‘The strictest,orderlyest,and best bredd in the world’

Abstract

The English Jesuit college, founded in 1593 at Saint-Omer because of increasing Elizabethan penal legislation against Catholics, soon became the largest post-Reformation Catholic school in the English-speaking world. This article analyses the organization of the school, with particular emphasis on education in drama and music. It was in the environment of this institution that the recently discovered Saint-Omer First Folio almost certainly had its first home, probably left behind following the flight of the English Jesuits and their students to Bruges in 1762, immediately prior to the expulsion of all members of the Society of Jesus from France.