After his ordination he returned to England and served the mission at Grantham for some time, meeting with persecution and more than once narrowly escaping arrest as a priest.
Bishop John Milner, in a Memoir of him in the Laity's Directory (1818), says: "This was so generally approved of, that he received something like official thanks from Oxford for the publication.
In this book, according to Charles Butler, he made large use of Maurus Corker's Roman Catholic Principles in Reference to God and the King, but this was denied by Milner.
[2] In 1766, as his health was failing, he obtained Thomas Talbot as his coadjutor, and consecrated him in 1767 (not in 1776 as has been erroneously asserted, in consequence of a misprint in Milner's "Memoir").
In 1768 he undertook the responsibility of carrying on Sedgley Park School, which had been founded, on the initiative of his intimate friend Bishop Challoner, six years previously, and thus preserved it for the Church.