Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hamilton, Archibald (d.1593)
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.]