The Monastery of the English Teresian nuns at Antwerp was founded under the protection of St. Joseph and St. Anne in the year of our Lord 1619, thirty-seven years after the death of St. Teresa. It was founded by the piety and liberality of the Lady Mary Lovel, daughter to the Right Honourable Lord Roper, Baron of Teynham. In the writings of the foundation I find these following passages.

This virtuous lady understood by revelation that the Queen of Heaven required that she should found a monastery, of an order most devoted to her service, upon which her director, a priest of the Society of Jesus, advised her to address herself to the Rev. Father Thomas of Jesus, Provincial of the Carmes. At the beginning he was unwilling to give in to the lady's proposals, hence this affair seemed dropped for a whole year, till at last he was severely reprehended by our Blessed Lady in his morning prayer for opposing the designs of heaven, so much conducing to the glory of God. This he owned afterwards to the first Prioress of the convent, and withal assured her he had received several commissions from the Blessed Virgin relating to the concerns of that house. In effect, he immediately condescended to what the Lady Lovel had proposed, and was instrumental in obtaining a licence from the Infanta Clara Isabella Eugenia, to found a monastery in any part of her dominions.