Arthur Richard Dillon

The most reverend Arthur Richard Dillon
Portrait of Arthur Richard Dillon wearing the Order of the Holy Spirit on its blue ribbon, the cordon bleu, around his neck
Archbishop of Narbonne
In office 1763–1790
Preceded by	Charles-Antoine de la Roche-Aimon
Succeeded by	Guillaume Besaucèle
Personal details
Born	14 September 1721 Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Died	5 July 1806 London
Mother	Christina Sheldon
Father	Arthur Dillon, Count Dillon

Arthur Richard Dillon (1721–1806) was archbishop of Narbonne in France. He was the youngest son of Arthur Dillon (1670–1733), who came to France with Mountcashel's Irish Brigade. At the French Revolution he refused the civil constitution of the clergy and fled first to Coblenz and then to London.

Birth and origins[]

Arthur Richard was born on 15 September 1721 at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye in France.^[1] He was the youngest of the five sons of Arthur Dillon and his wife Christina Sheldon. His father was born in 1670 in Ireland, had fought for the Jacobites in the Williamite War and had gone to France as the colonel of Dillon's Regiment with the Irish Brigade in April 1690 when Irish troops were sent to France in exchange for French troops sent to Ireland with Lauzun. He was a younger son of the 7th Viscount Dillon. His father's family was Old English Irish and descended from Sir Henry Dillon who came to Ireland with Prince John in 1185.^[2] Henry's mother was a daughter of Ralph Sheldon, whereas Dominic Sheldon, the English Catholic Jacobite, was her uncle. She was a maid of honour to Queen Mary of Modena, wife of James II.^[3] Both parents were thus Jacobites and Catholics. They had five sons and several daughters.^[4]

Dillon's coat of arms. Above the escutcheon the green galero with fifteen tassels (as primate of Gallia narbonensis) and around the escutcheon is the cordon bleu of the Order of the Holy Spirit.

Career[]

Arthur Richard entered the priesthood and was successively curé of Elan near Mézières, vicar-general of Pontoise (1747), Bishop of Evreux (1753), Archbishop of Toulouse (1758), and Archbishop of Narbonne (1763). In that latter capacity, he also was both the Primate of the ecclesiastical region of Gallia narbonensis and ex officio president of the estates of Languedoc.^[16]

He devoted himself less to the spiritual direction of his diocese than to the temporal welfare of its inhabitants, carrying out many works of public utility, bridges, canals, roads, harbours, etc.; he had chairs of chemistry and of physics created at the universities of Montpellier and Toulouse, and tried to reduce poverty, especially in Narbonne.^[17]

From about the age of fifty he lived with his wealthy, widowed niece, Madame de Rothe. She was born Lucy Cary and was the child of his sister Laura, who had married Lucius Cary, 6th Viscount Falkland. Madame de Rothe had been widowed in 1766. Dillon and Madame de Rothe were lovers, an arrangement considered scandalous even by the jaded standards of the day. They maintained a household primarily at the château de Hautefontaine, where Dillon kept an extravagant hunt. Madame de Rothe brought her daughter Thérèse-Lucy de Dillon, a favourite of Marie Antoinette, the French Queen, and her grand-daughter Henriette-Lucy, who would become the memoirist Henriette-Lucy, Marquise de La Tour du Pin Gouvernet.

In 1787 and in 1788 he was a member of the Assembly of Notables called together by Louis XVI, and in 1788 presided over the assembly of the clergy.

Exile and death[]

Having refused to accept the civil constitution of the clergy, Dillon had to leave Narbonne in 1790. He was replaced by Guillaume Besaucèle, who was the constitutional bishop of Aude. Dillon then emigrated, accompanied by Madame de Rothe, to Coblenz in 1791. Soon afterwards both went to London, where he was visited in 1797 at his home in Thayer Street, Marylebone, by Henriette-Lucy, Marquise de La Tour du Pin Gouvernet.^[18]

On 15 July 1801, at Paris, Napoleon and Pope Pius VII signed the Concordat of 1801 and most of the French clergy that had gone into exile or hiding returned to take up again their normal duties. Dillon however disobeyed the pope and rejected the Concordat, probably because it suppressed his see at Narbonne, or because he wanted to avoid paying his debts in France.

On 7 February 1804, Madame de Rothe, his partner, died in London. He survived her by two years and died on 5 July 1806 in London, and was buried in St Pancras churchyard, which was the burial place favoured by the émigré community, as there was no official Catholic cemetery available.^[19]

Burial of Arthur Richard Dillon in Narbonne Cathedral

Final resting place[]

Dillon's grave on Old St. Pancras churchyard seems to have been disturbed in some ways during the cutting of the Midland Railway in 1865, as his name appears on the list of graves of important persons affected by that event on the Burdett-Coutts memorial, erected at that occasion. Between March 2002 and June 2003, part of the St Pancras Old Church graveyard was excavated^[22] in preparation for the London terminus of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. During the archaeological investigation, Dillon's body was found to have been buried wearing a set of porcelain dentures. It is believed that he purchased them from a Parisian dentist named Nicholas de Chemant.^[23]

In March 2007 the body of Archbishop Dillon was returned to France and now lies in Narbonne Cathedral.^[24][25] On 19 May 2008, the porcelain dentures were accessioned into the Cobbe Museum (currently housed at Hatchlands, East Clandon).

Notes, citations, and sources[]

Notes[]

Citations[]

Sources[]

• Burke, Bernard (1949). A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire (99th ed.). London: Burke's Peerage Ltd.
• Debrett, John (1828). Peerage of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. 2 (17th ed.). London: F. C. and J. Rivington. OCLC 54499602. – Scotland and Ireland (for Dillon)
• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1910). "Dillon, Arthur Richard (1721–1807)". Encyclopædia Britannica. 8 (11th ed.). New York: The Encyclopædia Britannica Company. p. 273. OCLC 43740094.
• Fisquet, Honoré Jean Pierre (1867). La France pontificale (Gallia christiana) Histoire chronologique et biographique des archevêques at évêques de tous les diocèses de France depuis l'établissement du christiansme jusqu'à nos jours: Metropole de Rouen: Evreux (in French). Paris: E. Repos. OCLC 496333101.
• La Chesnaye des Bois, François Alexandre Aubert de (1863). Dictionnaire de la noblesse (in French). 3 (3rd ed.). Paris: Schlesinger Frères. OCLC 797014713. – BER to BRA (for Blaisel, husband of his sister Bridget)
• La Tour du Pin, Henriette-Lucy, Marquise de (1913a). Journal d'une femme de cinquante ans (in French). 1 (7th ed.). Paris: Librairie Chapelot. OCLC 1047408815.
• La Tour du Pin, Henriette-Lucy, Marquise de (1913b). Journal d'une femme de cinquante ans (in French). 2 (7th ed.). Paris: Librairie Chapelot. OCLC 1047478749.
• Lodge, John (1789). Archdall, Mervyn (ed.). The Peerage of Ireland or, A Genealogical History of the Present Nobility of that Kingdom. 4. Dublin: James Moore. OCLC 264906028. – Viscounts (for Dillon)
• O'Callaghan, John Cornelius (1854). History of the Irish Brigades in the Service of France. New York: P. O'Shea Publisher. OCLC 1046538374.
• Sollier, J. F. (1913). "Dillon, Artur-Richard". In Herbermann, Charles George (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. 4. New York: The Encyclopedia Press. p. 797. OCLC 1157968788.
• Webb, Alfred (1878). "Dillon, Theobald, Viscount". Compendium of Irish Biography. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son. p. 149. OCLC 122693688.

Further reading[]

• La Tour du Pin, Henriette-Lucy, Marquise de (1920). Recollections of the Revolution and the Empire. Translated by Geer, Walter. New York: Brentano's. (an abridged translation)
• Moorehead, Caroline (2009). Dancing to the Precipice: The Life of Lucie de la Tour du Pin, Eyewitness to an Era. London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN 978-0-7011-7904-5.
• L. Audibret, Le Dernier President des Etats du Languedoc, Mgr. Arthur Richard Dillon, archevêque de Narbonne (Bordeaux, 1868);
•  [fr], Les Assemblées provinciales sous Louis XVI (Paris, 1864).

External links[]

• Cobbe Museum