Early Life
Challoner was born in the Protestant town of Lewes, Sussex, England on 29 September 1691. His father, also Richard Challoner, was married by licence granted on 17 January 1690/1 to his wife Grace Willard at Ringmer, Sussex on 10 February.
After the death of his father, who was a Presbyterian winecooper (wine-barrel maker), his mother, now reduced to poverty, became housekeeper to the Catholic Gage family, at Firle in Sussex. It is not known for sure whether she was originally a Roman Catholic, or whether she subsequently became one under the influence of a Catholic household and surroundings.
In any case, thus it came about that Richard was brought up as a Catholic, though he was not baptized a Catholic until he was about thirteen years old. This was at Warkworth, Northamptonshire, the seat of another well-known Roman Catholic family, that of George Holman, whose wife, Lady Anastasia Holman, was a daughter of Blessed William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford, a Catholic unjustly condemned and beheaded in the Titus Oates hysteria of 1678. In this house the chaplain was the Rev. John Gother, a celebrated controversialist.
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