William Allen (cardinal) - Rome and Rheims

Rome and Rheims

When the number of students had risen rapidly to one hundred and twenty, the Pope summoned Allen to Rome to establish a similar College there. In 1575 Allen made a second journey to Rome, where he assisted by order of Pope Gregory XIII in the establishment of the English College. To that end, the ancient English Hospice in Rome was taken over, and converted into a seminary for the sending over of missionaries to England, and Jesuits were placed in the College, in order to assist Maurice Clenock, D.D. (Doctor of Divinity), Rector of the College.

The Pope appointed Allen to be a Canon in Kortrijk (also known as Courtrai or Courtray), and he returned back to Douai in July 1576, but there he had to face a new difficulty. Besides the plots to assassinate him by agents of the Queen of England, the rebels against the Crown of the King of Spain, encouraged by Elizabeth and Elizabeth's emissaries, now at Douai, expelled the students of the University from Douai in March 1578. Allen moved the College of Douai to Rheims, now under the patronage and protection of the House of Guise. The collegians took refuge at the University of Rheims, where they were well received, and continued their work as before, and Allen was soon afterwards elected to become the Canon of the Chapter of Rheims Cathedral. Thomas Stapleton, Richard Bristow, Gregory Martin and Morgan Phillips, were amongst Allen's companions.

From the College Press came forth a constant stream of polemic, controversialist and other Roman Catholic literature, which for obvious reasons could not be printed in England. Allen took a prominent part in this. One of the chief works undertaken in the early years of the College was the preparation under Allen's direction of the well-known Douai Bible. The New Testament was published in 1582, when the College was at Rheims; but the Old Testament, although completed at the same time, was delayed due to a lack of funds. It was eventually printed and published at Douai, in 1609, two years before the Authorized King James Version.