Archibald Hamilton Rowan

Archibald Hamilton Rowan (1 May 1751 – 1 November 1834), christened Archibald Hamilton (sometimes referred to as Archibald Rowan Hamilton), was a founding member of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen, a political exile in France and the United States and, following his return to Ireland in 1806, a celebrated champion of democratic reform. Early life Archibald Hamilton Rowan was the son of Gawen Hamilton (1729–1805) of Killyleagh Castle, County Down, in the Kingdom of Ireland, and Jane Rowan Hamilton. He was born in the home of his lawyer grandfather, William Rowan KC, in London, and lived there with his mother and sister for much of his early life. The elder Rowan collected works by republicans of the Cromwellian era such as John Milton, James Harrington, Edmund Ludlow and Algernon Sydney, and by the Irish rationalist philosopher and freethinker, John Toland. These his grandson was to retain in his own extensive library. When his grandfather died in 1767, he inherited a large sum of money under the stipulations that he would change his name to the maternal surname Rowan, receive an Oxbridge education, and not visit Ireland before his 25th birthday. He was admitted to Westminster School and Queens' College, Cambridge in 1768, but was expelled from the college and rusticated for an attempt to throw a tutor into the River Cam. He was sent for a period in 1769 to Warrington Academy, "the cradle of Unitarianism", though he absented himself from the care of John Seddon of Warrington. Upon his return he obeyed his grandfather's wishes by staying out of Ireland and returning to Jesus College. Hamilton Rowan travelled throughout the 1770s and 1780s, visiting parts of Europe, the Americas, and Northern Africa. During his travels, he witnessed early signs of revolutionary sentiment in America that may have planted the seeds of revolutionary inclinations that would flower later in his life. While serving as private secretary to Lord Charles Montague, the governor of South Carolina, he witnessed the South Carolina legislature's vote to repaint the railings around the statue of Pitt the Elder, an affront to the ministry of Lord North under which Montague served. Montague dissolved the legislature, only to see all the members re-elected.