 As his parents did not want him to enter the Benedictine noviciate immediately after finishing at Downside, he spent a brief period at the short-lived Catholic University College in Kensington, London, as well as travelling throughout Europe.Butler entered the noviciate at Belmont Abbey in Herefordshire in 1876.Reflecting on his entry into the abbey in a manuscript written between 1891 and 1892, he wrote