His father supported the Marquess of Ormond in the Irish Confederate War and the Cromwellian conquest[5] and was a would-be baronet.
[8] Viscount Thurles (courtesy title) predeceased his father, Walter Butler, 11th Earl of Ormond, and therefore never succeeded to the earldom.
[11][5] His place of birth and the date of his parents marriage are affected by errors caused by confusing his father with his granduncle, George Hamilton of Greenlaw and Roscrea.
Lady Ormond with her children left for England in August 1652,[19] whereas Richard's mother moved to Paris, where she lived in the Convent of the Feuillantines [fr].
[23] About that year Charles allegedly created Hamilton's father baronet of Donalong and Nenagh,[c] but the king, if he really went that far, refused to go further because the family was Catholic.
[26][27][28] Early in 1661 Richard's father also brought his wife and younger children to London,[29] where they lived for some time all together in a house near Whitehall.
[30] Wanting to be a soldier and unable to take the oath of supremacy, obligatory in the English army, Richard followed the example of his elder brothers George and Anthony and went into French service.
[35] Richard's voyage caused him to miss Turenne's winter campaign in which the French marched south and surprised the Germans in upper Alsace, beating them at Turckheim in January 1675.
[51][52][53][54] In the War of the Reunions (1683–1684), Richard commanded the Altmünster sector in the Siege of Luxembourg in 1684 under Maréchal de Créquy.
[55] In March 1685 Hamilton was obliged to leave France after a bitter disagreement with Louvois, the minister of war, over the state of his regiment and a brawl with the Marquis d'Alincourt [fr] over the Princess de Conti, Louis XIV's recently widowed daughter.
[57] Hamilton left France and went to England, where James II on 20 June 1685 made him a colonel of a regiment of dragoons of the Irish Army.
[58] He was promoted brigadier in April 1686, making him the third most senior officer of the Irish Army after Tyrconnell and Justin McCarthy, Viscount Mountcashel.
[60] He went to England with the Irish troops that Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, viceroy (Lord Lieutenant) of Ireland, sent to help James when the king's position became precarious in the build-up to the Glorious Revolution and was promoted to major-general on 12 November 1688.
[63] William, the Prince of Orange, wanted to bring Ireland around to his side by proposing favourable terms to Tyrconnell.
[14] Hamilton routed Sir Arthur Rawdon's Protestant Army of the North in the battle called the Break of Dromore on 14 March 1689 in County Down and then moved northwards into County Antrim where he raided Antrim Castle and took Viscount Massereene's silverware and furniture worth £3000.
[67] In the meantime James II had landed in Ireland (on 12 March) and had sent Lieutenant-General Rosen, the French commander-in-chief, up north with an army.
Lundy, the governor of Derry for William, tried to defend the so-called fords along the River Finn south of the city.
At the Battle of the Boyne, in July 1690, Hamilton commanded the centre of the Irish army, defending the ford at Oldbridge.
In 1692 he served as lieutenant-general under Marshal Bellefonds in the forces that assembled at Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue and should have been carried over the Channel by the French Fleet to land on the Isle of Portland and march on London from there.
However, that fleet was intercepted by the English and Dutch and defeated in several actions at Barfleur and La Hougue in May, after which the invasion had to be cancelled.
In March 1708, during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), Hamilton was involved in an attempt to invade Scotland led by James III.
They sailed from Dunkirk up to the Firth of Forth intending to land near Edinburgh, but a stronger British fleet under Admiral George Byng caught up with them.
They had to abandon the landing, but Forbin outmaneuvered the British, escaped northwards, and brought the invasion force safely back to Dunkirk by sailing around Scotland and Ireland.
In 1713, Hamilton was implicated in a scandal in which he had plotted to usurp Lord Middleton's position as James's secretary of state.