Richard Challoner

Roman Catholic clergyman and writer, born in Lewes, East Sussex, SE England, UK. He studied at Douai (1704) and was ordained in 1716, remaining there as a professor until 1730. He then served as a missionary priest in London, becoming Bishop of Debra (1741) and Vicar Apostolic of the London district (1758). His best-known works are the prayer book, The Garden of the Soul (1740), and his revision of the Douai version of the Bible (5 vols, 1750).

Richard Challoner (1691-1781), was an English Roman Catholic bishop, a leading figure of English Catholicism during the greater part of the eighteenth century.

He was born in fiercely Protestant Lewes, Sussex, England on September 29, 1691. His father, also Richard Challoner, was married by licence granted on January 17 1690/1 to his wife Grace Willard at Ringmer, Sussex on February 10. It is not known for sure whether she was originally a Roman Catholic, or whether she subsequently became one under the influence of Roman Catholic surroundings. Most probably she was a lapsed Roman Catholic. In any case, thus it came about that Richard was brought up as a Catholic, though he was not received into the Roman Catholic Church till 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 William Howard, Viscount Stafford, a Roman Catholic unjustly condemned and beheaded in the Titus Oates rumpus of 1678. In 1705 young Richard was sent to the English College at Douai on a sort of scholarship, entering the English College on July 29.

He was to spend the next twenty-five years there, first as student, then as professor, and as vice-president. He graduated Bachelor in Divinity of the University of Douai in 1719, and was appointed professor of philosophy, a post which he held for eight years. Though in 1727 he defended his public thesis and obtained the degree of Doctor in Divinity, Challoner's success as a teacher was probably due rather to his untiring industry and devotion to this work than to any extraordinary mental gifts, for he was never an original thinker, but his gift lay in enforcing the spiritual reality of the doctrines he was expounding.

Having in 1708 taken the college oath, binding himself to return to England, when required, to labour on the mission, in 1730 he felt the call and was given permission to embark for England on August 18, being stationed in London. There he threw himself with zeal into the laborious work of the ministry. Though the penal laws were no longer enforced with extreme severity, the life of the Roman Catholic priest was still a hard one. Disguised as a layman, Challoner ministered to the small number of Roman Catholics, celebrating Mass secretly in obscure ale-houses, cockpits, and wherever small gatherings could assemble without exciting remark. In his spare time he gave himself to study and writing, and was thus able to produce several works of instruction and controversy.

His first published work, a little book of meditations under the quaint title of Think Well On't dated from 1728. Bishop Challoner was the author over the years of numerous controversial and devotional works, which have been frequently reprinted and translated into various languages.

In 1740 he brought out a new prayer book for the laity, the Garden of the Soul, which until the mid 20th century remained the favourite work of devotion, though the many editions that have since appeared have been so altered that little of the original work remains. Of his historical works the most valuable is one which was intended to be a Catholic antidote to John Foxe's well-known martyrology, Foxe's Book of Martyrs. It is entitled Memoirs of Missionary Priests and other Catholicks of both Sexes who suffered Death or Imprisonment in England on account of their Religion, from the year 1577 till the end of the reign of Charles II (2 vols. This work, laboriously compiled from original records, was for long the chief means of perpetuating the tradition of the English martyrs and remains the standard work on the subject. In 1745 he produced anonymously his longest and most learned book, Britannia Sancta, containing the lives of the British, English, Scottish, and Irish saints, an interesting work of hagiography which was superseded by that of Alban Butler and then by more recent publications.

Another work to which he devoted much energy and time was revision of the English Catholic Bible. He had long perceived a need to update the language of the Douay Rheims Bible that had appeared over the years 1582-1610. While still at Douay, he was one of the approving prelates for a revision of the Rheims New Testament published in 1730 by the college President, Robert Witham (infra). His more important work would appear over the years 1749 through 1752. All revisions attributed to Challoner were published anonymously. (Curiously, a book he published in 1762, Morality of the Bible [infra], quotes Scriptural citations from the 1749 and 1752 revisions in different places.) Challoner is believed to have had the assistance of Robert Pinkard (alias Typper)(d. For the next 200 years Challoner's revisions were the groundwork for nearly all English Catholic Bibles, including those published in America, beginning with a Philadelphia edition in 1790.

In 1753 Dr. Challoner brought out another of his best-known works, the popular Meditations for every Day of the Year, a book which has passed through numerous editions and been translated into French and Italian. Besides the works mentioned above, and a good number of tracts, other writings, whose titles convey the atmosphere of an era, include: Grounds of Catholic Doctrine (1732); The Catholic Christian Instructed (1737);

In 1738, the president of Douai College, Robert Witham, died, and strenuous efforts were made by the superiors of the college to have Challoner appointed as his successor. But Bishop Benjamin Petre, the Vicar Apostolic of the London District, who already had Challoner as his vicar general, opposed this on the ground that he desired to have him as his own coadjutor with right of succession. The Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide had apparently already arranged Challoner's appointment as president of Douai, but the Petre's representations prevailed, and papal Briefs were issued on September 12, 1739, appointing Challoner to the See of Debra in partibus. The delay so caused lasted a whole year, and it was not until November 24, 1740, that the new Briefs were issued.

The new bishop's first work was a visitation of the district, the first methodical visitation of which there is any record since the creation of the vicariate in 1688. But, besides this literary work, he caused two schools for boys to be opened, one at Standon Lordship, later represented by St Edmund's College, Old Hall, and the other at Sedgley Park, in Staffordshire.

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 Bishop Challoner's manifold 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 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 he and the London Roman Catholic priests were continually harassed in this way. Finally the evil was remedied by the Catholic Relief Act of 1778, by which priests were no longer liable to imprisonment for life. From his hiding-place the bishop, now nearly ninety years of age, could hear the howls of the mob, who were searching for him with the intention of dragging him through the streets.

In 1753 Pope Benedict XIV put an end to the long disputes that had been carried on between the secular clergy and the regulars, in the last stages of which Bishop Challoner took a leading part. The bishops opposed this and, after a struggle lasting for several years, obtained a final settlement of this and other questions, a settlement, in the main, satisfactory to the bishops. In 1758 Bishop Petre died, and Bishop Challoner, as his coadjutor, succeeded him at once as Vicar Apostolic of the London District. He was, however, nearly seventy years old, and was so ill that he was forced immediately to apply for a coadjutor in his turn. He continued to write, and almost every year published a new book, but they were more usually translations or abstracts, such as The Historical Part of the Old and New Testament. One more work of original value remained, and that was his little British Martyrology published in 1761.

The aged Challoner never fully recovered from the shock of the Gordon Riots.