with Mr. John Hamilton, called the Skirmisher, from the Duke of Alva’ (Memorials, p. 51). This Hamilton arrived in Aberdeen on 1 Aug. 1570 (Cal. State Papers, For. Ser. 1569–71, entry 1197). He is probably the John Hamilton who had returned to Brussels by April 1571, when he stated he had been in England and spoken with the Queen of Scots, having a free passport to come and go (ib. Dom. Ser., Addenda, 1566–79, p. 345). Early in 1573 John Hamilton wrote to the regent Morton from Brussels ‘that he was at the Regent's command to do what service he would, either there with the Duke of Alva, or with the Queen of Scots’ (Killigrew to Burghley, 4 March 1573, quoted in Froude's Hist. cab. ed. ix. 198). On 2 July of the following year he wrote to the Queen of Scots from Brussels complaining that he had not heard from her since he left Sheffield four years previously (Cal. State Papers, For. Ser. 1572–4, entry 917). About this time John Hamilton, the anti-protestant writer, took up his residence in Paris. His advocate, Louis Servin (‘Plaidoyé pour Maistre Jehan Hamilton’ in Louis Servin's Plaidoyez, i. 809–91), places this event in 1573, in contradiction with the fact that the above letter was written from Brussels. Dr. M'Crie, in his ‘Life of Andrew Melville’ (second ed. ii. 473), states that Hamilton had not left Scotland in 1573, and cites in evidence that a John Hamilton was chosen one of the examinators of the bachelors of St. Andrews University on 21 Feb. 1574. The only evidence, however, connecting this anti-protestant writer with St. Andrews University is a reference to him in Calderwood's ‘History’ (vii. 21) as ‘sometime professor of theology at St. Andrewes,’ and not improbably Calderwood confounded John with Archibald Hamilton [q. v.] A John Hamilton was one of the regents of the New College (St. Mary's) in 1569, and his name appears as professor of philosophy in the same college in 1571, but no mention is made of him as professor of theology (information from J. Maitland Anderson, registrar of the university). The name of ‘John Hamilton, sometime persoun of Dunbar,’ appears next to that of ‘Thomas Hamilton, sumtime of Priestfield,’ brother of the anti-protestant writer, among a list of persons specially denounced as rebels at Hamilton on 10 July 1572 (Reg. P. C. Scotl. ii. 155), and having remained ‘beyond sea’ he was, along with other ‘declarit traitors,’ again specially denounced on 12 Feb. 1573–4 (ib. p. 334). Some time after Hamilton took up his residence in Paris he was appointed to teach philosophy in the college of Navarre (Launoii Opera Omnia, Geneva, 1732, tom. iv. pars. 2, p. 754). In 1576 he became tutor to the Cardinal de Bourbon, and in 1578 to Francis de Joyeuse. He is referred to by Pierre de l'Estoile as ‘a man of resolution and of learning, as every one knows’ (Mémoires, ed. Champollion, v. 173).
