Background
He was born Richard Mason in the county of Wiltshire, England, in 1599.
He was born Richard Mason in the county of Wiltshire, England, in 1599.
Like a number of English Roman Catholics under the Penal laws who desired to enter religious life, he went to Douai in the County of Flanders, then the Spanish Netherlands. He was professed in 1625, and ordained to the priesthood four years later. There is the suggestion in some documents of the Order that he served for a time in Ireland after this, possibly himself being of Irish descent.
Mason rapidly became eminent in the Order, being created a Doctor of Divinity and appointed successively to the high administrative offices of Definitor, Guardian and Visitor to the Franciscan province of Brabant.
In that office, he visited Paris in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain permission for the settlement there of a colony of English Franciscan Sisters from their convent in Nieuwpoort in Flanders, where he had served as their confessor. From 1662-1675 he lived in England, as domestic chaplain to Lord Henry Arundell, 3rd Baron Arundell of Wardour, after which period he retired to the friary at Douai, where he died on 30 December 1678.