Richard Challoner - Final Years

Final Years

As a bishop, Challoner usually resided in London, though on occasion, as during the "No Popery" riots of 1780, he was obliged to retire into the country.

In fact Challoner's extensive activity is the more remarkable because his life was spent in hiding, owing to the state of the law, and often he had hurriedly to change his lodgings to escape the Protestant and/or Anglican informers, who were anxious to earn the government reward of £100 for the conviction of a priest.

One of these, John Payne, known as the "Protestant Carpenter", indicted Challoner, but was compelled to drop the proceedings, owing to some documents, which he had forged, falling into the hands of the bishop's lawyers.

For some years Challoner and the London Catholic priests were continually harassed in this way. Finally the harassment was remedied by the Catholic Relief Act of 1778, by which priests were no longer liable to imprisonment for life.

This concession speedily aroused religious dispute, and two years later the Gordon Riots broke out with rioters attacking any London building that was associated with Catholicism or owned by Catholics. From his hiding-place the bishop, now nearly ninety years of age, could hear the mob, who were searching for him with the intention of dragging him through the streets. They failed to find his refuge, and on the following day he escaped to Finchley, where he remained till the London riots came to an end.

The aged Challoner never fully recovered from the shock of the riots. Six months later he was seized with paralysis, and died after two days' illness, on the January 12, 1781, aged 89, and was buried at Milton, Berkshire (present-day Oxfordshire) in the family vault of his friend Bryan Barrett in the Church of England parish church. In 1946 the body was reinterred in Westminster Cathedral.