Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Hamilton, James
HAMILTON, JAMES, second Duke of Abercorn (1838–1913), the eldest son of James Hamilton, first Duke [q.v.], by his wife, Lady Louisa Jane Russell, second daughter of John, sixth Duke of Bedford, was born at Brighton 24 August 1838, and educated at Harrow and at Christ Church, Oxford. In 1860 as Marquess of Hamilton he became member, in the conservative interest, for county Donegal, where the family estates mainly lay, though the seat was at Baronscourt in county Tyrone. The tradition of the family was strongly tory despite their connexion with the house of Russell. Five of the brothers sat in parliament, but, unlike the others, the Marquess of Hamilton took no active part in debates and held no ministerial position. He accompanied the Prince of Wales to Russia in 1866; was lord of the bedchamber to the Prince of Wales, from 1866 to 1886 and in 1886 became groom of the stole. In the general election of 1880, at the beginning of the Land League campaign, he lost his seat for county Donegal. In 1885 his father's death raised him to the dukedom.
The new duke, though no speaker, became the official figurehead of the Irish landlord class throughout the later phases of the land war. In 1888 he was president of the Irish landlords' convention and in 1892 the outgoing unionist ministry gave him the Garter. In 1893 he presided over a great meeting held at the Albert Hall to rally opposition to the second Home Rule Bill. The affairs of his own district interested him greatly, and when the Irish Local Government Act was passed (1898) he was elected to the Tyrone county council and became its chairman by general consent. Land purchase, though a unionist measure, had not his approval, but when the Wyndham Act was passed (1903) he was one of the first to sell to his tenants. The land war being thus abated, he continued the resistance to Irish self-government and became first president of the Ulster Unionist Association. Failing health kept him out of the active struggle; but he made a last public appearance in 1912 at the Londonderry meeting in Sir Edward Carson's campaign, and he was acclaimed as author of Ulster's formula ‘We will not have Home Rule’. But he could not leave his bed that September to sign the Ulster covenant publicly, and on 3 January 1913 he died at 61 Green Street, Mayfair. His eldest son, James, Marquess of Hamilton, member for Derry city since 1900, succeeded him; and at the by-election thus caused the representation of Derry ceased to be unionist. The last Hamilton stronghold had fallen.
Essentially a great Irish territorial magnate who throughout his life fought a losing battle to preserve territorial power, the Duke was chiefly concerned with his home life at Baronscourt. Apart from Ireland his main interest lay in the British South Africa Company, of which he became president when Cecil Rhodes resigned after the Jameson raid.
The duke married in 1869 Lady Mary Anne Curzon, daughter of Richard William Penn, first Earl Howe, and had by her seven sons and two daughters.
[Lord Ernest Hamilton, Old Days and New, 1923; Lord Frederic Hamilton, The Days before Yesterday, 1920.]