Antoine Hamilton

Antoine (or Anthony) Hamilton, comte ( – 1719) was a soldier and a writer of literature. As a Catholic of Irish and Scottish ancestry, he fled with his family to France during the Interregnum and later sided with James II against the Prince of Orange, which led him into another French exile.

As a soldier he fought in French service in the Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678) and then in the Irish Army in the Williamite War (1688–1690) where he fought on the losing side in the battles of Newtownbutler and the Boyne.

As a writer he chose French as his language and adopted a light and elegant style, seeking to amuse and entertain his reader. He is mainly known for the ''Mémoires du Comte de Grammont'', which focuses on the time his brother-in-law Philibert, comte de Gramont, spent at the court of Charles II at Whitehall.

Birth and origins

Anthony was born in 1644 or 1645 in Ireland, probably in Nenagh, County Tipperary, He was the third son of George Hamilton and his wife Mary Butler. His father was Scottish, the fourth son of James Hamilton, 1st Earl of Abercorn. Anthony's father was an officer in the Irish Army and would in 1660 be created baronet of Donalong and Nenagh.

Anthony's mother was Irish, the third daughter of Thomas Butler, Viscount Thurles, and a sister of the future 1st Duke of Ormond. 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. Anthony's parents had married in 1629. Ormond had granted Anthony's father in 1640 the manor, castle, town and lands of Nenagh for 31 years. Anthony had five brothers and three sisters, who are listed in his father's article.

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, but his father and all his paternal uncles were raised as Catholics due to the influence of his paternal grandmother, Marion Boyd, a recusant. 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. His brother Thomas seems to have made the same choice as he became a captain in the Royal Navy.

Irish childhood

Before Anthony's birth Phelim O'Neill started the Irish Rebellion in October 1641 in Ulster. In December Phelim burned Strabane Castle, which had been the home of Anthony's aunt Jean Gordon. She was the widow of Hamilton's uncle Claude, his father's elder brother, who had died in 1638. Phelim sent her and her children to her brother in law, Anthony's father at Nenagh. With the creation of the Irish Catholic Confederation in 1642, the rebellion turned into the Confederate War. In 1643 King Charles I, occupied with the English Civil War, asked Anthony's uncle Ormond to negotiate a truce with the Confederates. This truce, called the Cessation, was concluded in September 1643. Ormond was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in November 1643, and employed Anthony's father at various administrative and military tasks.

However, in September 1646 Rinuccini, the papal nuncio, overthrew the Confederate Supreme Council in a coup d'état with help of Owen Roe O'Neill's Confederate Ulster Army. O'Neill led his army south to Kilkenny, the capital of the Confederates, where he arrived on the 16th. Rinuccini then took power appointing a new Supreme Council on the 26th. The Ulster army had a reputation for living off the inhabitants, even friendly ones, looting, and worse. On 17 September 1646 O'Neill, or more likely some of his troops without him, occupied Rosscrea. Some say that little Anthony, his mother and his elder siblings were there. However, it is more likely that they were at Nenagh and that the Lady Hamilton who was spared by the ulstermen at Roscrea was his aunt, not his mother.

In 1649, during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, Hamilton's father was colonel of an infantry regiment and governor of Nenagh. He defended Nenagh Castle in November 1650 when it was attacked and captured by the Parliamentarian army under Henry Ireton on the way back from their unsuccessful siege of Limerick to their winter quarters at Kilkenny.

First French exile

In spring 1651, when Anthony was about seven years old, his father followed his brother-in-law, Ormond, from Ireland into French exile. They first went to Caen

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