Sick . . . Wives of Private Soldiers,' Lincoln, 1783. 2. 'On the Means of Obviating the Fatal Effects of the Bite of a Mad Dog,' &c., Ipswich, 1785; 2nd edit. 2 vols., London, 1798. 3. 'Opium as a Poison,' Ipswich, 1791. 4. 'Rules for Recovering Persons recently Drowned,' London, 1795. A work on the vital statistics of Suffolk, announced in 1800, was not published. He was a warm supporter of civil and religious liberty, and an advocate of the abolition of the slave trade.
[Gent. Mag. 1830, i. 564; Munk's Coll. of Phys. ii. 443; Hamilton's writings.]
HAMILTON, ROBERT (1750?–1831), legal writer and genealogist, distantly connected with the ducal house of Hamilton, was born about 1750. He entered the army, and was present at Bunker's Hill and other battles of the American war of independence, where he fought gallantly and was wounded. He afterwards studied law, became a member of the Faculty of Advocates, sheriff of Lanarkshire, and finally one of the clerks of session. He married a daughter of Lord Westhall, a lord of session. He died in 1831.
Hamilton was an intimate friend of his colleague Sir Walter Scott. They were both commissioners of the northern lights, and went together the sea voyage of inspection in 1814 described in Lockhart. Hamilton is noted therein as good-humoured, even when troubled with the gout, 'a brother antiquary of the genuine Monkbarns breed.' On his deathbed he gave Scott the sword he had carried at Bunker's Hill. The version of Sir Patrick Spens in Scott's 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border' (1802) was taken down from his recitation. Unfortunately Hamilton has left no record of the source whence he obtained it, and so his connection with it does not help to prove or disprove the theory started by Robert Chambers in his journal in 1843, and afterwards elaborated in 'The Romantic Scottish Ballads; their Epoch and Authorship,' in 1849, to the effect that this and others were the work of Lady Wardlaw. The 'quaint tune' to which he sang the ballad is preserved in the 'Albyns Anthology' of Alexander Campbell, the musician [q. v.]
Hamilton had the credit of being a good lawyer, and it is said 'obtained much professional reputation for getting up the case for Hamilton of Wishaw, which carried the peerage of Belhaven before a committee of privileges. He also drew up the elaborate claim of Miss Lennox of Woodhead to the ancient earldom of Lennox, an interesting production, but based on a fallacy.' He is very possibly the editor of 'Decisions of the Court of Session from November 1769 to January 1772' (Edinb. 1803, fol.), mentioned in Watt's 'Bibliotheca Britannica' as by Robert Hamilton, esq., advocate, but neither in the British Museum Catalogue nor in the Catalogue of Advocates' Library, nor in any of the usual books of legal reference is there any mention of this work.
[Lockhart's Life of Scott; Notes and Queries, 14 July 1860, p. 31. A good summary of the controversy as to the authorship of Sir Patrick Spens is given in the Romantic Scottish Ballads and the Lady Wardlaw Heresy, by Norval Clyne, Aberdeen. 1859.]
HAMILTON, Sir ROBERT NORTH COLLIE (1802–1887), bart., Indian official, born 7 April 1802, was eldest son of Sir Frederick Hamilton, fifth baronet, of Silverton Hill, Lanarkshire, by his wife, Eliza Ducarel, daughter of John Collie, M.D., of Calcutta. He was educated at Haileybury College, and in 1819 obtained a Bengal writership. His first post was that of assistant to the magistrate at Benares, where his father, a Bengal civilian of long standing, was collector of customs (1816-27) and deputy opium-agent (1828-30). After filling other subordinate posts the younger Hamilton was appointed magistrate of the city court of Benares in 1827, and acting collector of customs and judge there in 1829, and in July 1830 became acting secretary in the political department. In 1834, on his return from leave to Europe, he became collector and magistrate at Secheswan, and officiating collector and magistrate at Meerut; in 1836 collector and session judge at Delhi, and in 1837 officiating commissioner of revenue at Agra. After holding various other appointments for brief periods he was appointed commissioner at Agra; in 1843 secretary to the government in the north-west provinces, and in 1844 resident with Holkar at Indore. During his long tenure of the latter post he acquired his vast knowledge of Central India. As Malleson points out (Hist. Indian Mutiny, v. 90), Hamilton knew every inch of ground, the disposition of the people, and all the peculiarities constituting a bond or a source of disunion between particular districts. His wise counsel and sympathetic intercourse had fostered a genuine attachment to the British rule in the youthful Holkar (Holmes, p. 522). Hamilton, who succeeded his father in the family baronetcy in 1853, was in 1854 made governor-general's agent for Central India, retaining his post at Indore. In 1857 he went on home leave, his place with Holkar being temporarily filled by Sir Henry Marion Durand [q. v.] Hamilton had only been six weeks in England when
