Blacklow after holding the office of President for two years, came to England for the purpose of obtaining a fresh supply of students, but principally to procure the means to enable him to place the College in such a position that it might be of greater utility to the Mission. Not being able to succeed in this latter object he resigned the Presidency.
The spirit which pervades an Institution is derived, in great measure, from the Rules by which it is governed; they are the agencies by which its members are chiefly moulded, he, therefore, who frames its rules infuses into it his own spirit and imprints upon it, to a large extent, his own indviduality. From this point of view the sons of Alma Mater are indebted, perhaps, more to Blacklow than to any other single individual connected with the College, and therefore some more detailed account of this remarkable man may not be without interest.
Thomas Blacklow, alias White, was the second son of Robert White of Hutton in Essex, and was born towards the close of the sixteenth century. He was carefully educated in the Catholic religion, and sent when still very young to Douay, where he manifested an extra ordinary capacity and genius for all kinds of learning. He was ordained priest at Arras House in Paris,[1] March 25, 1617, and afterwards employed at Douay in teaching Classics, Philosophy and Theology. He visited England on some private business in August, 1623, returning, however, to Douay the following October, and taking with him as a relic one of the ribs of Mr. Thomas Maxfield, a priest, who had suffered a few years before on account of his priesthood.
- ↑ " The House or College of Arras in the University of Paris, had been founded partly as an Institution where the clergy who had completed their course of studies in the Colleges, might improve and perfect their acquirements; and partly as a residence where a certain number of writers might be maintained for the defence of religion against the attacks of her adversaries." Dodd, vol. iv. p. 133.
