Nevertheless, this did not save the convents from the wrath of the French revolutionaries. Like their French counterparts, the English nuns were visited, their belongings catalogued and their homes seized before they were imprisoned. The Cambrai Benedictines even spent time sharing a prison with the 16 Carmelite nuns from Compiègne, who would be guillotined by the revolutionaries in 1794 and become the subject of Francis Poulenc's opera Dialogues of the Carmelites.

In the face of this violence, some communities fled, rescuing what possessions they could. Those in prison presented a problem for the authorities: despite residing abroad, they were English nationals. Not wishing to provoke the British Empire at this early stage of revolution, the French authorities thus exiled the nuns from their adopted homeland.

Of course, Catholicism remained illegal in the England to which they returned, the raft of penal laws against Catholics still present on the statute books. Yet the "ordered" English government could not be seen to be doing the French revolutionaries' work, so the nuns returned and continued their community existence, receiving property from members of the Catholic landed classes. As such, their very presence would become a tool for necessitating the emancipation of Catholics, finally granted in 1829.

A number of the communities still exist. For example, the Cambrai Benedictines eventually settled at Stanbrook Abbey in Worcestershire, with Edward Welby Pugin helping in its design. The community has recently moved to a new home on the Yorkshire moors. The Sepulchrines from Liège brought back with them the pioneering education of girls which the convents provided abroad; they settled in Chelmsford, Essex, and established the well-known independent school New Hall.