James Hamilton, 1st Viscount Claneboye

James Hamilton, 1st Viscount Claneboye (24 January 1644) His father Hans was the first Protestant minister of Dunlop in East Ayrshire, Scotland.

He was probably the James Hamilton who studied at the University of St Andrews and received a BA in 1584 and an MA in 1585. He employed fellow Scot James Fullerton as usher. Young Ussher followed them to Trinity.

He eventually carried the official news of Elizabeth's death to Scotland. O'Neill's wife made a deal with Scots aristocrat Hugh Montgomery to give him half of O'Neill's lands if Montgomery could get a royal pardon for O'Neill. Montgomery obtained the pardon but in August 1604 Hamilton discovered the plan for the land. James Fullerton, now Sir James and an advisor to King James, convinced the king that the lands were too large to be split in two and should be divided into three, with one-third going to his associate Hamilton; the king agreed. four years before the Plantation of Ulster in 1610. The settlement was a success and Hamilton was knighted by the king at Royston on 14 November 1609.

Hamilton was elected a member of parliament for County Down in 1613. He was also a privy councillor.

In 1641, when in his eighties, he returned to his Scottish home town of Dunlop and built a mausoleum for his parents in the churchyard where his father had been minister. He erected a school attached to the mausoleum which he named Clandeboye School. Both buildings still stand.

In the Irish Rebellion of 1641, the native Irish population rose against English settlers, and later also Scottish settlers, and killed thousands of them. The regiments raised by Hamilton and Hugh Montgomery's son, Hugh Montgomery, 2nd Viscount Montgomery, saved their areas of County Down from the degree of damage done in other parts of Ulster.