The Jesuit Suppression in Global Context: causes, events and consequences
EDITED BY JEFFREY D. BURSON AND JONATHAN WRIGHT

In September 1773 some Jesuit scholastics, making their way back to the English college in Liège from the college’s holiday house, met a group of their professors travelling in the opposite direction. From the professors, the students learned that Pope Clement XIV had suppressed their order throughout the world. There was much ringing of hands, but in truth they could not have been surprised. Fr John Carroll had recently returned from Rome which he had visited on the Grand Tour as a companion to the young Baron Stourton. While there, he had been alarmed by what he had learned of the society’s precarious future. And all the time that ­indefatigable letter writer, Fr John Thorpe, had kept his confrères apprised from Rome of the rise and fall of Jesuit fortunes.