James Archer (1550–1620) was an Irish Roman Catholic priest of the Society of Jesus who played a controversial role in the Nine Years War during the House of Tudor religious persecution of the Catholic Church in Ireland and the Elizabethan wars against the Irish clans. During the final decade of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Fr. Archer he became a leading hate figure in English government propaganda, but his lasting achievement was in the establishment of Irish seminaries in Catholic Europe as part of the counter reformation. Early life Archer came from an Anglo-Norman family in County Kilkenny. He may have attended the local grammar school Kilkenny College which had been established in 1555 under Peter White, a fellow of the University of Oxford. David Wolfe, papal nuncio to Ireland, had been evangelizing in south Leinster in this period, although there is no evidence that he came in contact with Archer. Archer entered the seminary college of Louvain around the year 1564, when Nicholas Sanders was in charge. In his maturity, he was described as tall, of dark complexion, with a long, thin face. Irish mission Fr. Archer took a degree of Master of Arts and returned to Ireland in March 1577. Later the same year his presence about Waterford and Clonmel was reported to the queen's secretary, Francis Walsingham, by the President of Munster, William Drury. In the report, Archer was described as a "principal prelate" and "a detestable enemy to the Word of God". Drury also claimed that en route to Ireland Fr. Archer had "taught all the way betwixt Rye and Bristol [in England] against our religion and caused a number to despair". In 1579, the rebel James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald landed a papal invasion force at Smerwick in modern-day County Kerry in the company of Fr. Nicolas Sanders. Fitzmaurice proceeded to Holy Cross in County Tipperary via Kilmallock, and it is possible that Archer, who was in the vicinity, was attached to his forces. Fitzmaurice was killed in action during this journey. At about this time Archer is said to have attended on the rebel Conor O'Rourke on the evening of the latter's execution for treason. One source asserts that he was imprisoned at Westminster sometime after, but there is no substantial evidence for this. Jesuit Archer was received as a novice into the Society of Jesus at Rome in 1581. He then spent two and