Dufferin Chronicles

The Hamiltons of Killyleagh

Tommy Bassett has asked me to write 1500 words on the Hamilton family of Killyleagh in the middle of the harvest. Ah well. I thought essays had finished when I left school or at least left the Army. As any serious student of Irish History since 1605 can read all about it in various books such as the "Hamilton Manuscripts", "The Ulster Plantation of 1605", "The Autobiography of Hamilton Rowan" (which it was not) and the "Desire to Please" by Harold Nicolson, I think my duty is to produce a fairly light-hearted account for people who do not normally concern themselves with history.

The story starts with James Hamilton son of the Vicar of Dunlop in Ayrshire being appointed an "Undertaker" by James I in 1605. He undertook to settle lands he was given by the king with his friends, connections and tenant farmers from Scotland. In return for the grant, he had to build a defended house with a bawn (wall), and administer his estates subject to satisfactory inspection by the king's emissaries. Since James Hamilton took over the Castle from Con O'Neill there have, without a break, been another eleven generations living in it. This first Hamilton was the only really clever one. If he had been alive today he would by now own Woolworths, The Ulster Bank and the Daily Mirror. As it was, he owned lands all over Ireland by his death, particularly the Hamilton Estates which comprised much of the Ards, all the Bangor area, most of the land between Killyleagh and Belfast and much of the North Coast of Antrim. He was created Viscount Clandeboye, and his eldest son, who continued the good work, was advanced to an earldom and took the name of Clanbrassil. This man had his wife painted in 1635 by the fashionable artist Van Dyck.

The second earl was less effective. He married a daughter of the Earl of Drogheda (there is still a Clanbrassil street in the town) who turned out to be a right old bag. He was impotent and I would think rather weak in the head. He wrote a form of will against his mother's advice leaving his wife all the Hamilton estates. The wife then murdered the earl by poisoning him in Dublin. She was not allowed to benefit by the recent will and after a long law case the estates were divided between a boy and a girl, nephew and niece of the dead earl. The boy, Gawen, inherited the Castle and the girl the gatehouse. We are now in the year 1700.

I might drift off course for a moment to follow the girl's family. She married Sir John Blackwood (Bart.) and her son married an extraordinary ball of fire called Dorcas who for her work, was created in her own right Countess Dufferin. After several generations of Dufferins, in 1862 the eldest son married Harriet Rowan-Hamilton the eldest daughter of the Castle and the two families were reunited. The husband was created 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava and the family seat is still Clandeboye which had come to the original Miss Hamilton of the gatehouse when the Hamilton estates were equally divided.

Since Gawen inherited the Castle from the impotent second earl, the eldest sons of the family were called alternatively Gawen William and Archibald James. So the first Archie was born in 1710 approximately. The second Gawen 1729, 2nd Archie 1752, 3rd Gawen 1783, 3rd Archie 1818, 4th Gawen 1844, 4th Archie (Denys Archibald, his great nephew) 1921. I have a 5th Gawn on the stocks (1969).

One cannot in 1500 words cover all that lot. The second Archie (1752) assumed the second name "Rowan" in order to inherit a large fortune from his maternal grandparents. He went through the cash at high speed keeping race horses at Newmarket, being sent down from Cambridge for putting chamber pots on college towers. He visited Queen Marie Antoinette in France and was given by her a jewelled watch. He was gay handsome, wild as a hawk and loved by all who knew him. As soon as he was allowed by his parents he came to Killyleagh and immediately become involved with the United Irishmen of who he soon became one of the leaders. Many of the establishment protestant families were members of this body, their aim being, so far as I can see, to rid themselves of government from London so that they would not have to pay taxes. Archibald could walk through the streets of Dublin followed by an adoring mob. He was warned by Dublin Castle that if he continued to misbehave he would be in trouble. He finally put his signature to an invitation to the French army to invade and liberate Ireland. He was arrested, sentenced to death and locked up in Dublin Castle. He bribed his jailor to let him visit his wife in his Dublin house. While the jailor sat outside the bedroom door, Archibald went down a rope to waiting friends who put him on a boat to France. Thence he went to the recently independent American Colonies. In old age he was pardoned and died in the Castle.

His son (3rd Gawen) was another interesting character who was a midshipman in Nelson's navy and rose to the rank of Commodore in command of a squadron in the Eastern Mediterranean. He tied up his ship, HMS Cambrian, in Pyreas harbour in Greece and did much to bring stability and democracy to that country. He was there at the same time as Lord Bryon. He is a hero in Modern Greek history and I am from time to time in correspondence with Greek authors who write books about him. There is a Hamilton street in Athens. He came home in 1834 after many years' service at sea, and rode through the village of Killyleagh. Someone threw a firework under his horse which bucked off the poor Commodore who died of his injuries. The old "rebel", Archibald Hamilton Rowan, was still alive in the Castle. The Commodore had in his lifetime changed his surname from that of his father to Rowan Hamilton because people had taken to calling him Commodore Rowan, whereas he was of course a Hamilton.

The third Archie presided at the Castle during the potato famine and in his old age saw the break-up of the Hamilton estates as a result of the Lands Acts. His wife, Catherine, was a woman of ability and considerable financial resources. She spent a large part of her fortune (£9,000) on restoring the Castle not only because the turrets were starting to disintegrate, but because the famine had caused great hardship in Killyleagh and there was an urgent need to provide work. She spent other large sums on the farm houses. When these were compulsorily transferred to the tenants it nearly broke her heart. Someone (I like to think it was the people of the town) put up a memorial to her where McCormick's garage now stands. It was knocked down and removed by the local authority in order to broaden the road.

There are people still alive in Killyleagh who remember the fourth Gawen "The old colonel", an extraordinary character with a small head on the end of a long neck walking through the town, as he did each day, dressed in a top hat, stock and frock coat with a walking stick. I am told that he was one of the fairly few people who never did anything in the way of work in his life. My relations told me that he never understood the difference between capital and income, and that he happily went on spending, paying wages, while he sold the contents of the Castle to find the money. Certainly the Van Dyck of the first Countess of Clanbrassil went to the Frick Museum in New York City. A 15th century alms dish was given to my wife by a resident of Downpatrick. Her father had bought it at a sale held by Colonel Gawen at the Castle for £5. Perhaps one should not blame him as his son and heir (the real fourth Archie) was killed at Loos in 1915 without a son. His only daughter Sheilah never married. She sold, for a song, the Castle to my mother who was the widow of her father's first cousin. My mother then offered the place to her eldest son Angus who, as he was already established in Perthshire, declined to come to Northern Ireland. This fact accounts for my presence here.

Contributed by Lt.Col. D.A. Rowan-Hamilton

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