Richard Challoner (29 September 1691 – 12 January 1781) was an English Catholic prelate who served as Vicar Apostolic of the London District during the greater part of the 18th century, and as Titular Bishop of Doberus.

After the death of his father, who was a Presbyterian[1] winecooper (wine-barrel maker), his mother, now reduced to poverty, became housekeeper to the Catholic Gage family, at Firle, Sussex.

Ordained a priest at Tournai on 28 March 1716, in 1720 he was chosen by the president, Robert Witham, to be his vice-president, an office which involved the supervision of both professors and students.

Though in 1727 he defended his public thesis and obtained a doctorate 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.

Disguised as a layman in London, Challoner ministered to his flock there, celebrating Mass secretly in obscure ale-houses, cockpits, and wherever small gatherings could assemble without exciting remark.

The controversial treatises which he published in rapid succession from London attracted much attention, particularly his Catholic Christian Instructed (1737), which was prefaced by a witty reply to Conyers Middleton's Letter from Rome, showing an Exact Conformity between Popery and Paganism.

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[8] till the end of the reign of Charles II (2 vols.

[2] 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the lives of the British, English, Scottish, and Irish saints, an interesting work of hagiography which was later superseded by that of Alban Butler[1] and then by more recent publications.

[9] As an administrator he provided for his people a suitable prayer and meditation book, as well as convenient editions of the scriptures, the Imitation of Christ, and the catechism of Christian doctrine.

[2] Beyond this literary work, he caused two schools for boys to be opened, one at Standon Lordship, later represented by St Edmund's College, Ware, and the other at Sedgley Park, in Staffordshire.

Challoner did not set out to make a new translation; his aim was to remove antiquated words and expressions so that the Bible would be more readable and understandable by ordinary folk.

[2] In 1753 Challoner brought out another of his best-known works, the Meditations for every Day of the Year, a book which has passed through numerous editions and been translated into French and Italian.

With this book Challoner hoped to promote among Catholics a pride in their ancestry, and to show them that their present sufferings were not as hard as those endured by the martyrs and saints of the past.

There were several points at issue, but the matter was brought to a head over the contention put forward by the regulars, that they did not need the approbation of the vicars apostolic to hear confessions.

The Holy See appointed James Talbot to this office, and with the help of the younger prelate, whose assistance considerably reduced his labour, Challoner's health somewhat recovered.

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 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 when some documents he had forged fell into the hands of the bishop's lawyers.

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.

In addition, the oldest post-Reformation Catholic school in England, St Edmund's College, Ware, a former seminary, in Hertfordshire (which Challoner himself helped to re-establish from Douay, France to its present site), named one of their five houses after him.