Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/253

Rh four of the ring-leaders of the infamous fraternity by which they had been perpetrated, yet Hamilton by some means or ether contrived to escape sharing in their punishment. In 1 594, his unextinguishable zeal again placed him in an extraordinary and conspicuous position. On the day on which Henry IV. entered Paris, after embracing the catholic religion, and while Te Deum was celebrating for the restoration of peace and good government, Hamilton, with some of his frantic associates, flew to arms, with the desperate design of still expelling the king, in whose conversion they had no faith. The attempt, however, as might have been expected, was a total failure, and Hamilton was taken into custody, but was afterwards allowed to leave France without farther punishment. The parliament, however, some time after his departure, sentenced him to be broken on the wheel for the murder of Tardif, and as he was not then forthcoming in person, ordered that their decree should be carried into execution on his effigy. Hamilton in the meantime had retired to the Low Countries, and was now residing at Brussels, under the Spanish government.

In 1600, he published another work on religious matters, entitled "A Catalogue of one hundred and sixty-seven heresies, lies, and calumnies, teachit and practisit be the ministers of Calvin's sect, and corruptions of twenty-three passages of the Scripture be the ministeris adulterate translations thereof." This work he dedicated to the Scottish king. In 1601, Hamilton returned to his native country, after an absence of above thirty years. He was there joined by one Edmond Hay, an eminent Jesuit, equally turbulent and factious with himself. The arrival of these two dangerous men, whose characters were well known, especially that of Hamilton, having reached the ears of the king, he immediately issued a proclamation, enjoining their instant departure from the kingdom under pain of treason, and declared all guilty of the like crime who harboured them.

Notwithstanding this edict, Hamilton contrived to find shelter in the north, and to elude for some time the vigilance of the government. Amongst others who contravened the king's proclamation on this occasion was the lord Ogilvie, who afforded him a temporary residence at his house of Airly. At length the Scottish privy council, determined to have possession of so dangerous a person, despatched a party of life-guards to apprehend him. When found and desired to surrender, this indomitable and factious spirit, who had bearded the king of France in his might, and treated the orders of a Scottish privy council with contempt, endeavoured to resist them, but in vain. His life, however, was afterwards spared by the king, who, by a very slight stretch of certain laws then existing, might have deprived him of it. This clemency is said to have arisen from James's regard for Hamilton's nephew, then Sir Thomas Hamilton, afterwards earl of Haddington. The former, after his capture, spent the remainder of his days in the Tower, where he was sent at once for his own safety and that of the kingdom.

Amongst other peculiarities of Hamilton, it is recorded that he entertained a strong aversion to the introduction of English words into the Scottish language, a practice which was then becoming fashionable; and in the abuse which he was constantly heaping on the protestant preachers, he frequently charges them with "Knapping Suddrone," (aiming at English,) and still greater enormity with having it "imprentit at London in contempt of our native language;" and in proof at once of his abhorrence of all innovation in this particular, and of his partiality for the native unadulterated language of his own country, he always wrote in a style somewhat more uncouth than was warranted by the period in which he lived.