HUNTER, JACOB PETRI [SSNE 4933]

Surname
HUNTER, HUNTERUS, HONTHERUS, PETRI, PETRE
First name
JACOB PETRI, JAKOB, JAMES
Nationality
SCOT
Region
UPPLAND, SWEDEN
Education
UNIVERSITY
Religion
CATHOLIC CONVERT

Text source

James Hunter / Jacob Petri Hunterus was born in Uppland in Sweden at the end of the 1500s. He was the son of the Scot, Peter Thomson Hunter (Honther) and Christina Johansdotter. Jacob studied at Uppsala (fil. mag.) in 1617 and then travelled to Britain and Holland. Throughout 1620 and 1621, Hunter studied at both Oxford and Canbridge and by 1623 he could be found in Paris where he studied with the Dutchman Hugo Grotius and Lucas Holstenius. Apparently while there he converted to Catholicism. In 1627 he worked in Vienna and became the secretary in the "Furstiga Hus" or Imperial Electoral College. Throughout this time he kept in communication with Ture Nilsson Bielke (1626-1628). Hunter received an appointment to the Diet in Regensburg but Ferdinand II fired him in 1630 due to his Swedish birth [A reaction to Gustav II Adolf's entry into the Thirty Years' War]. In 1631 he published a satire called "Epistolae Miscellanae". In some sources he is called "preceptor" for Carl Chrisersson Horn.

Swedish Riksarkiv, Oxenstierna Samlingen, Skrivelser till Axel Oxenstierna July 1619-September 1620 (4); Swedish Riksarkiv, Brev till Ture Nilsson Bielke 7 1626-1628; C. V. Jacobowsky, 'Svenska studenter i Oxford c. 1620-1740' in Personhistorisk Tidskrift, vol. 28, 1927, p.122; Svenska Man och Kvinnor (8 vols., 1942-1955), III, pp.559-560; Steve Murdoch, Network North: Scottish Kin, Commercial and Covert Associations in Northern Europe, 1603-1746 (Brill, Leiden, 2006), p.97.

Service record

SWEDEN, THE DUTCH REPUBLIC, THE DUTCH REPUBLIC
Arrived 1618-01-01
Departed 1622-12-31
Capacity STUDENT?, purpose ACADEMIC
SWEDEN, STUART KINGDOMS, BRITAIN, OXFORD, CAMBRIDGE
Arrived 1620-01-01
Departed 1622-12-31
Capacity STUDENT, purpose ACADEMIC
SWEDEN, FRANCE, PARIS, FRANCE
Arrived 1623-01-01
Departed 1626-12-31
Capacity STUDENT, purpose ACADEMIC
HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, AUSTRIA, VIENNA, FURSTIGA HUS
Arrived 1627-01-01, as SECRETARY
Departed 1630-12-31, as SECRETARY
Capacity ADMINISTRATION, purpose ROYAL SECRETARY