Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hunter, Thomas (1666-1725)
HUNTER, THOMAS (1666–1725), Jesuit, born in Northumberland on 6 June 1666, made his humanity studies in the college of the English Jesuits at St. Omer; entered the society in 1684; was appointed professor of logic and philosophy at Liege, and was professed of the four vows 2 Feb. 1701–1702. He became chaplain to the Sherburne family at Stonyhurst, Lancashire, in 1704. After the marriage of Sir Nicholas Sherburne's daughter and heiress, Mary Winifred Frances, in 1709, with Thomas, eighth duke of Norfolk, Hunter generally resided with the duchess as her chaplain. He died on 21 Feb. 1724–5.
His works are: 1. 'A Modest Defence of the Clergy and Religious against R.C.'s History of Doway. With an account of the matters of fact misrepresented in the same History,' sine loco, 1714, 8vo. This is in answer to the anonymous work of the Rev. Charles Dodd [q. v.] entitled 'The History of the English College at Doway, from its first foundation in 1568 to the present time,' 1713. Dodd replied to Hunter in 'The Secret Policy of the English Society of Jesus,' 1715, a work which is sometimes called Dodd's 'Provincial Letters.' 2. 'An Answer to the 24 Letters entitled The Secret Policy of the English Society of Jesus; containing a Letter to the Author of the same; and five Dialogues, in which the chief matters of fact contained in those letters are examined.' Manuscript at Stonyhurst, A copy was in Charles Butler's collection. 3. `An English Carmelite. The Life of Catharine Burton [q. v.], Mother Mary Xaveria of the Angels, of the English Teresian Convent at Antwerp,' London, 1876, in vol. 18 of the 'Quarterly Series,' edited by the Rev. Henry James Coleridge, S.J. The original manuscript is in the custody of the Teresian nuns at Lanherne, Cornwall.
[Butler's Hist. Memoirs (1822), ii. 250; Coleridge's preface to Hunter's Life of Catharine Burton; De Backer's Bibl. de la Compagnie de Jésus (1872), ii. 227; Foley's Records, v. 401, vii. 384; Hist. MSS. Commission 3rd Rep. 234 col. 1, 340 col. 2; Kirk's MS. Biog. Collection, quoted in Gillow's Bibl. Dict.; Oliver's Jesuit Collections, p. 120.]