Sardinian Embassy Chapel

The Sardinian Embassy Chapel wan an important Roman Catholic church attached to the Embassy of the Kingdom of Sardinia in the Lincoln's Inn area of London.

London's 18th-century Roman Catholic Bishop, Richard Challoner, called the Embassy Chapel" the chief support of religion in London," where it served as an "ersatz cathedral."

Embassies were a very particular subset of clandestine churches. Early modern embassy staff, who commonly lived in the ambassadorial residence, were permitted to have in-house chapels and chaplains, especially where, in the wake of the Reformation, they lived in a country that banned their religious faith. These soon drew members of the same faith to join the worship services in the embassy. In London, the streets outside the houses and house chapels of the Spanish, French and Venetian Embassies were the scenes of public protests, sometimes violent. English police sometimes attempted to English subjects who attended Catholic services in the Embassy Chapels. But Embassy Chapels were not exclusive to England or to Catholic Embassies. The Dutch Republic sponsored chapels in 12 of its embassies, which acted as churches for local Reformed Protestants. Emperor Leopold I sponsored them wherever he could, "That Catholic services might be held to comfort the Catholics of the are, and to promote the further growth of this religion." By the late eighteenth century, a new legal principle had come into being, extraterritoriality, according to which, "the ambassador and the precincts of the embassy stood as if on the soil of his homeland, subject only to its laws."

In thie eighteenth century, English subjects ceased to be harassed for attending services at teh Sardinian Embassy, whch constructed an handsome and spacious church, richly endowed with silver plate and works of art. The silver, which still belongs to the chapel, is now on loan and display at teh Victoria and Albert Museum.