On the north-west border of the county is the ancient seat of the Shireburn family. After the death of Sir Nicholas Shireburn, Bart., in 1720, it was possessed by his daughter Mary, Duchess of Norfolk, till 1754. It then became the property of Edward Weld, Esq., of Lullworth Castle, Dorset, whose son, the late Thomas Weld, Esq., converted it, in 1794, into a college, or house of education, for young pupils of the Roman Catholic religion. This gentleman’s benevolent view was to facilitate the means of religious and literary instruction for persons of his own persuasion, who had now lost all the resources which the British transmarine colleges and seminaries had afforded during two hundred years. He had received his education among the English Jesuits abroad, and he had witnessed the violent seizure and ejection of his old masters from their College of St. Omer, which was perpetrated by the French Parliament of Paris in 1762. This college was one of the principal houses of education which the British Catholics had formed on the continent, while the severity of the penal laws prohibited such institutions in their own country. The English fathers of the society, not disheartened by persecution, proceeded to form new establishments, for the same purpose of education, in the Austrian Netherlands, and again in the city of Liege; and they were dislodged, pillaged, and ejected, with similar injustice and violence, by the governments which admitted the suppression of their order, by Pope Clement XIV. in 1773, and finally, by the revolutionary armies of France in 1794. In their uttermost distress they took advantage of the humane lenity of our Government, which allowed them to settle and to open schools for pupils of their own religion, under security of the oath of civil allegiance which was prescribed by the Act of 1791. Under the immediate protection of Thomas Weld, Esq., the gentlemen expelled from Liege by the French conducted the small remnant of their flourishing seminary to Stonyhurst; and, in the course of twenty-one years, by unremitting industry, they have improved it into a distinguished seminary and house of education, of which they justly acknowledge Thomas Weld, Esq., as the founder and principal benefactor. It is filled at present (1816) by more than two hundred and fifty students of the Roman Catholic religion, sent thither from most parts of the world; and their established reputation for good order and regularity has justly procured for them the countenance and favour of their neighbours.