| Honorific-Prefix: | His Grace |
| The Duke of Abercorn | |
| Honorific-Suffix: | KG KP PC |
| Order1: | Lord Lieutenant of Ireland |
| Term Start1: | 13 July 1866 |
| Term End1: | 1 December 1868 |
| Monarch1: | Victoria |
| Primeminister1: | The Earl of Derby Benjamin Disraeli |
| Predecessor1: | The Lord Wodehouse |
| Successor1: | The Earl Spencer |
| Term Start2: | 2 March 1874 |
| Term End2: | 11 December 1876 |
| Monarch2: | Victoria |
| Primeminister2: | Benjamin Disraeli |
| Predecessor2: | The Earl Spencer |
| Successor2: | The Duke of Marlborough |
| Birth Date: | 1811 1, df=yes |
| Birth Place: | Mayfair, Westminster, Middlesex, England |
| Death Place: | Baronscourt, Tyrone, United Kingdom |
| Nationality: | British |
| Party: | Conservative |
| Alma Mater: | Christ Church, Oxford |
James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Abercorn, (21 January 1811 – 31 October 1885), styled Viscount Hamilton from 1814 to 1818 and The Marquess of Abercorn from 1818 to 1868, was a British Conservative statesman who twice served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
Born into an Ulster-Scots aristocratic family at Seymour Place, Mayfair, on 21 January 1811, Abercorn was the son of James, Viscount Hamilton, himself the eldest son of The 1st Marquess of Abercorn. His mother, Harriet, was the second daughter of The Hon. John Douglas, himself the son of The 14th Earl of Morton. His father died when Abercorn was only three. In 1818, aged seven, he succeeded his grandfather in his titles and estates.[1] He was educated at Harrow School and Christ Church, Oxford, where he matriculated on 2 July 1829.
Lord Abercorn was first appointed a deputy lieutenant of County Tyrone, where he had a family seat at Baronscourt. On 13 November 1844, Lord Abercorn was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Donegal. The next month, on 12 December 1844, he was made a Knight of the Garter at the relatively young age of 33.
Abercorn was appointed Groom of the Stole to Prince Albert on 8 February 1846, and shortly thereafter, on 25 February 1846, was made a Privy Counsellor. He served as Groom of the Stole until June 1859, and remained a prominent figure in the royal court for the next two decades. He received two honorary degrees during this period, becoming an LL.D. of Cambridge on 5 July 1847, a DCL of Oxford on 4 June 1856. From 11 April 1855 to 22 September 1860, he was honorary colonel of the Donegal Militia, and on 18 February 1860, was commissioned a captain in the newly raised London Scottish Rifle Volunteers.
On 6 July 1866, he was appointed Viceroy of Ireland, under the third ministry of Lord Derby. He retained the post after Derby resigned in February 1868 and Benjamin Disraeli took the reins of the ministry. On 10 August 1868, he was created Marquess of Hamilton and Duke of Abercorn in the Peerage of Ireland. Around this time, he received his third honorary degree, an LL.D. from Trinity College, Dublin. After Gladstone and the Liberals won the 1868 general election, Abercorn resigned the Lord-Lieutenancy on 14 December.
After the formation of the second Disraeli ministry, Abercorn was again appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland on 2 March 1874, and was also chosen Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Ireland, a post he held until his death.[2] He resigned the Lord-Lieutenancy again on 6 December 1876, partly on account of his wife's ill health.
Abercorn was Envoy-Extraordinary for the investiture of King Umberto I of Italy with the Order of the Garter on 2 March 1878. He was elected Chancellor of the University of Ireland in 1881, and died four years later at his home of Baronscourt, County Tyrone on 31 October 1885. He is buried in the cemetery at Baronscourt Parish Church, the traditional burial place of the Dukes of Abercorn and their families.[3]
Abercorn married Lady Louisa, second daughter of John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford, in 1832.[1] They had fourteen children, thirteen of whom survived infancy, among them seven daughters, all of whom were ordered to marry into the peerage and no one beneath the rank of an earl:[4]
Abercorn died in October 1885, aged 74, and was succeeded by his eldest son, James. The Duchess of Abercorn died in March 1905, aged 92.
. George Cokayne . Gibbs . Vicary . Vicary Gibbs (St Albans MP) . The complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant . I, Ab-Adam to Basing . St. Catherine Press . London . 1910 .
. James William Edmund Doyle . The Official Baronage of England, v. 1 . London . Longmans, Green . 1886 .
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