Feature: The Duke of Hamilton pub, Hampstead - It might not have a future, but it's got a past

Published: 05 August 2010
by DAN CARRIER

IT was a violent double murder that rocked Stuart society, with two peers killing each other over a long-running inheritance feud – and the infamy of one of the families involved gave a Hampstead landmark its name. 

The Duke of Hamilton pub has been at its New End site for 300 years. Its owners, investment group Criterion Asset Management, recently applied for permission to turn the local into two houses. 

While the application was withdrawn, the publican is still due to leave in September and regulars are waiting for another set of plans to be lodged at the Town Hall. 

If the pub does close and the name is lost, a reminder of a scandal that rocked London when the pub served its first ale will disappear.

When The Duke opened its doors in the mid-1710s, James, the fourth Duke of Hamilton, had been Scotland’s leading peer. His involvement in a murderous duel just a few years earlier confirmed the Duke as a Stuart celebrity. While some believe the pub was named after his ancestor James – who fought for the crown in the English Civil War – the bloody dawn clash that took place in Hyde Park meant the pub’s aristocratic moniker was on the lips of most Londoners when it opened for business.

The story of the Duke of Hamilton, and his demise at the hand of Charles, Lord Mohun, was a sensation. 

Its roots lay in a long-running legal feud between the pair over a huge inheritance. Both had married into the family of the Earl of Macclesfield, an elderly and rich aristocrat who had no direct heirs. 

Macclesfield left the bulk of his wealth to Mohun, but this was disputed by the Hamilton branch of the family. 

Both men needed the income to maintain their appearances. Hamilton was bankrupt, a state disastrous for his standing. Lord Mohun was similarily broke, and the pair issued a series of claims and counter claims over two decades. 

Legal archives show the issue came to a head during a conference which they attended in 1711. Hamilton was accused by Mohun of casting doubt on the reliability of his witnesses. 

Strong words were exchanged, and both men felt their honour had been besmirched. It set the stage for a deadly outcome. 

Duelling was illegal. For the Duke – a leading Jacobite peer, influential in France and England – the idea should have been absurd. As well as the legal ramifications, he was 20 years older than his challenger, and suffered from gout. 

But the strictures of the time pronounced that if Hamilton was challenged he would fight. On a cold November morning in 1711, as the dawn mists hung over Hyde Park, Hamilton and Mohun met with drawn swords.

The peers did not indulge in fancy fencing. 

According to eyewitnesses, the Duke stormed at Mohun before he could raise his sword: his blade bit deeply into Mohun’s left side. Despite his injuries, Mohun fought back, cutting the Duke in his calf and then his arm. Another stab went eight inches into the Duke’s body, but still the fight was not finished. Mohun took another wound in his groin: he stumbled, turned to his foe and said: “I am killed.” 

With that, he fell. 

The Duke was in no better shape, and was found slumped against a tree where he bled to death. The aftermath was spectacular, and the period’s “Penny Dreadful” newspapers ran accounts of the killings just hours after it had finished. 

It set tongues wagging and printing presses to work – and gave publicans, with new establishments to be named, the chance to honour the memory of a leading political figure whose death had captured a society’s imagination.