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, the universal suppression of the Jesuit order in 1773 and the French Revolution.

Maurice Whitehead is Schwarzenbach Research Fellow at the Venerable English College, Rome, and Emeritus Professor of History at Swansea University, Wales. Since the mid-1980s, he has published widely in the field of Jesuit educational history, gradually moving back further in time better to comprehend its historical development.