Banqueting House, Whitehall room at Wilton House, to display Van Dyck's portraits of the aristocratic Pembroke family. Given the attention and effort which were lavished by Charles I on the Banqueting House, his end was not without irony. On the afternoon of 30 January 1649 he stepped out of a first floor window of Banqueting House onto the scaffold which had been erected outside for the purpose of his execution. The actual window no longer exists as it was not in the main hall but just outside it in an adjacent part of the building which has now gone and, pictured from the
Clan Hamilton in 1868. The third Marquess, James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Hamilton was a staunch supporter of Charles I. Charles rewarded him with the dukedom in 1643, which made Hamilton the premier peer in Scotland. Hamilton led a royalist army into England but was defeated at the Battle of Preston (1648) by the Parliamentarians of Oliver Cromwell. Hamilton was later executed in 1649 at Whitehall shortly before the king met the same fate. Hamilton's brother, William Hamilton, 2nd Duke of Hamilton was also a brave soldier but was killed at the Battle of Worcester in 1651. The title passed to Anne