The origins of Ampleforth were in the school run by the Benedictine community of St Laurence at Dieulouard in Lorraine. One of several foundations established on the continent by English Catholics at the end of the sixteenth and start of the seventeenth centuries to continue the religious practices outlawed in England to provide the education of the missionary priests necessary for the maintenance of a Catholic community within England during penal times and to provide a Catholic education for t