Hamilton, Archibald (1580?–1659?), Church of Ireland archbishop of Cashel, was second son of Sir Claud Hamilton of Cochnough, Dunbartonshire, Scotland, and his wife Margaret, daughter of Robert Betoun of Creich. He was educated at Glasgow University, graduating MA (1599), and taught there for many years, becoming a DD (1617). In 1610 he became minister in Paisley. While still in Scotland he married his first wife, who was probably Alison Hay, formerly a nurse to Elizabeth, queen of Bohemia and daughter of King James I of England.
It was due to James's patronage that he was appointed to the sees of Killala and Achonry on 21 May 1623, being consecrated at Drogheda on 29 June; he found the diocesan clergy to be composed mainly of natives. Regarding them as unreliable, he gradually introduced Scottish ministers. This, combined with his policy of exacting tithes according to English rather than Gaelic customs, made him extremely unpopular. On 20 April 1630 he was translated to the archbishopric of Cashel, which, like most Irish dioceses, was singularly impoverished. To enhance his personal income, on 3 August 1630 he was granted the prebend of Skrine, Killala, and (in early 1634) his old bishopric of Killala and Achonry. He was sufficiently wealthy to purchase 1,000 acres at Moyenner and Ballegalin in Fermanagh by 1628.
His efforts to recover church lands alienated by his predecessor Miler Magrath (qv) were supported by Thomas Wentworth (qv), lord deputy of Ireland (1633–41). However, when his suit was tried in a common law court in the spring of 1635, it was (according to Wentworth) defeated through Hamilton's folly. The real reason appears to have been the care that Magrath took to insure that his property conveyances were carried out legally. In the event, royal letters of instruction led to the restitution of the land in late 1636. By then the lord deputy's patience with the archbishop had run out; he discovered that Hamilton had been holding sixteen vicarages without informing him. However, Hamilton had influential friends at court, particularly the queen of Bohemia, through whose intercession he was pardoned. Nonetheless, his request for land in the proposed plantations of Clare and Ormond was brusquely dismissed. He appears to have been in England at the time of Wentworth's trial and execution in the spring of 1641, and may have provided information against him.
When rebellion broke out in Cashel in November 1641, Hamilton happened to be away. His family were protected from the rebels by some of their catholic neighbours and eventually made their way safely to Dublin. He was in London by March 1642, and that September he petitioned parliament for either employment or leave to travel to the Netherlands. He went to the Netherlands and was a professor of theology there in 1644, but soon settled in Sweden, as did many other members of his extended kin. His death is reported in different sources as occurring in Uppsala (1658) or Stockholm (1659). He was buried in Uppsala cathedral, in the same grave as Laurentius Petrie, the first protestant archbishop of Uppsala.
After the death of his first wife, he married Anne Balfour of Burleigh. Of his children, it is known that he had four sons, some of whom established themselves as members of the Swedish aristocracy.