Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Comberford, Nicholas
COMBERFORD, COMERFORD, or QUEMERFORD, NICHOLAS, D.D. (1544?–1599), Jesuit, was born in the city of Waterford in Ireland about 1544, and took the degree of B.A. at Oxford in 1562, after he had spent at least four years in that university' in pecking and hewing at logic and philosophy ' (Wood, Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 459; Fasti, i. 161; Boase, Register of the Univ. of Oxford, i. 250). After completing his degree by determination he returned to Ireland, was ordained priest, and obtained some ecclesiastical preferment from which he was ejected on account of his religion. Repairing to the university of Louvain, he was promoted to the degree of D.D. on 23 June or October 1575, on which occasion his fellow-countryman, Peter Lombard, who that year was 'primus in schola artium,' wrote 'Carmen Heroicum in Doctoratum Nicolai Quemerfordi' (Oliver, Jesuit Collections, p. 262). He entered the Society of Jesus about 1578 (Hogan, Ibernia Ignatiana, p. 58). He died in Spain about 1599 (Hogan, Cat. of Irish Jesuits, p. 6).
He wrote in English 'a pithy and learned treatise, very exquisitely penned,' entitled 'Answers to certain Questions propounded by the Citizens of Waterford;' also some sermons; and, it is said, 'divers other things.'
[Authorities cited above; also Foley's Records, vol. vii. pt. i. p. 52; Ware's Writers of Ireland, ed. Harris, p. 96; Backer's Bibl. des Ecrivains de la Compagnie de Jésus (1872), ii. 2205; Catholic Miscellany, ix. 140.]