John Hamilton, 2nd Lord Belhaven and Stenton

Who was John Hamilton, 2nd Lord Belhaven and Stenton?

John Hamilton, 2nd Lord Belhaven and Stenton was a Scottish politician.

He was the eldest son of Robert Hamilton, Lord Presmennan. Having married Margaret, granddaughter of John Hamilton, 1st Lord Belhaven and Stenton; who had been made a peer by Charles I in 1647, he succeeded to this title in 1679.

In 1681, he was imprisoned for opposing the government and for speaking slightingly of James, duke of York, afterwards James VII and II, in parliament, and in 1689 he was among those who asked William of Orange to undertake the government of Scotland. Belhaven was at the Battle of Killiecrankie in 1689. He was a member of the Scottish privy council.

He was a director of and invested heavily in the Scottish Trading Company, which was formed in 1695 and was responsible for the ill-fated Darien scheme to set up a Scots colony on the Darien peninsula in Panama.

He was also a proponent of agricultural improvement publishing a handbook, The Countryman's Rudiments in 1699.