necessitous circumstances, for his family received assistance from the town council at Rotterdam, and eventually sailed for New England, taking with them his library, which was hailed as an acquisition of great value by the theological students of the youthful colony.
In the opinion of his contemporaries his genius was better adapted for the professor's chair than for the pulpit. In controversy he was distinguished as a champion of Calvinistic views in opposition to the Arminian doctrines which, during the latter part of his life, began to gain ground both in England and abroad; and his ‘Medulla Theologiæ,’ a system of Calvinistic theology, has been frequently reprinted. His ‘Fresh Suit against Roman Ceremonies,’ which was passing through the press at the time of his death, is highly praised by Orme (Life of Baxter, p. 19) as an able exposition from the presbyterian standpoint of the chief points of difference between the puritans and the school of theology represented by Richard Hooker. The work, however, by which Ames chiefly merits to be remembered by posterity is his treatise ‘De Conscientia, ejus Jure et Casibus,’ first published in the year preceding his death. It was an elaborate attempt to make the application of the general principles of christian morality more certain and clear in relation to particular cases, and served to make the name of ‘Amesius’ classical in the schools of moral philosophy. His biographer speaks of it as removing a reproach from the learning of protestantism, and relieving its teachers from the necessity of resorting to ‘the Philistines’ for assistance in the determination of nice points in cases of conscience. Among Ames's other works the chief are his ‘Bellarminus enervatus,’ often reprinted at Amsterdam, London, and Oxford; his ‘Coronis ad Collationem Hagiensem’ (12mo), a confutation of the Arminian arguments against the Calvinistic clergy of the United Provinces; his ‘Antisynodalia’ (Franeker, 12mo, 1629)—against the Remonstrants; and his ‘Demonstratio Logicæ Veræ’ (Leyden, 12mo, 1632). The ‘Puritanismus Anglicanus’ (1610), an exposition of the views of the English puritans, is a Latin version by Ames of an English original by another writer, W. Bradshaw, of which latter no edition appeared until the year 1641. His Latin works were collected and published at Amsterdam in five volumes, 16mo (1658), by his admirer and biographer Nethenus.
[Life by Nethenus in Præfatio Introductoria, prefixed to edition of his works above mentioned; Biographia Britannica; Benjamin Hanbury's Historical Memorials, i. 533; Fuller's History of University of Cambridge (ed. Prickett and Wright), p. 301; C. H. Coopers Annals of Cambridge, iii. 34; Neal's History of the Puritans, i. 532.]
AMESBURY, Earl of. [See Dundas, Charles.]
AMHERST, FRANCIS KERRIL (1819–1883), catholic prelate, was the son of Mr. Amherst, of Kenilworth, Warwickshire, and brother of the Rev. William Amherst, S.J. He was born in London 21 March 1819, and educated at St. Mary's College, Oscott, where, after his ordination in 1846, he became a professor. Subsequently he resided for some time in a Dominican monastery at Leicester, and in 1856 he was appointed missionary rector of the church of St. Augustin, at Stafford. He was consecrated bishop of Northampton, in succession to Dr. William Wareing, the first bishop, on 4 July 1858. He was compelled, however, by the painful maladies under which he laboured, to resign his see in 1879, and was preconised to the titular see of Sozusa in 1880. He passed the last years of his suffering life at the home of his family, Fieldgate House, Kenilworth, where he died 21 Aug. 1883. Bishop Amherst published ‘Lenten Thoughts, drawn from the Gospel for each day of Lent,’ London, 1873; 4th edition, 1880.
[Catholic Directory (1883), 184; Men of the Time, 11th ed., 31; Times, 22 Aug. 1883; Tablet, 25 Aug. 1883, pp. 300, 311, 1 Sept. 1883, p. 339, 5 Jan. 1884, p. 27; Cat. of Printed Books in Brit. Museum.]
AMHERST, JEFFREY, Baron Amherst (1717–1797), field-marshal, was the second son of Jeffrey Amherst, of Riverhead, Kent, and was born on 29 Jan. 1717. The Duke of Dorset, who was his father's neighbour at Knole in Kent, took him, when a boy, into his service as a page, and procured him an ensigncy in the Guards in 1731. When he went on service his patron recommended him as a young man of uncommon ability to General Ligonier, then commanding in Germany, who made him his aide-de-camp. He gave great satisfaction, and served on Ligonier's staff at Roucoux, Dettingen, and Fontenoy , and was then passed on to the Duke of Cumberland's staff, with which he was present at Lauffeld and Hastenbeck. These generals did not neglect their protégé, and he was rapidly promoted till he became lieutenant-colonel of the 15th regiment in 1756. But a greater and more deserving patron now perceived his merits, and in 1758 Pitt, who was on the look-out
