Historical and genealogical memoirs of the House of Hamilton

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THE DESCENT OF THE FAMILY. S3
elder brother,* without issue, he could not be the progenitor of the Ha- sir w alter
,11, , , • j , • • • p DE HAMILTON.
rontons, and seems to think that they may have derived their origin from =====
one of the younger sons of the second Earl, " as the similarity of arms,
and the concurring testimony of several genealogists, evince that they
came from that house." But of these three sons, Henry, Geoffrey, and
John, introduced by Archdall in his Peerage without authority or evi-
dence, neither Dugdale nor Nicholls make mention ; and Dugdale was
the most accurate of genealogical writers.
along with Walterus, Sanescallus Scotia?, Comes de Menteth, &c. to a confirmation-
charter, by Alexander the Third, of the church of Craigyn, to the monastery of
Paisley, of date 1272.
* That William predeceased his elder brother he makes appear evident, from the
great inheritance of the family going to the two sisters and their husbands, and from
a charter in Nicholls's History of Hinckley, of this tenor : —
" Petronilla, Comitissa Leicestrise, dedisse Deo et Sanctse Marise de Lira, 40 solidos
in molendinis meis de Bristolio — annuatim persolvendos ad faciendum anniversarium
Willielmi de Britolio, filii mei." — This charter serves also to show that the sirname
of William was not Hamilton, but Britolio.
In a communication from George Frederick Beltz, Esq. Lancaster Herald, Herald's
College, London, he states, that, in the pedigrees of the Bellomont family, preserved in
the records there, this William is termed " Leprosus ;" and that his brother and he
dying without issue, the arms of Bellomont were borne as a quartering by the de-
pendents of his sisters.
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