Author: Hamilton, William Gerard
Biography:
HAMILTON, William Gerard (1728-96: findmypast.com)
It was an authorial convention of the time to declare that poetry was a form of recreation for the author, and in Hamilton's case it seems to have been true. He published Four Odes in 1750, a short prose tale The Death of the Thrush in 1780, and A Slight View, modelled on Thomas Gray's (q.v.) Eton College Ode, also in or about 1780--and that is the sum of his literary production. There is some confusion in reference sources about his date of birth but it cannot have been 1729. He was baptised in London on 25 Feb. 1728, the son of Scottish parents, Helen (Hay) and William Hamilton; his father was a barrister of Lincoln's Inn. From Harrow he went to Oriel College, Oxford (matric. 1744-5), and to Lincoln's Inn, but after the death of his father in 1754 he chose to go into politics rather than law, and was an elected MP continuously for over forty years until his death in 1796. He never married. Noted for a fine maiden speech in 1755, he was not conspicuous in the House afterwards, but he held a number of important or lucrative government positions: member of the Board of Trade, Chief Secretary to two successive Viceroys of Ireland, and Chancellor of the Exchequer (at the time a sinecure) until persuaded to exchange it for a pension. He moved in literary as well as political circles: he was suspected by some of having been "Junius." Samuel Johnson was a friend. He died at his home in Upper Brook Street, London, on 16 Jul. 1796 and was buried in the crypt of St. Martin-in-the-Fields on 22 Jul. (ODNB 20 Jan. 2022; ancestry.com 20 Jan. 2022; Alumni Oxonienses) HJ