Summary: He was the only son of James Hamilton, 1st Lord Hamilton, and his wife, Mary Stewart, Countess of Arran. Mary was a daughter of King James II of Scotland and his Queen consort Mary of Guelders, and was a sister of King James III of Scotland. Hamilton succeeded to his father’s lordship and inherited his lands when his father died in 1479.In 1489 his first cousin King James IV made him Sheriff of Lanark, a position his father had previously had, and a Scottish Privy Counsellor.[2] By 28 April 1490 he was married to Elizabeth Home, daughter of Alexander Home, 2nd Lord Home.

1. James Earl Hamilton Marsden
1st Earl of Arran and 2nd Lord Hamilton

2. BIOGRAPHY
He was the only son of James Hamilton, 1st Lord Hamilton, and his wife, Mary Stewart,
Countess of Arran. Mary was a daughter of King James II of Scotland and his Queen
consort Mary of Guelders, and was a sister of King James III of Scotland.
Hamilton succeeded to his father’s lordship and inherited his lands when his father died in
1479.In 1489 his first cousin King James IV made him Sheriff of Lanark, a position his father
had previously had, and a Scottish Privy Counsellor.[2] By 28 April 1490 he was married to
Elizabeth Home, daughter of Alexander Home, 2nd Lord Home.
Between April and August 1502, he commanded a naval fleet sent to help King Hans of
Denmark, James IV’s uncle, defeat a Swedish rebellion. He negotiated James’s marriage
to Margaret Tudor and was present at the wedding on 8 August 1503. On the same day Lord
Hamilton was created Earl of Arran, with the formal grant three days later, “for his nearness
of blood” and his services at the time of the marriage. He was appointed Lieutenant General
of Scotland and in May 1504 commanded a naval expedition to suppress an uprising in
the Western Isles.
In September 1507, James IV sent Hamilton as his ambassador on a diplomatic mission to the
court of Louis XII of France. When returning in early 1508, he was briefly detained in
the Kingdom of England by Henry VII, who was suspicious of a renewal of the Auld
Alliance between Scotland and France.

3. When Henry VIII of England joined the War of the League of Cambrai by invading France in
1513, Scotland came under pressure to support France against England. Hamilton was given
command of the Scottish naval fleet. He first sailed to Ulster and attacked Carrickfergus, the
main English stronghold there. The fleet then sailed to France, arriving there in September
1513, too late to be much help as the Scottish army had been defeated at the Battle of Flodden
Field in England on 9 September, with James IV being killed in battle.
During the minority of King James V he opposed Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus and
the English party. He plotted against the Regent John Stewart, 2nd Duke of Albany. He was
president of the council of regency during Albany’s absence in France from 1517 to 1520.
He was defeated in an attempt to overpower Angus in the streets of Edinburgh in 1520, a riot
known as “Cleanse the Causeway“. He was again a member of the council of regency in 1522
and Lieutenant of the South. He joined the Queen Dowager Margaret Tudor in ousting
Albany and proclaiming James V in 1524.
Hamilton was compelled by Henry VIII of England to readmit Angus to the council. He
supported Angus against John Stewart, 3rd Earl of Lennox in 1526 at the Battle of Linlithgow
Bridge, but on the escape of James V from the Douglases, Hamilton received Bothwell from
Angus’s forfeited estates.

4. HAMILTON
MARSDEN

5. MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN
Hamilton was married firstly, c.1490, to Elizabeth Home, daughter of Alexander Home, 2nd
Lord Home. The marriage was dissolved in 1506, when it was found that her first husband
Thomas Hay, a son of John Hay, 1st Lord Hay of Yester, was still alive at the time of the
wedding. In November 1516 Hamilton married Janet Bethune of Easter Wemyss, daughter of
Sir David Bethune of Creich, and widow of Sir Robert Livingstone of Easter Wemyss, who
had been killed in the Battle of Flodden Field. In November 1504 Hamilton had been granted a
divorce from Elizabeth Home on the grounds that she had previously been married to Thomas
Hay. Hay had apparently left the country and was thought to be dead when Hamilton married
Home in or before 1490, but in fact he did not die until 1491 or later. This award of divorce
was repeated in 1510, suggesting that Hamilton had continued living with her after 1504, and
was held by some to undermine the dissolution of the first marriage as invalid. It is likely that
the real motive for divorcing Elizabeth was that she had not born any children and that
Hamilton wanted a legitimate heir – he already had several illegitimate children, his eldest
illegitimate son being James Hamilton of Finnart. The complicated legal issues of the second
marriage would continue to trouble his heir, whose legitimacy was questioned by his rivals in
1543.

6. ANCESTORS
James Hamilton, 1st Earl of Arran’s ancestors in three generations Paternal Great-Grandmother:
James Hamilton, 1st Earl of Arran
Mother:
Father: Mary Stewart, Princess of Scotland
James Hamilton, 1st Lord Hamilton
Maternal Grandfather:
Paternal Grandfather: James II of Scotland
James Hamilton of Cadzow
Maternal Great-Grandfather:
Paternal Great-Grandfather: James I of Scotland
possibly John Hamilton of Cadzow
Maternal Great-Grandmother:
Paternal Great-grandmother: Joan Beaufort, Queen of Scots
Janet, daughter of Sir James Douglas, 1st Lord Dalkeith
Maternal Grandmother:
Paternal Grandmother: Mary of Guelders
Janet Livingston of Callander
Maternal Great-grandfather:
Paternal Great-Grandfather: Arnold, Duke of Gelderland
Sir Alexander Livingston of Callander
Maternal Great-Grandmother:
Catherine of Cleves (1417–1479)

7. REFERENCES
• ^ a b c d e f g h i Greig, Elaine Finnie (2004). “Hamilton, James, first earl of Arran (1475?–1529)”
. Oxford Dictionary of NationalBiography. Oxford University Press. DOI:10.1093/ref:odnb/12079.
Retrieved 7 March 2009.
• ^ “Earls of Arran”. Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911. Retrieved 7 March 2009.
• ^ Alison Weir, Britain’s Royal Family: A Complete Genealogy (London, U.K.: The Bodley Head,
1999), page 234.
• ^ HMC 11th report, part 6, Duke of Hamilton, (1887), 4-5, 49-52.
• ^ Dickinson, Gladys, ed., Two Missions of de la Brosse, Scottish History Society (1942), 7-8,
19: Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol, 1 (1898), 691-694.
• ^ HMC, 11th report, part 6, Duke of Hamilton, (1897), 5.
• ^ Sanderson, Margaret HB., Cardinal of Scotland, John Donald, (1986), 166.
• ^ G.E. Cokayne; with Vicary Gibbs, H.A. Doubleday, Geoffrey H. White, Duncan Warrand and
Lord Howard de Walden, editors, The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain
and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant, new ed., 13 volumes in 14 (1910-1959; reprint
in 6 volumes, Gloucester, U.K.: Alan Sutton Publishing, 2000), volume I, page 222.

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