Frederick was born about 1590 in Scotland, probably at Paisley. He was the fifth of the six children that lived to adulthood, and the youngest son, of Claud Hamilton and his wife Margaret Seton. His father was from the House of Hamilton. He the 1st Lord Paisley and a younger brother of John Hamilton, 1st Marquess of Hamilton, he was the founder of the Abercorn branch of that house. Frederick's mother was a daughter of George Seton, 7th Lord Seton by his wife Isobel Hamilton. Both parents were Scottish and seem also to have been both Catholic. They married in 1574. He was one of at least six siblings: He also had sisters among which:
He and his brothers James, Claud, and George were involved in James VI and I's Plantations of Ireland. In March 1620, he was given the quarter of Carrowrosse in the Barony of Dromahair in northern County Leitrim. Leitrim is in the Province of Connaught but northern Leitrim lies along the border with Ulster. Over the next two decades he increased his estate to 18,000 acres. All that land had been seized from the O'Rourke clan in the Plantation of Leitrim.
Marriage and children
On 20 May 1620 he married Sidney Vaughan. She was a rich heiress, the only child of Sir John Vaughan, Governor of Londonderry. The marriage produced four children:
In November 1631, he entered Swedish service. He must by that time have converted to Protestantism as a Catholic would not have been acceptable to the Swedes. He became colonel of a Scottish-Irish regiment that served in Germany for 15 months during the Thirty Years' War. They fought in General Tott's army on the Elbe, the Weser and the Rhine. After spending a few years back in Leitrim, he unsuccessfully attempted to re-enter Swedish service in September 1637.
Ireland
In 1634 he started building Manorhamilton Castle in northern Leitrim, around which grew the town of Manorhamilton. Sir Frederick was involved in a lengthy legal dispute over the ownership of parcels of land in the County of Leitrim with Tirlagh Reynolds of Kiltubbrid. On 15 November 1633 an injunction was granted to give Tirlagh possession, but it was dissolved. In 13 June 1634 a second injunction in favour of Tirlagh was granted. A Chancery order of 19 December 1634 dissolved that second injunction. On 5 December 1640, the committee for Irish affairs of the Long Parliament heard four petitions from Sir Frederick in this respect. The Down Survey shows Tirlagh Reynolds as owner of several parcels in southern Leitrim in 1641. During the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Manorhamilton Castle was besieged several times, but remained intact. In the ensuing Irish Confederate Wars he fought for the Scottish Covenanters trying to keep the Confederates out of the north of Ireland. In 1643, after another unsuccessful attack upon the castle, he hanged 58 of his enemies from a scaffolding in front of the castle. On 1 July 1642, in retribution for cattle raids by the O'Rourke clan, he sacked the nearby town of Sligo, burning part of it, including Sligo Abbey, a Dominican friary. Local legend tells that on the way over the mountains back to Manorhamilton Castle, some of his men got lost in heavy fog. A guide on a white horse offered to lead them safely over the mountain, but intentionally led the men over a cliff and to their doom. This legend is the subject of a short story by Yeats, entitled The Curse of the Fires and of the Shadows.
Scotland
The "Cessation" ceasefire of September 1643, negotiated by the Marquess of Ormond, was not recognised by the Covenanters, with which he was allied. The war in Leitrim and Ulster therefore went on. However, after 1643 he left Ireland for Scotland where he became a colonel of a regiment of horse in the army of the Solemn League and Covenant fighting in Scotland and Northern England, while still retaining his foot regiment in western Ulster where his sons Frederick and James probably represented him. However, his son Frederick was killed and on 5 June 1646 the Covenanter army under Robert Monro lost the Battle of Benburb against the Confederates under Owen Roe O'Neill, after which they retreated to Carrickfergus, abandoning Leitrim and southern Ulster to the Confederates.
Death, succession, and timeline
In 1647, Sir Frederick, aged 57, left the then disbanding Scottish army and retired to Edinburgh, where he died later that year in relative poverty. He had received very little compensation for his military efforts from the English parliament. He was succeeded by his son James, who had two daughters with which Manorhamilton passed out of the family. In 1652 Manorhamilton Castle was burned by Ulick Burke, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde, who had taken over as leader of the royalists from Ormond. The castle then fell into ruins.
