Sir George Hamilton, Comte d'Hamilton (died 1676) was an Irish soldier in English and French service as well as a courtier at Charles II's Whitehall.

He courted La belle Stuart and married Frances Jennings, the future Lady Tyrconnell, who was then a maid of honour of the Duchess of York.

He began his military career as an officer in the Life Guards but was dismissed in an anti-Catholic purge in 1667, upon which he took French service and commanded English gens d'armes and then an Irish regiment in the Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678).

[2] His father was Scottish, the fourth son of James Hamilton, 1st Earl of Abercorn, and would in 1660 be created Baronet of Donalong and Nenagh.

The Dunnalong (or Donalong) estate, south of Derry, was his father's share of the land granted to his grandfather Abercorn during the Plantation of Ulster.

[4] Viscount Thurles (courtesy title) predeceased his father, Walter Butler, 11th Earl of Ormond, and therefore never succeeded to the earldom.

These are his father's uncle Sir George Hamilton of Greenlaw and Roscrea and his wife Mary, sixth daughter of Walter Butler, 11th Earl of Ormond.

[16] Young George lived with his mother in Nenagh, deep in Confederate territory but being Catholic they were not troubled and anyway fighting was halted by a truce in 1643.

[18] Owen Roe O'Neill's Confederate Ulster Army took Roscrea Castle 30 kilometres (19 mi) east of Nenagh on 17 September 1646.

[22] In October 1650 Hamilton's father was governor of Nenagh for the Royalist Alliance when the Parliamentarian army under Henry Ireton and Daniel Abbot attacked and captured the castle on the way back from their failed siege of Limerick to their winter quarters at Kilkenny.

They then moved to Paris[25] where Charles II and his mother Henrietta Maria lived in exile at the Louvre and the Chateau-Neuf de Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

Hamilton accompanied James Livingston, 1st Earl of Newburgh, a royalist, who asked to speak to Sir John Reynolds, who held Mardyck for the parliament.

[31] On 14 June 1658 Charles' brother James, the Duke of York, led the royalists in the Battle of the Dunes and was defeated by Turenne.

[32] At the Restoration, Hamilton was accepted into the Life Guards that Charles II and the Duke of York established early in 1660 in preparation of their return to London.

George and Frances had six children,[51] but only four (all daughters) seem to be known by name: Elizabeth, the eldest, was born in England in 1667 and baptised on 21 March at St Margaret's, Westminster, in an Anglican ceremony.

Her descendance through her two sons went extinct in 1764, but her second daughter, called Catharine, married in 1705 James Hussey[61] and was by him mother of Edward Hussey-Montagu, 1st Earl Beaulieu.

[63] On 28 September 1667, in an increasingly anti-Catholic political climate, the King felt obliged to dismiss from his Life Guards the Catholics who refused to take the Oath of Supremacy, and among them, Hamilton.

[77][78] Some of the officers who served in this régiment d'Hamilton would earn fame: Patrick Sarsfield, Justin McCarty, George's younger brothers Anthony and Richard, his cousin Gustavus Hamilton,[79] and Thomas Dongan, who was appointed lieutenant-colonel.

In the first year of the war, which the Dutch call the rampjaar (disaster-year), Hamilton's regiment was first employed to garrison Liège[81] but joined Louis's main army after the crossing of the Rhine in June.

[83] After the Dutch had flooded the land to the north, most of the French troops retreated, but Hamilton's regiment stayed behind with the small army of occupation under Marshal Luxembourg, being stationed at Zutphen in Gelderland to the east of Utrecht.

However, from there on to the Treaties of Nijmegen, which ended the Franco-Dutch war, the English Parliament pushed for measures to forbid the King's subjects to fight in French service.

George returned to France from England, whereas Anthony and Richard continued to Ireland to recruit as the battles of Sinsheim and Entzheim had left gaps in the ranks.

[97] Anthony's and Richard's voyage to Ireland caused them to miss Turenne's winter campaign 1674–1675, during which the French marched south and surprised the Germans by attacking them in Upper Alsace.

[100][101][102] The French retreated, pursued by the imperial army under Raimondo Montecuccoli, resulting in rearguard actions known as the Battle of Altenheim where Hamilton and his Irish excelled.

[110] French sources generally call Hamilton not chevalier [knight] but comte [count][94][105][90] and once even marquis [marquess].

[90] This might simply reflect the belief held by the French that he was a nobleman in England, Scotland, or Ireland, or shear cautious politeness from their part.

[58][113] Ó Ciardha (2009) says he was made a count in February 1676, ennobled by Louis XIV,[108][103] This might simply echo the French use, taking for truth what is maybe a mistake or politeness.