Antoine Hamilton

Anthony was born in 1644 or 1645[1][lower-alpha 1] in Ireland, probably in Roscrea, County Tipperary,[1][lower-alpha 2] He was one of the nine children[9] and the third of the six sons 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.[10] Anthony's mother was Irish, the third daughter of Thomas Butler, Viscount Thurles and a sister of the future 1st Duke of Ormond.[11] Her family, the Butler dynasty, was Old English and descended from Theobald Walter, who had been appointed Chief Butler of Ireland by King Henry II in 1177.[12] His parents married in 1629.[13]

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,[25] but his father and all his paternal uncles were raised as Catholics due to the influence of his paternal grandmother, Marion Boyd, a recusant.[26] Some branches of the Hamilton family were Protestant, such as that of his father's second cousin Gustavus (1642–1723), who would fight on the other side in the Williamite War. His mother's family, the Butlers, were Catholic with a few exceptions such as the future 1st Duke of Ormond, his maternal uncle. Anthony's eldest brother, James, would turn Protestant when marrying Elizabeth Colepeper in 1661.[27] His brother Thomas seems to have made the same choice as he became a captain in the Royal Navy.[28]

Anthony's father was a loyal cavalier. He fought in the Irish Confederate Wars (1641–1648) and the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland (1649–1653) in the Irish army under his uncle James Butler, the Earl of Ormond, until 1651 when he followed Ormond into exile.[29]

Little Anthony, his mother and his elder siblings lived in his father's house in Roscrea. The town belonged to the Butlers of Ormond as part of the County Palatine of Tipperary. They were there when the town, held by the royalists, was stormed and fell to Owen Roe O'Neil's Irish Confederates' Ulster Army on 17 September 1646. Anthony's father must have been elsewhere in Ormond's service. They were spared by O'Neil's men who massacred everybody else.[30][31] 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.[32][33]

His father was governor of Nenagh in November 1650 when the Parliamentarian army under Henry Ireton attacked and captured Nenagh Castle on the way back from their unsuccessful siege of Limerick to their winter quarters at Kilkenny.[34]

In spring 1651, when Anthony was about seven years old, his father followed his maternal uncle, the Marquess of Ormond, from Ireland into French exile.[35][36] They first went to Caen,[35] in Normandy, where they were all accommodated for some time by his aunt Elizabeth Preston, the Marchioness of Ormond. His father and his elder brothers, James and George, were soon employed by Charles II in various functions.[37][38] His mother then left for Paris where she would shelter in the convent of the Feuillantines together with her sister Eleanor Butler, Lady Muskerry.[39] Anthony's sister Elizabeth was sent to the boarding school of the convent of Port-Royal-des-Champs, near Versailles together with Lady Muskerry's daughter Helen. It may be that he stayed in Caen to be taught together with his Ormond cousins Thomas Butler, 6th Earl of Ossory and Richard Butler, 1st Earl of Arran.[40][41][lower-alpha 3]

Portrait attributed to François de Troy (c. 1700)[lower-alpha 4]

He and his family returned to London in 1660 with the advent of the English Restoration. His father was created Baronet Donalong in 1660 by Charles II, but Charles refused to go further than that because the family was Catholic.[42]

He, his eldest brother James, his sister Elizabeth, and his younger brother George became courtiers in the inner circle at Whitehall. The King arranged a Protestant marriage for James in 1691.[43][27][44]

In January 1663 Anthony met at Whitehall Philibert, chevalier de Gramont, a French exile.[45][46] De Gramont was already in his forties and a younger half-brother of the duc de Gramont, Marshal of France. The chevalier de Gramont had got into trouble at the French court by courting Mademoiselle Anne-Lucie de la Mothe-Houdancourt, on whom Louis XIV had set his eyes.[47][48][49][50][lower-alpha 5]

He befriended de Gramont, who quickly became part of the court's inner circles. Gramont courted his sister Elizabeth, "La belle Hamilton", who was seduced by Gramont's verbiage and gallantry. Philibert married her in London in December 1663 or early in 1664.[51][52][53] The couple had a son on 7 September, but he died as an infant.[54] In March 1664, having heard of de Gramont's marriage, Louis XIV allowed him to return.[55]

In 1667, his brother George refused to take the oath of supremacy and went to France. George recruited a regiment in Ireland for French service and fought in the Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678). Anthony followed George to France in 1667 and took service in that regiment.[56]

Portrait engraved by Edward Scriven, found in the 1811 London edition of the Mémoires du comte de Grammont[57]

He probably fought with George under Turenne in the Battle of Sinsheim in June 1674, and did quite surely so at Entzheim in October against Imperial troops under the Duke von Bournonville[58] as he and George were both wounded at that battle.[59] George's and Anthony's wounds and the voyage to England, described below, undertaken by the three brothers, caused them to miss Turenne's winter campaign 1674/1675, during which the French marched south and surprised the Imperialists by launching a surprise attack on Upper Alsace, which culminated in Turennes's victory at the Battle of Turckheim on 5 January 1675.[60]

In March 1675 he visited England with George and his younger brother Richard, who had also taken French service. George returned to France from England, but Anthony and Richard continued to Ireland to recruit for the regiment.[61] The recruits were picked up by French ships at Kinsale in April[62] after a missed appointment at Dingle in March.[63]

On 27 July 1675 Anthony probably fought with George at Sasbach, where Turenne was killed. Two of Turenne's general officers considered themselves second in command: Count Guy Aldonce de Durfort de Lorges and the marquis de Vaubrun. At the retreat from Sasbach and the Battle of Altenheim in August the French army was therefore commanded by both until Vaubrun was killed in that battle on 1 August 1676. Finally arrived the new commander, Condé, whom the King had appointed. However, Condé was old and was soon replaced by Luxembourg. George was killed in June 1676 while commanding Luxembourg's rear-guard at the Zaberner Steige where imperial troops under Charles V, Duke of Lorraine pursued the French who were retreating eastward to Saverne in lower Alsace.[16][64][16] Anthony succeeded to his brother's French title of comte d'Hamilton.[65] Voltaire calls him "comte" in his note of 1739.[41] The Peace of Nijmegen of 1678 ended the Franco-Dutch War[66] and Anthony seems to have returned to Ireland.

According to the majority view, the comte d'Hamilton, as he now was, visited France in 1681 and played one of six zephyrs needed in the performance of Quinault's ballet the Triomphe de l'Amour, to music by Lully, on 21 January 1681 N.S. at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye before the king.[67][68][69][70] However, some believe it was Richard.[71]

In 1685 James II acceded to the English throne and appointed Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell commander of the Irish army. Tyrconnell, a Catholic, recruited Anthony Hamilton and his younger brothers Richard and John. Anthony was appointed lieutenant-colonel of Sir Thomas Newcomen's regiment.[72] Later in that same year he was appointed governor of Limerick where his regiment was garrisoned, replacing Sir William King, a Protestant.[73] Shortly he demonstrated his Catholicism when he went publicly to mass.

In 1688, at the eve of the Glorious Revolution, he was sent with his battalion to England in an effort to provide James with reliable Catholic troops.[74] After James's flight Hamilton made his way back to Ireland where he was promoted to major-general and given the command of the dragoons, under Justin McCarthy, Viscount Mountcashel, in actions around Enniskillen. At some stage his unit was garrisoned in Belturbet, County Cavan. In the battle of Newtownbutler on 31 July 1689, serving under McCarthy, he was wounded in the leg at the beginning of the action, and his dragoons were routed. He succeeded in making good his escape.[75] Hamilton was considered to have led his dragoons into an ambush by over-confidence; and to have made minimal efforts to extricate them. With Captain Lavallin from Cork he served as scapegoat for the defeat, being subjected to a court martial under General de Rosen. Given his family's influence Hamilton was acquitted, while the hapless Lavallin was shot.[76] However, the reputations of the Hamilton brothers had suffered terminal damage with the French.[77]

Anthony Hamilton fought in the cavalry at the battle of the Boyne on 1 July 1690.[78] He also took part in the Siege of Limerick (1690) and when William had to raise the siege in autumn, Tyrconnell sent him to France to report the victory.[79] He does not seem to have returned to Ireland and was absent at the Battle of Aughrim on 12 July 1691 where his youngest brother, John, was mortally wounded.[22][80]

He spent the last thirty years of his life mainly at the court of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, with visits to the châteaux of his friends and to Les Moulineaux, the house of his sister Elizabeth at Versailles. From his years in Ireland he was a friend of the Duke of Berwick. He became an especial favourite with Ludovise, duchesse du Maine, and it was at her seat at Sceaux that he wrote the Mémoires that made him famous.

In 1701 he accompanied Berwick on a mission to Rome to obtain the support of the new pope, Clement XI for the Jacobite cause.[81]

In May 1703 his sister Elizabeth was given a house called Les Moulineaux, where he visited her often and which became a centre of his social world.[82][83]

In 1707 his friend the comte de Gramont died.[84][85] On 3 June 1708 his sister Elizabeth, the comtesse de Gramont died in Paris.[86][87]

He never married and died at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 20 April 1719.[2][3][88][89][lower-alpha 6]

Antoine Hamilton is mainly known for a single book: the Mémoires du comte de Grammont. After this followed some shorter works among which the four short stories: Le Bélier, Fleur d'Epine, Zénéyde, and Les quatre Facardins.

Memoirs

Anthony Hamilton wrote the Mémoires du comte de Gramont between 1704 and 1710 at the age of 59 to 65. This work made Hamilton one of the classical writers of France. The tone of the work, however, is now thought equivocal. By highlighting the brilliance of the London Restoration court, the book threw into relief the lacklustre nature of the exiled Stuart court. It has even been said to share something with the anti-jacobite polemic written against the court of James II at St Germain by John Macky.[96]

Frontispiece of the 1713 edition[97]

The book starts with the sentence (as translated by Horace Walpole):

As those who read only for amusement are, in my opinion, more worthy of attention than those who open a book merely to find a fault, to the former I address myself, and for their entertainment commit the following pages to press, without being in the least concerned about the severe criticism of the latter.[98]

The work was said to have been written at Gramont's dictation, but Hamilton's share is obvious and the book situates itself at the cross-roads between memoirs, biography, and fiction.[99]

The work was first published anonymously in 1713,[95] apparently without Hamilton's knowledge. The first English translation is the one by Abel Boyer, which appeared in 1714. Walpole's translation is the classical one and used in many editions. It seem it has been published for the first time in 1773 at Strawberry Hill Press. Peter Quennell retranslated the Memoirs in 1930. It was published accompanied with extensive commentary by Cyril Hughes Hartmann.

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• Boulger, Demetrius Charles (1911), The Battle of the Boyne, London: Martin Secker
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