Frederick Hamilton (soldier)

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Frederick Hamilton
Ruin of the castle built by Frederick Hamilton at Manorhamilton.
Born	c. 1590
Died	1647
Spouse	Sidney Vaughan
Children	Gustavus & others
Parents	Claud Hamilton, 1st Lord Paisley Margaret Seton
Relatives	7th Lord Seton (grandfather) Frederick Hamilton (grandson) 2nd Viscount Boyne (grandson)

Sir Frederick Hamilton (c. 1590 – 1647) was a Scottish soldier who fought for Sweden in the Thirty Years' War in Germany and for the Covenanters in Ireland, Scotland, and northern England. He built Manorhamilton Castle, County Leitrim, Ireland. His son Gustavus became the 1st Viscount Boyne.

Frederick was born about 1590^[a] in Scotland, probably at Paisley. He was the youngest of the five sons that lived to adulthood of Claud Hamilton and his wife Margaret Seton. His father was the 1st Lord Paisley. His father's family descended from Walter FitzGilbert, the founder of the House of Hamilton,^[1] who had received the barony of Cadzow from Robert the Bruce.^[2] Frederick's mother was a daughter of George Seton, 7th Lord Seton^[b] by his wife Isobel Hamilton.^[3] Both parents were Scottish and seem also to have been both Catholic. They had married in 1574.^[3]

Several of his siblings died in their infancy or childhood.^[5] Six reached adulthood^[6] and are listed in his father's article.

His mother died in March 1616.^[7]

He and his brothers James, Claud, and George were involved in James VI and I's Plantations of Ireland. In March 1620, he was given the quarter of Carrowrosse in the Barony of Dromahair in northern County Leitrim.^[8] Leitrim is in the Province of Connacht but northern Leitrim lies along the border with Ulster. Over the next two decades he increased his estate to 18,000 acres (73 km²). All that land had been seized from the O'Rourke clan in the Plantation of Leitrim.

On 20 May 1620 Frederick Hamilton married Sidney Vaughan. She was a rich heiress, the only child of Sir John Vaughan, Governor of Londonderry.^[9]

Frederick and Sidney had three sons:^[10]

1. Frederick (died before 1646), was killed in action in Ireland^[11]
2. James of Manorhamilton (died 1652), married his cousin Catherine, daughter of Claud Hamilton, Lord Strabane^[12]
3. Gustavus (1642–1723), became the 1st Viscount Boyne^[13]

—and one daughter:

1. Christiana (married 1649), married Sir George Munro^[14]

In November 1631, he entered Swedish service. He must by that time have converted to Protestantism as a Catholic would not have been acceptable to the Swedes. He became colonel of a Scottish-Irish regiment that served in Germany for 15 months during the Thirty Years' War. They fought in General Tott's army on the Elbe, the Weser and the Rhine. After spending a few years back in Leitrim, he unsuccessfully attempted to re-enter Swedish service in September 1637.

About 1638 he built Manorhamilton Castle in northern Leitrim, around which grew the town of Manorhamilton.^[15]

Sir Frederick was involved in a lengthy legal dispute over the ownership of parcels of land in the County of Leitrim with Tirlagh Reynolds of Kiltubbrid. On 15 November 1633 an injunction was granted to give Tirlagh possession, but it was dissolved. On 13 June 1634 a second injunction in favour of Tirlagh was granted. A Chancery order of 19 December 1634 dissolved that second injunction. On 5 December 1640, the committee for Irish affairs of the Long Parliament heard four petitions from Sir Frederick in this respect.^[16] The Down Survey shows Tirlagh Reynolds as owner of several parcels in southern Leitrim in 1641.^[17]

During the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Manorhamilton Castle was besieged several times, but remained intact. In the ensuing Irish Confederate Wars he fought for the Scottish Covenanters trying to keep the Confederates out of the north of Ireland. In 1643, after another unsuccessful attack upon the castle, he hanged 58 of his enemies from a scaffolding in front of the castle.

On 1 July 1642, in retribution for cattle raids by the O'Rourke clan, he sacked the nearby town of Sligo, burning part of it, including Sligo Abbey, a Dominican friary.^[18][19] Local legend tells that on the way over the mountains back to Manorhamilton Castle, some of his men got 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 Yeats, entitled The Curse of the Fires and of the Shadows.^[20]

The "Cessation" ceasefire of September 1643, negotiated by the Marquess of Ormond, was not recognised by the Covenanters, with whom he was allied. The war in Leitrim and Ulster therefore went on. However, after 1643 he left Ireland for Scotland where he became a colonel of a regiment of horse in the army of the Solemn League and Covenant, commanded by Alexander Leslie, 1st Earl of Leven, fighting in Scotland and Northern England. In Ireland he still retained the command of his foot regiment in western Ulster where his sons Frederick and James probably stood in for him. However, his son Frederick was killed and on 5 June 1646 the Covenanter army under Robert Monro lost the Battle of Benburb against the Confederates under Owen Roe O'Neill, after which they retreated to Carrickfergus, abandoning Leitrim and southern Ulster to the Confederates.

In 1647, Sir Frederick, aged 57, left the then disbanding army of the Solemn League and Covenant and retired to Edinburgh, where he died later that year in relative poverty. He had received very little compensation for his military efforts from the English parliament. He was succeeded by his son James, who had two daughters, one a Lady Judith Hamilton, with whom Manorhamilton passed out of the family.^[21] In 1652 Manorhamilton Castle was burned by Ulick Burke, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde, who had taken over as leader of the royalists from Ormond. The castle then fell into ruins.

• Bardon, Jonathan (2011). The Plantation of Ulster: War and Conflict in Ireland. Dublin: Gill & MacMillan. ISBN 978-0-7171-5447-0. – (Preview)
• Hill, Rev. George (1877). An Historical Account of the Plantation in Ulster at the Commencement of the Seventeenth Century, 1608–1620. Dublin: McCaw Stevenson and Orr. OCLC 32638560.
• Ó Siochrú, Micheál; Ó Ciardha, Eamonn (2012). The Plantation of Ulster: Ideology and Practice. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-8608-3. – Preview
• Rooney, Dominic (2013). The Life and times of Sir Frederick Hamilton. Dublin: Four Courts Press. ISBN 978-1-84682-424-1. – (Google Books, no Preview)

• Manorhamilton in The Irish Aesthete
• Page about Sir Frederick Hamilton on the town's website Archived 12 July 2019 at the Wayback Machine