Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 24.djvu/228

  at Christ Church, Oxford, where he matriculated on 24 Oct. 1798, and graduated B.A. in 1801 and M.A. in 1815. At the general election in July 1802 he was returned to parliament in the tory interest for the borough of St. Germans, Cornwall, for which constituency he continued to sit until the dissolution 'in October 1806. At a by-election in January 1807 he was returned for Cockermouth, Cumberland, and at the general election in May of that year for Callington, Cornwall. Having been sworn a member of the privy council on 29 July 1814, he was appointed on 7 Sept. 1814 one of the commissioners for the management of the affairs in India (a post which he retained until the accession of the Grenville party to office in February 1822), and at a by-election in December 1814 was returned for Michael-Borough, Cornwall. At the general election in June 1818 he was elected one of the members for Rochester, and continued to represent that constituency until the dissolution in June 1826. At the general election of that year he was returned for the borough of Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight, but on 24 July 1827 was created Baron Melros of Tynninghame, in the peerage of the United Kingdom, and took his seat in the House of Lords on 29 Jan. 1828 (Journals of the House of Lords, lx. 6).

He succeeded his father as ninth earl of Haddington on 17 March 1828, and was appointed lord-lieutenant of Ireland in Sir Robert Peel's first administration on 29 Dec. 1 834, but resigned, with the rest of his colleagues, in April 1835. In September 1841, on the formation of Peel's second administration, Haddington was appointed first lord of the admiralty (with a seat in the cabinet), a post which he held until January 1846, when he succeeded the Duke of Buccleuch as lord privy seal. After the downfall of this administration in June 1846 Haddington did not again hold office, and took but little part in the debates. On 28 Oct. 1853 he was elected a knight of the Thistle. He died on 1 Dec. 1858 at Tynninghame House, Haddingtonshire, in the seventy-ninth year of his age, when the barony of Melros became extinct, and the earldom of Haddington and the barony of Binning and Byres descended to his cousin, George Baillie of Mellerstain and Jerviswood, the great-great-grandson of Thomas, the sixth earl. Haddington was not a man of any remarkable ability, and Greville, after recording that the governor-generalship of India was offered to but refused by Haddington in 1841, remarks: 'It is a curious circumstance that a man so unimportant, so destitute not only of shining but of plausible qualities, without interest or influence, should by a mere combination of accidental circumstances have had at his disposal three of the greatest and most important offices under the crown, having actually occupied two of them and rejected the greatest and most brilliant of all (Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, 1837–52, 1885, ii. 46). In 1843 he received 30,674l. 1s. 8d. in compensation for the surrender of the hereditary office of keeper of Holyrood Park, conferred upon Thomas, sixth earl of Haddington, by charter dated 23 Jan. 1691 (6 & 7 Vict. c. 64). He married, on 13 Nov. 1802, Lady Maria Parker, only surviving child of George, fourth earl of Macclesfield, by whom he had no issue. His widow survived him, and died on 11 Feb. 1861.

 HAMILTON, THOMAS (1784–1858), architect, son of Thomas Hamilton, was born in Edinburgh in 1784, 'served a regular apprenticeship as an operative carpenter with his father, and afterwards acted as his father's assistant' (, Letter to the Lord Provost, 1819). He 'conducted some extensive buildings' for his uncle, John Hamilton, and on his own account carried on business as an architect and builder (ib.) H. W. Williams ('Grecian Williams'), the landscape-painter, described him as 'a careful and correct draftsman' (Attestations, &c. p. 12).

In November 1816 Hamilton submitted designs in competition for the completion of the Edinburgh College Buildings, but those of Play fair were chosen. He printed and circulated observations on his two designs on 19 Nov. of the same year. His design for the Burns memorial to be erected at Alloway, near Ayr, was selected on 26 Jan. 1818, and after some unavoidable delay the building was commenced on the anniversary of the poet's birth, 25 Jan. 1820. The monument (Grecian) was completed on 4 July 1823. Hamilton was an unsuccessful candidate in 1819 for the post of superintendent of public works in the city of Edinburgh. In 1825 he designed the Knox monument in the Glasgow necropolis, a lofty column of Doric architecture, the first stone of which was laid on 22 Sept. (The figure was by Robert Forrest.) On 28 July 1825 was laid the first stone of the Edinburgh High School on the Calton 