Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 1.djvu/30

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of the throne of Spain. But this happy change in the affairs of the nation proved fatal to the rising prospects of Arthur, for his great merit, having procured him many enemies, they made a pretence of the devotion of the new king to the immaculate conception, to prevail on that monarch to oblige all the professors of the university to swear to defend that doctrine, which, being a controverted point between the disciples of Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, the former maintaining the affirmative, and the latter the negative, in which he was supported by the Dominicans, and Arthur, having, on his admission into, the order, sworn to maintain his doctrine, on his refusal of the new oath, was deprived of his professorship, in 1642. He withdrew to the royal convent of St. Dominick, at Lisbon, where he died about the year 1670. He wrote "Commentaria in totum ferè S. Thomæ de Aquino Sumenem," in two volumes, one of which was published in 1665, folio; and, at the time of his death, he was preparing ten volumes more of the above learned work.



ST. GEORGE ASH,

Once Vice-Chancellor of Dublin university, was a native of the county of Roscommon, and received his education in the university of Dublin, of which he was elected a fellow in 1679, and became provost of it in the room of Doctor Robert Huntington, who resigned on the 2nd September, 1692, being then in the thirty-fourth year of his age. Shortly after this he became vice-chancellor, but, prior to that advancement, was obliged to quit his country, from the tyrannous acts of King James II. He came to England, and engaged himself in the service of the Lord Paget, who was King William's embassador at the court of Vienna, and to whom he was both chaplain and secretary. In these stations he remained several years, nor did he meditate a return to his native country, until after the passing of the Acts of Settlement. He