HAMILTON, ARCHIBALD, D.D. (d. 1593), catholic controversialist, was a native of one of the islands off the coast of Scotland. Dempster states that he was educated in France, and became a professor in the university of Paris, a doctor of the Sorbonne, and by presentation of Mary Queen of Scots a canon of St. Quentin. According, however, to his antagonist, Thomas Smeton, he was brought up in the protestant faith, and received his education in the university of St. Andrews, where for five years he disputed against the authority of the pope. After his conversion to catholicism he engaged in a public disputation with John Knox. In consequence of the civil wars in France he retired to Rome, where his learning secured for him the friendship of many illustrious men, and employment as one of the librarians at the Vatican. He died there in 1593 in the apartments which had been assigned to him by Gregory XIII.
He wrote: 1. ‘De Confusione Calvinianæ Sectæ apud Scotos Ecclesiæ nomen ridicule usurpantis Dialogus,’ Paris, 1577, 8vo, dedicated to Mary Queen of Scots. Thomas Smeton published a Latin reply to this work in 1579. 2. ‘Calvinianæ Confusionis demonstratio, contra maledicam Ministrorum Scotiæ responsionem, in duos divisa libros. Quorum prior: proprietatum veræ Ecclesiæ evictionem: posterior, earundem in hypothesi ad res subjectas applicatarum, contentionem continet,’ Paris, 1581, 8vo. 3. ‘De Philosophia Aristotelica.’ In five books.
[Dempster's Hist. Ecclesiastica, viii. 671, 672; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.; Lowndes's Bibl. Man. (Bohn), p. 986.]
HAMILTON, ARCHIBALD, D.D. (1580?–1659), archbishop of Cashel and Emly, son of Claud Hamilton of Cochno in Dumbartonshire, was educated at Glasgow University, where he proceeded D.D. Advanced by James I on 21 May 1623 to the conjoint sees of Killala and Achonry, he was consecrated in St. Peter's Church, Drogheda, on 29 June following. On 20 April 1630 he was translated to the archbishopric of Cashel and Emly. The temporalities of that see having been much diminished by the wholesale alienations of Archbishop Miler Magragh [q. v.], Hamilton earnestly petitioned Wentworth for their recovery. But for this purpose the common law proved insufficient, and it required a special letter of instruction from the king to undo the mischief committed by Archbishop Magragh. Archbishop Laud, who was warmly interested in the case, but whose confidence, as he admitted, in Hamilton was not infinite, cautioned Wentworth to keep a sharp eye on him lest he should prove ‘as good at it as Milerus was’ (Strafford, Letters, i. 172, 380–1; Laud, Works, vii. 58–9, 107, 141, 159). It was not long before Hamilton incurred Laud's displeasure. For having, ‘upon his own authority, commanded a fast once a week for eight weeks together throughout his province,’ it transpired in the course of his examination that, notwithstanding the restoration of his temporalities, he was in the possession of sixteen vicarages. Being summoned to Dublin to explain matters, Hamilton pleaded inability to travel owing to an acute attack of sciatica. His excuse weighed little with Laud, who wrote to Wentworth: ‘Do you not think it would lame any man to carry sixteen vicarages? But surely that burden will help him to a sciatica in his conscience sooner than in his hips.’ Hamilton's friends, including the queen of Bohemia, interceded with the king for his forgiveness, and solicited for him ‘a portion in the plantation going forward in Ormonde or Clare.’ But Laud and Wentworth both agreed that he already possessed as much as he deserved, and being pardoned, it does not appear that his petition was granted (Laud, Works, vii. 298, 309, 328, 393, vi. 522; Strafford, Letters, ii. 42, 157). In November 1641, when the rebellion broke out in Tipperary, Hamilton happened to be absent from his diocese, and being joined by his wife and family, who owed their preservation to the humanity of their Roman catholic neighbours (Hickson, Irish Massacres, ii. 244, 245), he appears shortly afterwards to have quitted Ireland and, like many others of his kindred, to have retired to Sweden. His loss of personal property in the rebellion was very great. He is usually said to have died at Stockholm, aged about 80, in 1659. Peringskiöld, in his ‘Monumenta Ullarakeriensia cum Upsalia Nova Illustrata’ (Stockholm, 1719, p. 176), states, however, that he died at Upsala in 1658, and lies buried in the cathedral there, in the same grave as Laurentius Petrie Nericius, the first protestant archbishop of Upsala. Schröder in his ‘Upsala Domkyrka’ (2nd edit., Upsala, 1857), p. 27, repeats this statement, but the destruction by fire in 1702 of the Upsala church registers makes confirmation impossible, and inquiries at Upsala have failed to identify the grave. The archbishop married the daughter of Bessie MacDowall, wet-nurse of the queen of Bohemia, and from one of his sons some of the existing Hamilton families in Sweden are believed to derive their descent.
