A previous article gave an account of the difficulties besetting Lisbon College at the beginning of the twentieth century. These were due both to the unsettled state of Portugal where the new Republic was hostile to the Church and to the failure of Mgr James Warwick to win the support of his staff in revitalising the college after the long and rather monochrome presidency of William Hilton. Warwick’s failure led to an unfortunate difference of opinion among the staff of the college and in the absence of an Apostolic Nuncio in Lisbon, the traditional Protector of the College and the court of appeal, Cardinal Bourne sent Mgr Bernard Ward of Old Hall, Ware, to make an official visitation and report on the state of affairs in Lisbon.

Jesuit archives refer to Bristol as ‘a very ancient mission’ of the Society of Jesus and as ‘one of the Society’s first class missions’. This article traces briefly the early development of the Society in that part of the old Western District which included Bristol and which for their own administrative purposes the Jesuits called the College (District) of St. Francis Xavier, and then seeks to show how in the first half of the eighteenth century they established a permanent mission in Bristol itself—a city strongly Protestant, by the standards of the time wealthy and cosmopolitan in character, and for a while second in importance only to London.

The English seminary of St. Alban Valladolid in Spain has an up to date theological library with books in both Spanish and English. As an establishment dating back to 1589 it also possesses many books of antiquarian interest. The older books belonging to the college owe their present arrangement to Edwin Henson. During World War II as Rector he was for several years the only permanent resident in the college and he spent much of his time cataloguing and indexing the archives and library. There are two rooms: the eighteenth century style Biblioteca or Big Library with 6765 volumes and the smaller enclosed repository known as the Pigskin Library (Biblioteca de Piel) containing 2881 volumes.

This paper is the final part of a trilogy dealing with Harvington Hall in Worcestershire from 1529 until 1923, when it passed into the ownership of the Archdiocese of Birmingham. The first part, ‘The Pakingtons of Harvington [1529–1631]’ by Lionel and Veronica Anderton Webster, appeared in Recusant History in April 1974; my sequel, ‘The Yates of Harvington, 1631–1696’, followed in October 1994.’ This third part appropriately appears in an issue of Recusant History to mark the ninetieth birthday of Fr. Geoffrey Holt, S.J., who over the years has published many studies of other country-house missions in the eighteenth century, and whose characteristic combination of scholarship, lucidity and human sympathy is a model of how such things ought to be done. He appreciates the problems and will, I hope, appreciate the result.

Thomas Weld (1750–1810), of Lulworth in Dorset, is remembered today principally on three counts: his rôle as the founder of Stonyhurst College in 1794; his benefactions to religious orders at the height of the French revolution as they fled from political upheaval and danger in continental Europe; and his friendship with George III, including his hosting of several visits of the king to Lulworth Castle in the 1790s. Weld’s munificence in making available his Lancashire seat, Stonyhurst, to the English ex-Jesuit ‘Gentlemen of Liège’ has received attention from historians. In contrast, his own education as a young man, at the hands of the English and French Jesuits in continental Europe, has hitherto received little more than passing notice.