Anne Hamilton, 3rd Duchess of Hamilton

Scottish peeress

Anne Hamilton, 3rd Duchess of Hamilton (6 January 1632 – 17 October 1716) was a Scottish peeress. The daughter of James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Hamilton and 3rd Marquess of Hamilton, Scottish General and premier peer of the realm, and Lady Mary Feilding, daughter of William Feilding, 1st Earl of Denbigh, and his wife, the former Lady Susan Villiers, a sister of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham. She was born at the Palace of Whitehall in London, where her mother was a Lady of the Bedchamber to Henrietta Maria of France, wife of King Charles I. Her name is found as a shareholder in "A List of the Names of the Adventurers in the Bank of Scotland, February 4, 1697". Holding shares worth £8000 Scots, she was entitled to be elected as Governor.

Following the 1st Duke's execution for his part in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in 1649, his brother, William, Earl of Lanark, inherited the titles and lands. William died from wounds received at the Battle of Worcester in 1651, whilst leading his regiment into some of the thickest of the fighting. In his will made at The Hague in 1650, he stipulated that the Lady Anne was his heir, over and above his own children, (all daughters, his only son having died in childhood). Lady Anne became the Duchess of Hamilton, with the subsidiary titles Marchioness of Clydesdale, Countess of Arran, Lanark and Cambridge, the Lady Aven, Innerdale, Machanshire and Polmont. She succeeded to the dukedom of Hamilton thanks to a remainder that stipulated, the dukedom should devolve upon his brother and male heirs, and that the eldest daughter of the 1st Duke should succeed to the dukedom only if her uncle died leaving no sons. Through paternal descent, Anne had a claim to the throne of Scotland, although this was dependent upon the failure of the House of Stuart. She was descended from James II through the marriage of the 1st Lord Hamilton to James's daughter Mary. Her great great grandfather, the 2nd Earl of Arran, had been heir presumptive from the death of Regent Albany until the birth of James VI, and had served as regent of Scotland during the childhood and absence in France of Mary, Queen of Scots.

After her marriage, the Duchess and her husband set about laying the foundations for what would be, under later Dukes, the largest private residence in the western hemisphere, Hamilton Palace. This was constructed on the site of what was commonly called either the 'Palace' or 'The Orchard', a courtyard style building in the Low Parks of Hamilton. The Hamiltons had lived in the Low Parks, the more formal area of their estate in the Clyde valley, since the fourteenth century. In 1684 she commissioned the architect, James Smith to remodel the existing buildings, removing the southern part of the previous courtyard building on the site and increasing the scale of the edifice to form a U shaped mansion house. Today, the palace is no more, and the Low Parks now form part of Strathclyde Park, having been given to the nation in lieu of death duties upon the passing of the 14th Duke in 1973. Another of the Duchess's works was the building of a new school building to house the Grammar School of Hamilton (in 1848 renamed the Hamilton Academy) which had originally been endowed in 1588 by her great grandfather John Hamilton, 1st Marquess of Hamilton and sited near the churchyard adjoining Hamilton Palace. In 1714 the Duchess presented this new school building on the newly named Grammar School Square to the Town Council of Hamilton. The building remained in the school's use until 1848 when, as now the Hamilton Academy, the school relocated to a further purpose built building. Duchess Anne's building of 1714 was demolished in 1932; a plaque commemorating the site was subsequently erected by Hamilton Civic Society, the Hamilton family continuing as benefactors of the school (see article Hamilton Academy).