Charles Hamilton, 5th Earl of Abercorn

Charles was born between 1659 and 1668,[lower-alpha 1] probably at Kenure House in Rush near Dublin. He was the second son of George Hamilton, and his wife Elizabeth Fagan. His father was the 4th Baron Hamilton of Strabane, an important landowner in County Tyrone. The Strabanes were a cadet branch of the Abercorns and of Scottish origin. Charles's mother was a rich heiress, the only child of Christopher Fagan of Feltrim, County Dublin.

He appears below among his siblings as the third child:

1. Claud (1659–1691), became the 4th Earl of Abercorn;
2. Anne (died 1680), married John Browne from the Neale in County Mayo;[2][3]
3. Charles (died 1701); and
4. Mary, married as his second wife Garrett Dillon, Recorder of Dublin.[4]

His parents were both Catholic, but he later conformed to the established religion. The family's usual residence was Kenure House in Rush near Dublin, where he and his siblings were probably born and where his father died.[5]

Charles's father died on 14 April 1668 at Kenure House[5] and his elder brother, Claud, succeeded as the 5th Baron of Strabane.[6] Charles became heir presumptive as his brother was unmarried. In about 1680 Claud also succeeded as the 4th Earl of Abercorn after the death of his cousin George in faraway Padua, Italy.[7] This made him heir presumptive.

However, in August 1691, when Charles was about 26, Claud was killed in a sea-fight when a Dutch privateer attacked the ship that should have brought him from Limerick to France.[8] His brother had been a Jacobite and had been attainted in Ireland on 11 May 1691. Charles succeeded him immediately as the 5th Earl of Abercorn as the family's Scottish titles were not affected by the attainder but could not become Baron Hamilton of Strabane as the title was forfeit.

Lord Abercorn, as he was now, had supported the Prince of Orange and was a Protestant,[9] perhaps due to his marriage. On 24 May 1692, he obtained a reversal of his brother's attainder and also succeeded as Baron Hamilton of Strabane, becoming the 6th holder of that title. In that capacity he took his seat in the Irish House of Lords on 31 August 1695.

He married his second cousin Catherine Lenthall (née Hamilton), probably around 1690. She was the daughter of James Hamilton, Lord Paisley, and widow of William Lenthall of Burford,[10] a grandson of the speaker. They had one daughter:

• Elizabeth, died young and was buried in St. Michan's Church, Dublin on 22 February 1699.[11]

In 1697 he signed the Association, an oath of loyalty to the king that had been introduced in reaction to the Jacobite assassination plot of 1696.[12][13]

On 3 April 1697 John Pryor was found murdered in the garden of the Priory of Burford.[14] He had been a steward to William Lenthall, Abercorn's wife's first husband. Abercorn was accused of the murder and put into goal but was finally acquitted.[15]

He died childless in Strabane in June 1701.[16] His only child, Elizabeth, had predeceased him in 1699. His widow died on 24 May 1723 in Pall Mall, London, and was buried in the Richmond vault of the Henry VII Chapel at Westminster Abbey.[17]

With his death, the senior line of the Abercorns and the Strabanes failed. With regard to the Abercorns, the succession reverted to the next of the cadet branches descending from the five sons of the 1st Earl of Abercorn as it already had done in about 1650 when George, the 3rd Earl, died unmarried in Padua. As the 1st Earl's third son, William, 1st Baronet of Westport, had no children, the succession passed to the descendants of the fourth son, Sir George Hamilton, 1st Baronet, of Donalong. Our subject, the 5th Earl, was therefore succeeded as Earl of Abercorn by his second cousin, James Hamilton, the grandson of Sir George. James Hamilton would thus become the 6th Earl of Abercorn.

With regard to the Barons Hamilton of Strabane, Charles, our subject, was the 6th Baron, and the last heir-male of Claud Hamilton, the 2nd Baron, to whom the title was regranted after the 2nd Earl had resigned it. The succession therefore needed to make use of the special remainder, which also allowed succession through heirs-male from the body of the grantee's father.[18] This made that not only the Scottish but also the Irish title devolved to his second cousin, James Hamilton. James therefore became 6th Earl of Abercorn and 7th Baron Hamilton of Strabane. From that time on these two titles would always be worn by the same person.

• Chester, Joseph Lemuel (1876), Registers of Westminster Abbey, London: Private Edition
• Cokayne, George Edward (1910), Gibbs, Vicary (ed.), The complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant, 1 (2nd ed.), London: St Catherine Press – Ab-Adam to Basing
• Cressy, David (1982), Guth, DeLloyd J.; McKenna, John W. (eds.), "Binding the nation: the Bonds of Association, 1584 and 1596", Tudor Rule and Revolution: Essays for G R Elton from His American Friends, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 217–234, ISBN 978-0-521-09127-5
• Handley, Stuart (2004), "Hamilton, James, 6th Earl of Abercorn (c. 1661–1734)", in Matthew, Colin; Harrison, Brian (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 24, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 852–853, ISBN 978-0198614111
• Lodge, John (1789), The Peerage of Ireland, 5, Dublin: James Moore - Viscounts
• Monk, William John (1891), History of Burford, Burford: C. W. Swatman
• Paul, Sir James Balfour (1904), The Scots Peerage, Founded on Wood's Edition of Sir Robert Douglas's Peerage of Scotland, 1, Edinburgh: David Douglas – Abercorn to Balmerino
• Smyth, Constantine (1839), Chronicle of the Law Officers of Ireland, London: Henry Butterworth (for Table of reigns)
• "Rye, August 8", The London Gazette, no. 2687, 10–13 August 1691

• Genealogy of Charles Hamilton, 5th Earl of Abercorn on The Peerage website