in September 1643. Hamilton's uncle Ormond had been appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in November 1643, and employed Anthony's father at various administrative and military tasks. However, in September 1646 Rinuccini, the papal nuncio, overthrew the Confederate Supreme Council in a coup d'état with help of Owen Roe O'Neill's Confederate Ulster Army. O'Neill led his army south to Kilkenny, the Confederate capital, where he arrived the 16th. Rinuccini then took power appointing a new Supreme Council the 26th. In the meantime, on the 17th, Ulster troops sacked Roscrea. The ulstermen had a reputation for living off the inhabitants, even friendly ones. Carte (1736) reports that "Sir G. Hamilton's lady, sister to the marquis of Ormond" was spared at Roscrea. However, it is more likely that infant Anthony, his mother, and elder siblings were safely at Nenagh and that the Lady Hamilton at Roscrea was his grandaunt, the wife of George Hamilton of Greenlaw and Roscrea, not his mother. In 1649, during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, Hamilton's father was colonel of an infantry regiment and governor of Nenagh. He defended Nenagh Castle in November 1650 when it was attacked and captured by Ireton's Parliamentarian army on the way back from their unsuccessful siege of Limerick to their winter quarters at Kilkenny. First French exile In spring 1651, when Anthony was about seven, his father, accompanied by his wife and children, followed his brother-in-law, Ormond, from Ireland into French exile. They first went to Caen, Normandy, where they were accommodated for some time by Anthony's aunt Elizabeth Preston, the Marchioness of Ormond. His father and his elder brothers, James and George, were soon employed by Charles II in various functions. His mother then moved to Paris where she found shelter in the convent of the Feuillantines, together with her sister Eleanor Butler, Lady Muskerry. Anthony's sister Elizabeth was sent to the boarding school of the convent of Port-Royal-des-Champs, near Versailles together with Lady Muskerry's daughter Helen. It may be that Anthony was left behind in Caen to be taught together with his Ormond cousins Thomas Butler, 6th Earl of Ossory and Richard Butler, 1st Earl of Arran. Restoration court Hamilton and his family returned to London in 1660 with the advent of the English Restoration. His father was created Baronet of Donalong and Nenagh in 1660 by Charles II, but Charles refused to go further than that because the family was