The London Exile: Bishop Colbert de Castlehill and the French Bishops in London, 1791–1814

The chapter provides an overview of the life and thought of the French Bishops resident in London following their emigration consequent on the Civil Constitution of the Clergy published in 1790. Their life, in great contrast to their former existence, was dependent on the charity of the British state and limited self-help. It was centred on the French chapels which provided spiritual and material comfort. They had an uneasy relationship with their English fellow Catholics and their leaders, the Vicars Apostolic of the London District and were aware that their identity as Catholics and Frenchmen made them doubly suspicious. Leadership among the bishops themselves was provided by the Bishop of St Pol de Léon in Brittany, a devout and business-like prelate who acted as an intermediary with the British authorities. Others like Dillon of Narbonne and Colbert himself had personal links with their land of exile. Colbert cultivated his British contacts who included Horace Walpole and busied himself alongside his episcopal colleagues in presenting a united front of opposition to Napoleon’s Concordat. Their ‘memoir’ was a spirited defence of the pre-Revolutionary Gallican Church of which they regarded themselves as the ‘faithful remnant’.