Lord Basil Hamilton

Upon his marriage to Mary Dunbar, he presided over the Baldoon estate, south west of Wigtown, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, south of the River Bladnoch.^[2]

On 27 August 1701, while traveling with his brother and some friends, they found the Minnick Water at Larg in Galloway in high flood. Lord Basil's servant "entered the water to try the ford, and was carried away by the torrent, and Lord Basil, in attempting to save him, was drowned."^[1]

Hamilton was married to Mary Dunbar, a daughter of David Dunbar the Younger of Baldoon and, his second wife Lady Eleanora Montgomerie (fourth daughter of Hugh Montgomerie, 7th Earl of Eglinton). David's first wife was Janet Dalrymple (a daughter of James Dalrymple, 1st Viscount of Stair), who is well known as "the heroine of Sir Walter Scott's story of The Bride of Lammermoor. Mary was the granddaughter and heiress of Sir David Dunbar, 1st Baronet, of Baldoon.^[3] Together, they were the parents of four children:^[1]

• Catherine Hamilton (c. 1692–1779), who married Thomas Cochrane, 6th Earl of Dundonald^[1]
• Eleanor Hamilton (c. 1694–1783), who married John Murray of Philiphaugh^[1]
• William Hamilton (? – c. 1703), who died unmarried^[1]
• Basil Hamilton (1696–1742), who married Isabella Mackenzie, granddaughter of Kenneth Mackenzie of Suddie^[1]

After Lord Basil's death on 27 August 1701, he was succeeded in his estates by his eldest son William. As William died unmarried before November 1703, the Baldoon estate passed to his second son, Basil, who was returned as MP for Kirkcudbright in 1741.

Lady Mary Hamilton was one of the Jacobites required to forfeit estates in 1715. She died at Edinburgh at age eighty-six in 1760 and was buried at Holyrood on 22 May 1760.^[1]

Through his second son Basil, he was posthumously a grandfather of Dunbar Hamilton, who inherited the earldom of Selkirk in 1744.^[1]