George Talbot

George Talbot (1816–1886) was an Anglo-Irish cleric of the Church of England, who as a Roman Catholic convert became a papal chamberlain.

Early life He was a younger son of James Talbot, 3rd Baron Talbot of Malahide, a British intelligence chief of the French Revolutionary Wars period, and his wife Anne Sarah Rodbard, daughter of Samuel Rodbard of Evercreech, Somerset. He was educated at Eton College, where he was a pupil by 1829.

Talbot matriculated at Balliol College, Oxford in 1834. He graduated B.A. at St Mary Hall in 1839, and took up the position of vicar of Evercreech in 1840. He graduated M.A. in 1841. He trained for the Catholic priesthood at Oscott, with Edward Henry Howard and Edmund Stonor, lifelong friends. He was ordained priest by Wiseman in 1846. In 1847 he was rebuffed by John Henry Newman, when he offered to join Newman's proposed English branch of the Congregation of Oratorians. In the period 1848–9 he worked as a priest at St George's, Southwark.

In 1852, it was Talbot's initiative to found what is now Beda College. In its early years at the English College, Rome it was known as the Collegio Pio.

Last years In 1868, Talbot gave a papal benediction at St John the Evangelist Church, Islington, in a Vespers service to celebrate 25 years since its foundation. Frederick Oakeley, parish priest there, had been at Southwark with Talbot in 1848. From 1869, Talbot was treated by the French alienist , living in his house in Passy. He died there in 1886, and was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery