The following year he was a member of the Scottish army in England that attempted to rescue King Charles I, and fought at the Battle of Preston.

On his death in 1679 the baronetcy became extinct while he was succeeded in the lordship according to the new patent by John Hamilton of Pressmannan, the second Lord.

[1] His eldest son John Hamilton succeeded to his father's title, becoming 4th Baron Belhaven and Stenton, and died unmarried on 28 August 1764.

[1] His next brother Andrew having died unmarried in 1736, the title was inherited by the 3rd son James Hamilton, who became 5th Baron of Belhaven and Stenton.

[1] On James's death in 1777, the line of the second Lord failed since Robert Hamilton, the youngest of the 3rd Baron's sons, had died in 1743.

In 1831 he was created Baron Hamilton of Wishaw, in the County of Lanark, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, which gave him an automatic seat in the House of Lords.

He had seven daughters but no sons and on his death the title was claimed by his kinsman Alexander Charles Hamilton, the tenth Lord.

He was an officer in the Indian Army and also sat in the House of Lords as a Scottish Representative Peer between 1922 and 1945.

The heraldic blazon for the coat of arms of the lordship is: Quarterly: 1st and 4th, gules, a mullet argent between three cinquefoils ermine (for Hamilton of Udston); 2nd and 3rd, gules, a man's heart proper shadowed or between three cinquefoils ermine (for Hamilton of Raploch); all within a bordure argent.