Sir George Hamilton, Comte Hamilton
Sir George Hamilton, comte d'Hamilton (died 1676) was a 17th-century Irish soldier in English and French service and a courtier at Charles II's Whitehall. At Whitehall he was a favourite of the King. He courted La belle Stuart and married Frances Jennings, the future Lady Tyrconnell, who was then a maid of honour of the Duchess of York. He appears in the "Mémoires du comte de Grammont", written by his brother Anthony. He began his military career as an officer in the Life Guards but was dismissed in an anti-Catholic purge in  1667, upon which he took French service and commanded English "gens d'armes" and then an Irish regiment in the Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678). He served under Turenne at the battles of Sinsheim and Entzheim in 1674. He also fought at Sasbach (1675) where Turenne was killed. He then covered the retreat at Altenheim. He was killed in 1676 in a rearguard action at the Col de Saverne while serving under Luxembourg. His final rank was "Maréchal de camp" (major-general). He was known as "comte", but whether he was really ennobled by Louis XIV is not sure. Birth and origins . George was probably born in the late 1630s at Roscrea, County Tipperary. He was the second son of George Hamilton and his wife Mary Butler. His father was Scottish, the fourth son of James Hamilton, 1st Earl of Abercorn, and would in 1660 be created Baronet of Donalong and Nenagh. The Dunnalong (or Donalong) estate, south of Derry, was his father's share of the land granted to his grandfather Abercorn during the Plantation of Ulster. George's mother was Irish, the third daughter of Thomas Butler, Viscount Thurles and a sister of the future 1st Duke of Ormond (see  Family Tree). She was a member of the Butler dynasty, an Old English family that descended from Theobald Walter, who had been appointed Chief Butler of Ireland by King Henry II in 1177. He was one of nine children: Both his parents were Catholic, but some relatives, on his father's as on his mother's side, were Protestants. His grandfather, James Hamilton, 1st Earl of Abercorn, had been a Protestant, but his father and all his paternal uncles were raised as Catholics due to the influence of his paternal grandmother, Marion Boyd, a recusant. Some branches of the Hamilton  family were Protestant, such as that of his father's second cousin Gustavus (1642–1723). His mother's family, the Butlers, were generally Catholic with the notable exception of the future 1st Duke of Ormond, his maternal uncle. His eldest brother, James, would turn Protestant when marrying Elizabeth Colepeper in 1661. His brother Thomas seems to have made the same choice as he became a captain in the Royal Navy. Early life. Irish wars. His father, Sir George Hamilton, Baronet, served in the Irish army and fought for the royalists under his uncle James Butler, Earl of Ormond, in the Irish  Confederate Wars (1641–1648) and the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland (1649–1653) until he followed Ormond into exile in 1651. His uncle Claud, Lord Strabane, had lived in the Castle of Strabane until his death in 1638. During the Rebellion, in 1641, Phelim O'Neill burned this castle and took Hamilton's aunt Jean, Claud's widow, prisoner. On 17 September 1646, Owen Roe O'Neil, who had taken over from Phelim as leader of the Confederate Ulster army, captured Roscrea where little George Hamilton lived. The confederates spared him, his siblings, and his mother but put everybody else to the sword. Owen O'Neill  was leading his army south after his victory over the Scottish Covenanters at Benburb in June and was now attacking the royalists as directed by Rinuccini, the papal nuncio. In October 1650 his father was governor for the Royalist Alliance of Nenagh Castle, west of Roscrea, when the Parliamentarian army under Henry Ireton attacked and captured the castle on the way back from their failed siege of Limerick to their winter quarters at Kilkenny. First exile. In spring 1651, Sir George Hamilton, Baronet, and his family followed Ormond into French exile. They first went to Caen where they were accommodated  for some time by the Marchioness of Ormond. They then moved on to Paris near where Charles II and his mother Henrietta Maria lived in exile at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Young George Hamilton, aged about 15, became a page to the King. His father was employed in various missions for Ormond and the King, whereas his mother found shelter in the convent of the Feuillantines in Paris, together with her sister Ellen, Lady Muskerry. France was at that time involved in the long-going Franco-Spanish War (1635–1659). In 1654 France gained Cromwell as an ally  against the Spanish resulting in the Anglo-Spanish War (1654–1660), and in consequence the King had to leave France. He moved his court first to Cologne, then in March 1656 to Brussels, and then to Bruges. On 2 April 1656, the Treaty of Brussels was signed. On 14 June 1658 the Battle of the Dunes was fought. The King then moved to Antwerp. On 3 September 1658 Cromwell died. In November the King was allowed back to Brussels. Restoration. At the Restoration, George Hamilton was accepted into the Life Guards that Charles II and the Duke of York established, early  in 1660 in preparation of their return to London in June. He served in the King's troop, which was commanded by Charles Gerard as Captain and Colonel. George was an officer rather than a private. After the King's return to London in May 1660 Hamilton attended the court at Whitehall in addition to his military duties. He, like his brothers James and Anthony, and his sister Elizabeth, were part of to the inner circle around the King. Samuel Pepys tells us that Hamilton was present at the Queen's Birthday dance on 15 October 1666 at Whitehall. In  January 1663 Philibert, chevalier de Gramont arrived in London. Gramont had been exiled by Louis XIV because he had courted Mademoiselle Anne-Lucie de la Mothe-Houdancourt, on whom the King had set his eyes. Gramont was welcome at Whitehall as he came from the court of which Whitehall was the imitation. He had no difficulties to integrate as French was the predominant language at the English Restoration court. At court Hamilton met Elizabeth Wetenhall and fell in love with her, but she was married. He then courted Frances Stewart, called "La Belle Stuart" or the "fair Stuart", a maid  of honour of the Queen, Catherine of Braganza. Gramont warned Hamilton about courting the fair Stuart as the King had set his eyes on her. Eventually, he met and courted Frances Jennings, a maid of honour of Anne Hyde, the Duchess of York. Macaulay describes her as "beautiful Fanny Jennings, the loveliest coquette in the brilliant Whitehall of the Restoration." Marriage and children. In 1665 Hamilton married Frances Jennings. The King granted the couple a pension of £500 per year (about £ in ). His marriage is the sixth of the seven marriages with which end the "Memoirs of Count  Grammont". George and Frances had six children but only three (all daughters) are known by name: Elizabeth, the eldest, was born in England in 1667 and baptised on 21 March at St Margaret's, Westminster in an Anglican ceremony. The other two were born in France and were brought up as Catholics. According to the conventions of the time, the eldest, being a Protestant, married a Protestant; the younger two, being Catholics, married Catholics. All three married Irish viscounts and were therefore known as the "three viscountesses". Lord Beaulieu, who had the Portrait of George Hamilton used in this article  in his collection of paintings, was one of Elizabeth's grandsons. Her descendance through her two sons went extinct in 1764. However, her second daughter, called Catharine, married in 1705 James Hussey and was by him mother of Edward Hussey-Montagu, 1st Earl Beaulieu (open the collapsed family tree below). Later life. Second Anglo-Dutch War. On 4 March 1665 the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–1667) broke out. It seems that George volunteered in the Royal Navy and participated on 3 June 1665 O.S. in the naval battle of Lowestoft, an English victory. Second exile. On 28 September 1667 in  an increasingly anti-Catholic political climate, the King felt obliged to dismiss from his Life Guards the Catholics who refused to take the Oath of Supremacy, and among them, Hamilton. The king arranged with Louis XIV that Hamilton would be made the captain-lieutenant of a company of "gens d'armes" under Louis's direct command as captain. On 1 February 1668 Hamilton left England for France passing by Dover and Ostend. He seems to have been knighted by Charles before his departure as he is called Sir George Hamilton for the first time on his pass dated 14 January 1668 . Sir George Hamilton's "gens d'armes" were part of Louis's body guard. His wife followed him to France and converted to the Catholic religion. She stayed in Paris. The War of Devolution 1667/1668 was about to end; France was in peace talks with Spain that would lead to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle on 2 May 1668. In 1668 Sir George Hamilton acquired French nationality. In 1671 Sir George Hamilton raised a regiment in Ireland. Some of the officers engaged in this "régiment d'Hamilton" became well known: Patrick Sarsfield, Justin McCarty, George's younger brothers Anthony and Richard , his cousin Gustavus Hamilton, Governor of Enniskillen, and Thomas Dongan who was appointed lieutenant-colonel. In April 1672 France and England declared war on the Dutch Republic; the former starting the Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678), the latter the Third Anglo-Dutch War. Sir George Hamilton would pass the rest of his life fighting with his Irish regiment for France in that War, eventually being killed in action. The first three years he served under Henri, Viscount of Turenne. At the beginning of the war Hamilton's regiment was part of the garrison of Liège, but it joined the Louis's  main army after the passage of the Rhine in June 1672. It participated in the siege of Utrecht, which fell on 20 June 1672. After the Dutch had flooded the land to the north, most of the French troops retreated but Hamilton's regiment stayed behind with the small army of occupation under Marshal Luxembourg. It was stationed at Zutphen in Gerderland to the east of Utrecht. In the summer 1673 he joined Turenne's army. In February 1674 England and the Netherlands concluded the Treaty of Westminster (1674), which ended the Third Anglo-Dutch War. This peace did not  affect Sir George Hamilton as he served under French command. However, from there on to the end of the war, the English Parliament pushed for measures to forbid the King's subjects to fight in French service. On 8 May 1675 the Parliament forced Charles to make a proclamation demanding the immediate return of all his subjects that had gone into French service since the date of the Treaty of Westminster and forbidding all his subjects to enter that service. This made recruiting for Hamilton's regiment difficult. On 16 June 1674 Turenne fought the battle of Sinsheim, south of  Heidelberg, against the Imperials under Aeneas de Caprara. Hamilton commanded three battalions at that occasion, the two of his own regiment and one from the Monmouth regiment. In July Hamilton's regiment participated in the first ravaging of the Palatinate. On 4 October he fought the Imperial forces under the Duke von Bournonville at Entzheim in Alsace south of Strasbourg, where Hamilton's Regiment attacked on the right wing. Sir George and his brother Anthony were wounded. In March 1675 Sir George Hamilton visited England with his younger brothers Anthony and Richard. Sir George returned to France from England, whereas  Anthony and Richard continued to Ireland to recruit as Sinsheim and Entzheim had left gaps in the ranks of the regiment. The recruits were picked up by French ships at Kinsale in April after a missed appointment at Dingle in March. George's and Anthony's wounds and the voyage to England caused them to miss Turenne's winter campaign 1674/1675, during which the French marched south and surprised the Imperialists by attacking them in Upper Alsace, leading to Turenne's victory at Turckheim on 5 January 1675. On 27 July 1675 Sir George Hamilton fought at Sasbach, where Turenne  was killed. The French army retreated, pursued by the imperial army under Raimondo Montecuccoli, resulting in rearguard actions known as the Battle of Altenheim where Sir George Hamilton and his Irish excelled. In this battle the French army was commanded by the comte Guy Aldonce de Durfort de Lorges and the marquis de Vaubrun, who was slain in the action. Sir George Hamilton and his unit were part of the rearguard under Louis de Boufflers. In January 1676 Sir George Hamilton went to Ireland to recruit as Altemheim had taken its toll. The recruiting was tolerated by Essex, the Lord  Lieutenant of Ireland on instruction by the King. In February 1676 Sir George Hamilton was promoted maréchal de camp (major-general) for his achievements at Altenheim. After Altenheim the command of the Rhine Army passed to Louis, Grand Condé, and finally to François-Henri de Montmorency, duc de Luxembourg in 1676. Comte d'Hamilton. French sources generally call Sir George Hamilton not "chevalier" but "comte" and once even "marquis". The Gazette of 26 June 1674 mentions "Comte d'Hamilton" as one of the French commanders at the Battle of Sinsheim. This might simply reflect the belief held by the French that he  was a nobleman in England, Scotland, or Ireland, or shear cautious politeness from their part. The French genealogist François-Alexandre Aubert de La Chesnaye Des Bois mentions Hamilton as a Scottish noble family that gave rise to a Duc de Châtelleraut and mentions "Comte Antoine Hamilton" but not George Hamilton. Many English sources also call him count. Ó Ciardha says he was made a count in February ennobled by Louis XIV, This might simply echo the French use, taking for truth what is maybe a mistake or politeness. To call George Hamilton the father "the baronet" and his son "the  count" is a neat way to distinguish them. Sergeant thinks he was made a count soon after he obtained French nationality. Ó Ciardha seems to believe he was made a count in February 1676 after his achievements at Altenheim. No source mentions a territorial designation and none mentions that Sir George Hamilton owned land that was erected as comté as was done in some other cases. Death and timeline. Count Hamilton was killed on 1 June 1676 while commanding Luxembourg's rear-guard at the Col de Saverne (Zebernstieg in Alsatian) where imperial troops under Charles V, Duke of Lorraine  pursued the French who were retreating eastward to Saverne in lower Alsace. His younger brother Anthony succeeded him as comte d'Hamilton, but King Charles and his brother the Duke of York insisted that Thomas Dongan should succeed as colonel buying the regiment from the Hamiltons.