Anthony Hamilton, the celebrated author of the Grammont Memoirs, much cannot now be with certainty known.

[For uniformity’s sake the writer of this sketch has followed the
Memoirs in the spelling of this name; but he thinks it necessary to
observe that it should be Gramont, not Grammont.]

The accounts prefixed to the different editions of his works, down to the year 1805, are very imperfect; in that year a new, and, in general, far better edition than any of the preceding ones, was published in Paris, to which a sketch of his life was also added; but it contains rather just criticisms on his works, than any very novel or satisfactory anecdote concerning himself.  It is not pretended here to gratify literary curiosity as fully as it ought to be, with regard to this singular and very ingenious man; some effort, however, may be made to communicate a few more particulars relative to him, than the public has hitherto, perhaps, been acquainted with.

Anthony Hamilton was of the noble family of that name:  Sir George Hamilton, his father, was a younger son of James, Earl of Abercorn, a native of Scotland.  His mother was daughter of Lord Thurles, and sister to James, the first Duke of Ormond; his family and connections therefore, on the maternal side, were entirely Irish.  He was, as well as his brothers and sisters, born in Ireland, it is generally said, about the year 1646; but there is some reason to imagine that it was three or four years earlier.  The place of his birth, according to the best family accounts, was Roscrea, in the county of Tipperary, the usual residence of his father when not engaged by military or public business.

[In September, 1646, Owen O’Neale took Roscrea, and, as Carte says, “put man, woman, and child to the sword, except Sir George Hamilton’s lady, sister to the Marquis of Ormond, and some few gentlewomen whom he kept prisoners.”  No family suffered more in those disastrous times than the house of Ormond.  Lady Hamilton died in August, 1680, as appears from an interesting and affecting letter of her brother, the Duke of Ormond, dated Carrick, August 25th.  He had lost his noble son, Lord Ossory, not three weeks before.]

It has been always said, that the family migrated to France when Anthony was an infant; but this is not the fact:  “Sir George Hamilton,” says Carte, “would have accompanied his brother-in-law, the Marquis of Ormond, to France, in December, 1650:  but, as he was receiver-general in Ireland, he stayed to pass his accounts, which he did to the satisfaction of all parties, notwithstanding much clamour had been raised against him.”  When that business was settled, he, in the spring of 1651, took Lady Hamilton and all his family to France, and resided with Lord and Lady Ormond, near Caen, in Normandy,

   [Hence possibly Voltaire’s mistake in stating that Hamilton was born
   at Caen, in his Catalogue des Ecrivains du Siecle de Louis XIV.]