English Jesuit Education

Book excerpt: Analysing a period of 'hidden history', this book tracks the fate of the English Jesuits and their educational work through three major international crises of the eighteenth century: · the Lavalette affair, a major financial scandal, not of their making, which annihilated the Society of Jesus in France and led to the forced flight of exiled English Jesuits and their students from France to the Austrian Netherlands in 1762; · the universal suppression of the Jesuit order in 1773 and the English Jesuits' remarkable survival of that event, following a second forced flight to the safety of the Principality of Liège; · the French Revolution and their narrow escape from annihilation in Liège in 1794, resulting in a third forced flight with their students, this time to England. Despite repeated crises, huge adversity and multiple losses of personnel, property and educational goods, including significant libraries, the suppressed English Jesuits reconfigured themselves. Modernising their curriculum, they influenced the development of Jesuit education not only in the United Kingdom, but also in the nascent United States of America: in 1789, their influence contributed to the founding of Georgetown Academy, which later developed into the present-day Georgetown University in Washington, DC. English Jesuit Education is a unique story of educational survival and development against seemingly impossible odds, drawing on hitherto largely unexplored material in a wide range of archives.