Hatton Compton

[5] Sources differ on Hatton's date of birth: Dalton says 1661,[6] Edwards that he was the eldest son of a father who died in 1661;[5] Adam Williamson that he was "in his ninetieth year" in 1741, giving a birth year of 1651–2;[7] Arthur Collins that he died "aged upwards of 80";[8] an 1887 marriage licence index gives his age as 35 on 17 May 1698.

[10] In honour of his late father's loyalty to Charles II during the Interregnum, Hatton Compton was recommended as Knight of the Royal Oak.

[5] On 18 January 1686 Compton and William Seymour were injured fighting a duel arranged after Seymour's great-uncle Henry had rejected a challenge from Compton's cousin the 4th Earl of Northampton, triggered by Henry's foiling of Northampton's wooing of his stepdaughter, the dowager Countess of Conway.

[22] Adam Williamson, Compton's subordinate at the Tower of London from 1722, wrote after his death that "He had lived the last two years in a sort of Stupidity, and allwais in a Most close and avaritious Manner".

[28] For this he was cursed in the Jacobite ballad "The Belgick Boar",[29] but made a Groom of the Bedchamber by William from 6 July 1689 until the king's death in 1702.

On 21 September 1715 Compton wrote to the Privy Council that "there is no Horse belonging to the Tower Hamlets, but two very strong Regiments of Foot; and [they] are ready to march when his Majesty pleases" and that he had ordered "the searching for, and seizing of Papists, Jacobites, and Non-Jurors".

[41] Edward Harley, the auditor of the imprests and brother of the earl, said of Compton "the Character of this man is so very mean that the best that can be said of him is, he is very fully qualified for a jailer".