At about the age of fourteen, during an Orange riot, Bernard's family was burnt out of their home and moved to Drogheda, where he learned the trade of a weaver.
She accompanied her husband to France during the Napoleonic wars, where his regiment saw action as part of the 3rd Brigade at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815.
[1] Thomas had an older brother, John, who at the age of five was left in the care of an uncle in London to be educated rather than to follow the regiment which was frequently on the move.
He was ordained priest on 28 November 1841, was created doctor of divinity and appointed as secretary to Cardinal Acton, a position in which he acquired a knowledge of canon law, and acquaintance with the method of conducting ecclesiastical affairs at Rome.
In April 1849, with the French landing at Civitavecchia, the Rector sent the students to the cramped summer house at Monte Porzio, while remaining in Rome to protect the College.
Pope Pius IX had withdrawn to Gaeta, leaving a number of important documents with Grant at the English College.
In the wake of widespread popular "no popery" outbursts, Prime Minister Lord John Russell passed the Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851 as an anti-Roman Catholic measure.
[6] The Act was largely ineffective since while Roman Catholic community unofficially used the territorial titles, the bishops themselves carefully stayed within the letter of the law.
[7] To the newly appointed hierarchy he was, as Bishop Ullathorne testified, most useful: "His acuteness of learning, readiness of resource and knowledge of the forms of ecclesiastical business made him invaluable to our joint counsels at home, whether in synods or in our yearly episcopal meetings; and his obligingness, his untiring spirit of work, and the expedition and accuracy with which he struck off documents in Latin, Italian, or English, naturally brought the greater part of such work on his shoulders."
[8] Bishop Grant gave great attention to orphanages run by the Sisters of Our Lady of Fidelity in Norwood and North Hyde.
The last years of his life were spent in great suffering, caused by cancer, and when he set out to attend the First Vatican Council at Rome in 1870, he knew that he would not return.