The English Jesuit school at Saint-Orner in Spanish Flanders - known in England as St Omers College - was founded in 1593 by Fr Robert Persons. It remained there until 1762 when, in consequence of attacks on the Jesuits in France which culminated in their destruction in 1764, the College (Saint-Orner being then French territory) was moved to Bruges in the Austrian Netherlands and stayed there until the suppression of the Society of Jesus by papal brief in 1773. It was then continued at Liege under the protection of the prince bishop as the English Academy until it was moved to Stonyhurst in 1794 as a result of the advance of the French Revolutionary armies into the Low Countries.
