Patrick Hamilton

Patrick Hamilton 1504?-1528, Scottish Protestant martyr. While at St. Andrews, he was suspected of Lutheran sympathies. He fled (1527) to Germany, where, during his short stay, he met Luther and Melanchthon. In Germany he wrote Loci communes, known as Patrick's Places, embodying the doctrines of the Reformation. When Hamilton returned in 1527 to Scotland, he was charged with heresy, sentenced by Archbishop Beaton, and burned at the stake in 1528.

Bibliography: See biographies by P. Lorimer (in Precursors of John Knox, 1857), T. P. Johnston (1882), and A. Cameron (1929).

Hamilton, Patrick (c.1504–28), Scottish Protestant proto-martyr. He was attracted to M. Luther's writings and visited Wittenberg and Marburg. On his return to Scotland he converted A. Alesius, who had been deputed to convince him of his errors. He was charged with heresy and burnt.

Hamilton, (Anthony Walter) Patrick (1904–62), wrote several successful plays, including Rope (1929) and Gas Light (1939), both thrillers. His novels include a trilogy (The Midnight Bell, 1929; The Siege of Pleasure, 1932; The Plains of Cement, 1934) published in 1935 as Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, which deals respectively with the interlocking lives of Bob, a waiter, Jenny, a prostitute, and Ella, a barmaid; Hangover Square (1941), a thriller set in Earls Court; and The Slaves of Solitude (1947), a novel of boarding-house life in wartime. All the novels show a preoccupation with the perils and pleasures of drinking, and Hamilton's Marxism is expressed in his compassion for the hopelessness of his characters' lives.