Life
1777-1859; b. Martin-in-the Fields, London; son of Rev. Anthony Hamilton (1739-1812) cousin of William Gerard Hamilton (d.1796); ed. Harrow and lamed for life in an accident there; grad. St. John’s College, Cambridge, served as sec. to Lord Elgin and prevented France from carrying off the Rosetta Stone; superintended the transport of Elgin marbles to London [ultimately to the British Museum]; appt. minister of Foreign Affairs, 1809-22; minister to Naples, 1822-25; obtained restoration of art works taken from Italy by France, 1815; trustee of the British Museum, 1838-58; his Aegytpiaca (1809) contains first translations of Rosetta Stone; though similar in name, there is apparently no family connection with William Rowan Hamilton, the Irish astronomer William Rowan Hamilton [q.v.]. ODNB
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Commentary
W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP 1976; rep. 1984), cites Sir William Hamilton, Collection of Engravings from Ancient Vases, continued by Adam Buck (1811), found useful by Sir John Beazley in his standard work on Attic red-figure pottery.
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References
Dictionary of National Biography, also cites cites William John Hamilton (1805-1867), and a geologist and Tory MP; b. Lanarkshire, son of William Richard Hamilton (1777-1859) [i.e., supra]; ed. Charterhouse and Gottingen; sec. and then president of the Geological Soc. between 1835 and 1865; MP Newport; tours of the Levant described in Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus, and Armenia (1842); Pres. Royal Geographical Soc., 1837, 1841, 1842, 1847; excursions in France and Belgium; wrote on rocks of Tuscany and geology of the Mayence basin and Hesse-Cassel.
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