Frederick Hamilton (1590 - 1647)

Born 17 May 1590 in Carrowrosse, Dromahaire, Leitrim, Ireland

Ancestors

Husband of Sidney (Vaughan) Hamilton — married 20 May 1620 in Hamilton, Lanarkshire, Scotland

Descendants

Died 31 Mar 1647 at age 56 in Edinburgh, Scotland

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Biography

Frederick Hamilton is Notable.

Frederick was the son of Claud Hamilton and Margaret Seton.^[1]

Sir Frederick Hamilton, of Manor Hamilton, co. Leitrim, built the castle at that place in 1634.

Birth:

Date: 17 MAY 1590

Place: Carrowrosse, Dromahaire, Leitrim, Ireland

Death:

Date: 31 Mar 1647

Place: Edinburgh, Mid Lothian, Scotland

Sir Frederick Hamilton was born between 1578 and 1603. He was the son of Claud Hamilton, 1st Lord Paisley and Margaret Seton. He married, firstly, Sidney Vaughan, daughter of Sir John Vaughan. He married, secondly, Agnes (?) before 1646. He died on 31 March 1646.

On 18 March 1620 he received by Patent a grant of Carrowrosse in the barony of Dromahere, County Leitrim. Between 8 December 1621 and 10 September 1623 he was directed to have the command of the first company of foot or horse which fell vacant in Ireland. He was a commissioner for assessing the sum of £400 on County Leitrim in 1627. He gained the rank of Captain on 29 January 1627 in the service of the 50th Foot. He gained the rank of officer in the service of the Swedish Army. He held the office of Governor of the Province of Ulster. He lived at Manor Hamilton, Dromahaire, County Leitrim, Ireland.

Research Notes

Note: The Curse of the Fires and of the Shadows

http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=document&guid=046210e1-ec51-473f-a558-2d70d0ab347b&tid=26422540&pid=327

Note: Biography

http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=document&guid=3a4bb704-1925-4f6a-8a91-45a7435079d6&tid=26422540&pid=327

Frederick was born in 1578. He passed away in 1646.

• Fact: Also Known As Claud HAMILTON
• Fact: Burial Maner-Hamilton, Midlothian, Scotland
• Fact: http://familysearch.org/v1/LifeSketch

Sir Frederick Hamilton, Kt. Birthdate: circa 1578 Death: March 31, 1646 (63-72) Immediate Family: Son of Claud Hamilton, 1st Lord Paisley and Margaret Seton Husband of Agnes Hamilton and Sidney Vaughan Father of Christiana Hamilton; James Hamilton of Manor Hamilton; Christian Kerr; Gustavus Hamilton, 1st Viscount Boyne; Andrew Hamilton and 4 others Brother of Sir James Hamilton, 1st Earl of Abercorn; Sir John Hamilton, Kt.; Sir George Hamilton, Kt.; Hon. Margaret Hamilton; Henry Hamilton and 4 others Sir Frederick Hamilton (1590–1647) was the youngest son of Claud Hamilton, 1st Lord Paisley. He married Sidney Vaughn on May 20, 1620. She was the daughter of Sir John Vaughan, who was the Governor of Londonderry. Sir Frederick was given lands in Leitrim, in the northwest of Ireland in 1622.

Over the next two decades he increased his estate to 18,000 acres (73 km²) and built Manorhamilton Castle around which grew the town of Manorhamilton.

In November 1631, Sir Frederick entered Swedish service and became colonel of a Scottish-Irish regiment which served in Germany for 15 months. They fought General Tott's army in the Elbe and Weser basins and the Rhineland. After spending a few years back in Leitrim he unsuccessfully attempted to re-enter Swedish service in September 1637.

During the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Manorhamilton came under constant siege, but the castle remained intact. After the 1643 Cessation he became a colonel of a regiment of horse in the army of the Solemn League and Covenant in Scotland and Northern England, while still retaining his foot regiment in western Ulster.

In 1642, in punishment for cattle raids by the O'Rourke clan, he sacked the nearby town of Sligo, burning several buildings to the ground, including Sligo Abbey. He then retreated back to Manorhamilton.

Local legend tells that on the way over the mountains to Manorhamilton, some of Hamilton's men became lost in heavy fog. A guide on a white horse offered to lead them safely over the mountain, but intentionally led the men over a cliff and to their doom. This legend is the subject of a short story by W. B. Yeats, entitled The curse Of The Fires And Of The Shadows

In 1647, Sir Frederick left the then disbanding Scottish army and returned to Edinburgh, where he died later that year in relative poverty. He had lost all his estates in Ireland and received very little compensation or financial support for his military efforts from the English parliament. His youngest son Gustavus was raised to the Peerage of Ireland as Viscount Boyne.

Manorhamilton Castle was burned by the Royalist Earls of Clanrickard in 1652. It was used as a garrison for some time afterwards before being abandoned and quickly falling into ruins. The Castle ruins have now been renovated and are open to the public who can view artifacts from the period in the Castle Heritage Centre or take a guided tour of the grounds.

The Peerage

Sources

1. ↑ Paul, James Balfour. "The Scots Peerage : founded on Wood's ed. of Sir Robert Douglas's Peerage of Scotland; containing an historical and genealogical account of the nobility of that kingdom", Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1904, Vol. I, Archive.org, p. 43

See also:

• Wikipedia: Frederick Hamilton (soldier)

• Wikidata: Item Q16840891, en:Wikipedia

• "Family Tree," database, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org : modified 08 September 2020, 18:16), entry for Sir Frederick Hamilton(PID https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/4:1:LVKZ-NNZ); contributed by various users.

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Sir Frederick Hamilton 1590 – 1647

by Dominic Rooney www.manorhamilton.ie Taken from The Life and Times of Sir Frederick Hamilton 1590-1647

In 1620 James I of England rejected the claims of Brian O'Rourke, son of the last lord of Leitrim, to his native county. Instead, in the plantation of Leitrim he granted one half of the land of the county to fifty British settlers and the other half to one hundred and fifty local native gentry who had earlier surrendered their lands to the crown. The wealthy Scottish nobleman and courtier, Frederick Hamilton was allocated 1,500 acres of good land and 5,000 acres of mountain and bog in the Glenfarne and Manorhamilton areas of North Leitrim. His estate would be known as the Manor of Hamilton entitling him to hold a manor court with rights of local jurisdiction over his tenants. Another Scotsman John Waldron was granted 1,000 acres in Mullies.

Hamilton purchased a knight-hood to reflect his newly acquired status as an extensive estate owner, and settled immediately on his lands with his young wife, Sidney Vaughan. As he already had some military training, he was given the captaincy of a company of fifty soldiers in the regular army whom he garrisoned on his estate. Sir Frederick was an ambitious planter who by 1630 had enlarged his holding, through the purchase of land from both British and Irish grantees, to 5,000 acres of profitable land and double that of mountain and bog.

In November 1631 Hamilton raised a regiment of 1,200 Scots and Irish men to fight for King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden against the Catholic Habsburg emperor in the Thirty Years War. He spent almost twelve months in Germany as colonel of this regiment before returning firstly to Britain and then to Manorhamilton. In 1634 he built his impressive castle surrounded by a defensive bawn wall with two-storied towers at its four corners. The town of Manorhamilton comprising initially about one hundred and forty inhabitants grew up on the south side of the castle.

In the settled conditions of the 1630s Sir Frederick set about exploiting the resources of his estate and the surrounding area. He became a large cattle and horse breeder, established two corn mills in Manorhamilton, operated an ironworks at Drumshanbo and was probably involved in the timber trade.

The 1641 rebellion in Leitrim was led by sons of the loyal Irish gentry who had been Granted land during the plantation of the county some twenty years earlier. Many were now hopelessly in debt because of their inability to properly manage their estates. Castle Hamilton was attacked and besieged three times during the year 1642 and was in constant dander of being captured right up to the autumn of 1643. During one of the sieges in Manorhamilton town the military garrisons’ head quarters and the two corn mills were all burned to the ground. After having raised an extra two hundred soldiers from the local settler population, Hamilton reacted very violently to the rebellion. He laid waste the countryside around Manorhamilton killed many hundreds of the native Irish in military action and also had fifty-eight people hanged on a gallows erected outside the castle walls.

After he defeated the rebels in Leitrim and Sligo, Sir Frederick left Manorhamilton in September 1643 and went to Derry to oppose a truce between the King and theIrish confederates. While there he joined the recently formed alliance between the English parliament and the Scottish Presbyterian government in the English Civil War against the King. Having failed to secure the presidency of Connacht the government of Derryor compensation for his losses during the rebellion from the English parliament. Hamilton spent much of 1646 as colonel of a Scottish cavalry regiment. He retired from Public and army life in February 1647 and died in relative poverty in Edinburgh nine months later.