Relations with Boston's civic leaders worsened such that, when a Jesuit faculty was finally secured in 1843, Fenwick decided to leave the Boston school and instead opened the College of the Holy Cross 45 miles (72 km) west of the city in central Massachusetts, where he felt the Jesuits could operate with greater autonomy.[1] The site of the college, Mount Saint James, was originally occupied by a Roman Catholic boarding school run by the Rev. James Fitton, with his lay collaborator Joseph Brigden, since 1832. On February 2, 1843, Fr.