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Beaumont College, a Jesuit boarding school for boys from well-to-do families, was established in 1861 near Windsor, in the south of England. The college had been permitted to present loyal addresses to Queen Victoria in 1882, 1887, and 1897. Joseph M. Bampton, S.J. (1854-1933), the ninth rector, sought to strengthen the ties between the college and the British monarchy after Edward VII came to the throne in 1901, but met with only qualified success.
Keywords: Bampton, Joseph M., S.J.; Beaumont College; King Edward VII; Queen Victoria; Society of Jesus
The opening of a College of the Society in the neighbourhood of London is the realization of a long felt desire on the part of those of the Catholics of England who wish to give their children the benefit of the education of the Society, without sending them so far to the North as to Stonyhurst. There is every reason to hope for success in the undertaking, as the position is convenient with respect to London, easily accessible, (being within half-an-hour's drive of stations on three railroads,) the situation healthy and elevated, and climate excellent, to say nothing of the beautiful grounds and shrubberies, and magnificent ambulacrum, all of which must be a great attraction to parents.1
St. Stanislaus's College, better known as Beaumont College, opened at Old Windsor (Berkshire, England) in October 1861 as a boarding school for Catholic boys aged seven to fourteen who came from the upper classes. It previously had served as the residence of Warren Hastings (1732-1818), a governor-general of India, and as the novitiate of the English Province of the Society of Jesus for seven years. This foundation on the banks of the Thames near Windsor Castle completed the trio of boarding schools run by the Jesuits on English soil. The two others were Stonyhurst College, established in rural Lancashire in 1794, and Mount St. Mary's College, opened in 1842 at Spinkhill near Sheffield (Derbyshire). The English Province also had been operating St. Francis Xavier's College, a day school for middleclass children in Liverpool, since 1842.
Stonyhurst College represented the long-standing Jesuit tradition in education. It had been founded in exile at Saint-Omer in the Spanish Netherlands in 1593 by Robert Persons, SJ. (1546-1610), to educate young laymen who...