James Archer

Who is James Archer?

James Archer, D.D., was a renowned English catholic preacher, of whose personal history little appears to be known.

According to Dr. Husenbeth in his Life of Bishop Milner, "the celebrated preacher, Dr. Archer, began his preaching at a public-house near Lincoln's Inn Fields, at which the catholics assembled on Sunday evenings to hear the word of God in a large club-room in Turn Style." In 1791 Archer was chaplain to the Bavarian minister in London. Bishop Milner, in a pastoral, denounced the mixture of erroneous and dangerous morality in Archer's sermons, and absolutely forbade them to be publicly read in the chapels of his district. This feud was of old standing, as it appears, by A Letter from the Rev. James Archer to the Right Rev. John Milner, Vicar-Apostolic of the Midland District, that the bishop had "added to the charge of irreligion a charge of immorality." The nature of the latter charge may be inferred from the following allusion by Archer to his conduct on a certain occasion at the Clarendon Hotel: "The smallest voluntary aberration from the rules of temperance is certainly never to be justified. Yet, in certain moments of peculiar interest or exultation, and when men meet together to exhilarate their humanity, such a failing will, in liberal minds, meet with a gentle, mild disposition to give it some degree of extenuation."