Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/237

Rh may with more propriety bestow such an honour than on any stranger, however illustrious.

HAMILTON,, third marquis, and first duke of Hamilton, was born in the palace at Hamilton, on the 19th of June, 1606. His father, James, marquis of Hamilton, was held in high favour by James I., who, amongst other honours which he bestowed on him, created him earl of Cambridge, a title which was at an after period a fatal one to the unfortunate nobleman who is the subject of this memoir.

Before the marquis had attained his fourteenth year, his father, who was then at St James's court, sent for him for the purpose of betrothing him to the lady Margaret Fielding, daughter to the earl of Denbigh, and niece of the duke of Buckingham, and then only in the seventh year of her age. After this ceremony had taken place, the marquis was sent to Oxford, to complete those studies which he had begun in Scotland, but which had been seriously interrupted by his coming to court. He succeeded his father as marquis of Hamilton, March 2, 1625, while as yet considerably under age.

An early and fond intimacy seems to have taken place between prince Charles and the marquis. That it was sincere and abiding on the part of the latter, the whole tenor of his life and his melancholy and tragical death bear testimony. On Charles succeeding to the throne, one of his first cares was to mark the esteem in which he held his young and noble friend, by heaping upon him favours and distinctions.

Soon after the coronation of the king, however, in which ceremony he carried the sword of state in the procession, he returned to Scotland for the purpose of superintending in person his family affairs, which had been much deranged by the munificence of his father. The marquis, who does not seem to have ever been much captivated by the life of a courtier, soon became warmly attached to the quiet and retirement of the country, and spent the greater part of his time at Brodick castle, a beautiful and romantic residence in the island of Arran.

The king, however, whose attachment to him seems to have gained strength by his absence, wrote to him repeatedly, and with his own hand, in the most pressing terms, to return. All these flattering invitations he for some time resisted, until his father-in-law, the earl of Denbigh, came expressly to Scotland with another earnest request from the king that he would come up to London, and at the same time, offering him the appointment of master of the horse, then vacant by the death of the duke of Buckingham.

Unable longer to resist the entreaties of his sovereign, now seconded by the earl, the marquis complied, and proceeded with his father-in-law to court, where he arrived in the year 1628. The promised appointment was immediately bestowed on him; and in the fullness of his majesty's happiness at his young friend's return, he further made him gentleman of his bedchamber, and privy councillor in both kingdoms. The amiable and unassuming manners of the marquis saved him at this part of his career from all that hostility and jealousy which usually attend the favourite of a sovereign, and he was permitted to receive and enjoy all his offices and honours without a grudge, and without the cost of creating an enemy.

At the baptism of prince Charles in 1630, he represented the king of Bohemia as one of the sponsors, and on this occasion the order of the garter, was conferred upon him, together with a grant of the office of chief steward of the house and manor of Hampton court. A more active life, however, was now about to open upon the favourite courtier. King Charles, having in the duke's name entered into a treaty with the celebrated Gustavus Adolphus, king