[1] From the age of 5 Hamilton was tutored by his father's domestic chaplain, William Howley, who was later to become Bishop of London, and Archbishop of Canterbury.
[5] Instead, he was put in (while underage) for Dungannon by Abercorn's political ally, Thomas Knox, 1st Viscount Northland, at a by-election in January 1807.
[3] At the 1807 general election, in May, Abercorn declined a compromise with Earl Conyngham to put Hamilton in at Donegal, and he was instead returned, still underage, for Liskeard, by his half-cousin Lord Eliot.
[3] On 25 November 1809, in London, he married Harriet Douglas, granddaughter of James Douglas, 14th Earl of Morton,[1] by whom he had three children: He evidently suffered from chronic illness, as his father described him as "long dying" in declining an offer from Lord Eliot to return him for Liskeard again in 1812, although he was a founding member of Grillion's that year.
His eldest son, James, would succeed his grandfather as Marquess of Abercorn four years later.