all the English at Douai expelled in 1578 and the college finding a temporary base at Rheims. The College did hold onto the house at Douai, however, and returned to it in 1593 (though without Allen, who had been called to reside in Rome, where he died on 16 October 1594). Douai martyrs When the open re-conversion of England did not materialise (since the Marian Catholic bishops were dead, imprisoned or in exile, and the Catholic priests who had stayed in England were dying out or converting to Protestantism), the college began to supply missionary priests or "seminary priests" to enter England covertly, minister to existing Catholics and attempt re-conversion. Operating as a Catholic priest was legally high treason at the time (with the penalty of being hanged, drawn and quartered), and of the over 300 priests Douai sent into England by the end of the 16th century, more than 130 (mainly the secular clergy, known as the Douai Martyrs) are known to have been executed, with many more imprisoned and nearly 160 banished back to the continent. In 1577 Cuthbert Mayne became the first of them to be martyred. Back in Douai, the college was granted a special privilege of singing a solemn Mass of thanksgiving each time news reached them of another martyrdom of a Douai priest. 17th and 18th centuries Under Allen's successor, Dr. Richard Barrett, the work was extended to include a preparatory course in humanities, so that it became a school as well as a college. In 1603 under Dr. Thomas Worthington, the third president, a regular college was built, opposite the old parish church of St-Jacques, in the Rue des Morts, so called on account of the adjoining cemetery. The town at that time formed a single parish, whereas in the 18th century it was to be divided into four parishes, and the present church of St-Jacques dates from that time. Blessed Arthur Bell, the Franciscan, taught Hebrew at Douai in the 1620s. Disputes occurred between the secular priests and regular priests in the 17th century similar to the disputes affecting English Catholic affairs in general. Dr. Worthington, though himself a secular priest, was under the influence of the Jesuit Father Parsons, and for a long time the students attended the Jesuit schools and all the spiritual direction was in Jesuit hands. A visitation of the college, however, found many shortcomings in its administration