As a result of the political instability of the time, the 1822 Constitution was suspended just one year later, following the Vilafrancada uprising. Saraiva renounced his public and ecclesiastical offices (he had been elected Deputy of the Nation and made Bishop-Count of Coimbra, as well as Rector of the University of Coimbra) and retired to the Batalha Monastery. He would only return to politics in 1826, after the King granted a new Constitutional Charter, having been again elected to the Chamber of Deputies. When the absolutist Miguel I seized power in 1828, Saraiva once again retreated to monastic life, in the Convent of Serra de Ossa in the Alentejo, where he remained until the end of the Portuguese Civil War.