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Holy Scriptures and the law of God, which were formerly granted by the pope,* and which is the foundation of his granting special licenses to marry at any time or place, to hold two livings, and the like. And on this also is founded the right he exercises of conferring degrees in prejudice of the two universities. When the dominion of the pope was overturned in this country, this prerogative of dispensing with the canons of the church was transferred by that statute to the archbishop of Canterbury, in all cases in which dispensations were accustomed to be obtained at Rome; but in unaccustomed cases the matter is always referred to the king in council. The pope took upon him to dispense with every ecclesiastical canon and ordinance. But in some of the cases where the archbishop alone has authority to dispense, his dispensation with the canon, such as to hold two livings, must be confirmed under the great seal. But although the archbishop can confer all the degrees which are taken in the universities, yet the graduates of the two universities, by various acts of parliament and other regulations, are entitled to many privileges which are not extended to what is called a Lambeth degree: as, for instance, those degrees which are a qualification for a dispensation to hold two livings, are confined by 31 Henry VIII., c. 13, to the two ⚫ universities.

Besides the administration of certain holy ordinances peculiar to that sacred order, the power of an archbishop principally consists in inspecting the manners of the people and clergy, and punishing them by ecclesiastical censures in order to their reformation. For this purpose he has several courts under him, and may visit at pleasure any part of his province. He appoints his chancellor to hold his courts for him, and to assist him in matters of ecclesiastical law; who, as well as all other ecclesiastical officers if lay or married, must be a doctor of the civil law in some university. It is also the business of a bishop to institute, and to direct induction to all ecclesiastical livings in his diocese.

Archbishoprics and bishoprics may become void by death, deprivation for any very gross or notorious crime, and also by resignation. All resignations must be made to some superior. Therefore a bishop must resign to his metropolitan, or archbishop of his province; but the archbishop can resign to none but the king himself. An archbishop has the titles and styles of Grace, and Most Reverend Father in God by Divine providence; the bishops those of Lord, and Right Reverend Father in God by Divine permission. Archbishops are enthroned, and bishops are installed.

II. A dean and chapter are the bishop's council, to assist him with their advice in affairs of religion, and also in the temporal affairs of his see. When the rest of the clergy were settled in the several parishes, the dean and chapter were reserved for the celebration of divine service in the bishop's own cathedral. The chief of those who presided over the rest, obtained the name of decanus or dean, being probably at first appointed to superintend ten canons or prebendaries, that is, clergymen.

All the ancient deans are elected by the chapter, by conge d'elire from the king, and letters missive of recommendation, in the same manner as the bishops; but in those chapters that were founded by Henry VIII., out of the spoils of the dissolved monasteries, the deanery is donative, and the installation is merely by the king's letters patent. The chapter, consisting of canons or prebendaries, are sometimes appointed by the king, sometimes by the bishop, and sometimes they are elected by each other. The new deans and chapters which Henry VIII. added to the old bishoprics, are eight, viz. Canterbury, Norwich, Winchester, Durham, Ely, Rochester, Worcester, and Carlisle. That bluff monarch founded five new bishoprics, with new deans and chapters, out of the lands of the suppressed monasteries, viz. Peterborough, Chester, Gloucester, Bristol, and Oxford. He also founded a bishopric at Westminster, and Thomas Thirlby was the only bishop that ever filled that see. He surrendered the bishopric to Edward VI., 30th March, 1550; and on the same day it was dissolved, and re-annexed to the see of London. Queen Mary afterwards filled the church with Benedictine monks; and Elizabeth, with the concurrence of parliament, turned it into a collegiate church subject to a dean.

As before observed, the dean and chapter are the nominal electors of a bishop. The

25 Henry VIII., c. 21.

bishop is their ordinary and immediate superior; and, generally speaking, has the power of visiting them, and checking any irregularities into which they may fall. They had also a check on the bishop at common law, for till the statute 32 Henry VIII. the bishop's grant or lease would not have bound his successors unless confirmed by the dean and chapter.

Deaneries and prebends may become void, like a bishopric, by death, deprivation, or by resignation to either the king or the bishop. And it may be once for all observed, that if a dean or prebendary, or other spiritual person, be made a bishop, all the preferments of which he was before possessed become void, and the king may present to them in right of his prerogative royal. They are not void by the election, but only by the consecration.

Every diocese in England is divided into archdeaconries. There are sixty altogether; and again each archdeaconry is subdivided into deaneries. Deaneries are again parted into parishes, towns, and hamlets. The divisions into parishes were not done at first, but a considerable time after the introduction of Christianity. For many centuries after Christ, every bishop was universal incumbent of his diocese, and which was originally called a parish. He lived at the mother church or cathedral, and all his clergy lived in common with him. Although the bishop sent out clergy to reside constantly in newly erected stations, yet he still reserved a certain number in his cathedral to counsel and assist him. These were afterwards named deans and prebendaries, or canons.

In their original institution archdeacons had no relation to the diocese. They were chosen by the bishop to have the charge of the deacons, who are the lowest order in the church. By degrees this office became universal, and they began to share with the bishop in his authority. Their proper business was to attend the bishop at the altar, to direct the deacons and other inferior officers in their several duties, for the due performance of divine service. They attended the bishop at ordinations, and assisted him in managing the revenues of the church; but did not possess any of that jurisdiction either in the cathedral or the diocese, with which they are now invested. The council of Laodicea, in the year 360, ordained that no bishops should be placed in country villages, but only itinerant or visiting presbyters. The archdeacon being always near to the bishop, was frequently employed by him in visiting the clergy of his diocese, and in the despatch of other matters relating to the episcopal cure ; so that, by the beginning of the seventh century, the archdeacon seems to have been fully possessed of the chief care and inspection of the diocese, in subordination to the bishop. The canon law styles the archdeacon the bishop's eye. In the bishop's absence he has power to hold visitations, and, under the bishop, power to examine candidates for holy orders. He also gives institution and induction to benefices. He excommunicates, imposes penances, suspends, corrects, inspects and reforms irregularities and abuses among the clergy. He has the charge of the parochial churches within the diocese. In short, he supplies the bishop's absence, and is his vicegerent.

The institution of deaneries is something analogous to the division of the civil government into hundreds, tithings, and frank pledges. Bearing some resemblance to this, every bishop divided his diocese into deaneries, each of which contained a district of ten parish churches. Over every such deanery, or decennery, the bishop appointed a dean. In England there are four sorts of deans and deaneries. The first is a dean who has a chapter consisting of prebendaries or canons subordinate to the bishop. The dean and his chapter are the bishop's councillors both in the spiritual and temporal affairs of his diocese. This council became necessary after the subdivision of parishes, when the whole body of his clergy were dispersed throughout his diocese. This council was instituted to assist the bishop, that the burden of the whole church and its government might not lie entirely on the bishop's shoulders. The second is a dean without a chapter. He is presentative, and has cure of souls. He has a court, and holds jurisdiction, but is not subject to the bishop's visitation. The third dean is also ecclesiastical. His deanery is donative, but he has no cure of souls. He has a court, and holds plea and jurisdiction within his peculiar, of all ecclesiastical matters and things. The fourth are the rural deans. They have no absolute judicial power, but are to order the ecclesiastical affairs within their deanery and precinct under the bishop's or archdeacon's directions, and in many cases act as the bishop's substitutes. All the ancient deans were elected by the chapter, by conge d' elire from the king, accompanied by letters missive

of recommendation, in the same manner as the bishops. Those which have been erected since the Reformation are donative, and possession is given by letters patent from the

crown.

After the bishops dispersed the body of their clergy to the care of parochial churches, they reserved a college of priests for counsel and assistance to themselves, and for the constant celebration of divine service at the cathedral church of the diocese. Among these the tenth person had ar. inspecting or presiding power, till in time the dean swallowed up the office of all the inferior, and in subordination to the bishop became governor of the whole society. The dean had authority over all the canons, presbyters, and vicars. He gave them possession when instituted by the bishop. He inspected their discharge of the cure of souls. He convened and presided in chapters, and heard and determined causes. He visited all churches within the limits of his jurisdiction once in three years. Men of this dignity were called archipresbyters, because they had a superintendence or primacy over all their college of priests. The title of dean is a title of dignity. The canons require deans to reside at their cathedral churches fourscore and ten days at the least, conjunctim or divisim, in every year at least. And while there he is to preach the word of God, and keep good hospitality, unless he is otherwise hindered by good and weighty reasons known to, and allowed by, the bishop. A dean and chapter is a body corporate spiritual. They were originally selected by the bishop as his council, but they derive their corporate capacity from the crown. By degrees their dependance on and relation to the bishop gradually diminished, till at last the bishop has little more power left to him than that of visiting them, and he scarcely nominates the one half of them.*

III. An archdeacon has an ecclesiastical jurisdiction immediately subordinate to the bishop, throughout the whole of his diocese, or in some particular part of it. He is usually appointed by the bishop himself, and has an authority which was originally derived from the bishop, but is now independent and distinct from his. He therefore visits the clergy, and has his separate court for punishment of offenders by spiritual censures, and for hearing all other causes of ecclesiastical cognizance,

IV. Rural deans are very ancient officers in the church, but are now almost grown out of use, though their deaneries still subsist as an ecclesiastical division of the diocese, or archdeaconry. They seem to have been the bishop's deputies, planted all round his diocese, for the better inspection of the parochial clergy, to inquire into and report dilapidations, and to examine candidates for confirmation, and were armed in minuter matters with an inferior degree of judicial and coercive authority.

V. The next, and indeed the most numerous, order of men, in the system of ecclesiastical polity, are the parsons and vicars of churches. In treating of whom it will be necessary to mark out the distinction between them; to observe the method by which one may become a parson or vicar; briefly notice their rights and duties; and lastly, show how one may cease to be either. §

A parson, persona ecclesia, is one that has full possession of all the rights of a parochial church. He is called parson, persona, because by his person the church is represented; and he is himself a corporation sole, in order to defend and protect the rights of the church which he personates by a perpetual succession. He is sometimes called the rector or governor of the church; but the appellation of parson (however it may be depreciated by familiar, clownish, and indiscriminate use) is the most legal, and most honourable title that a parish priest can enjoy; because, says Sir Edward Coke, such a one, and he only, is said, vicem ser personam ecclesiæ gerere. A parson has during his life the freehold in himself of the parsonage house, the glebe, the tithes, and other dues. But these are sometimes appropriated; that is to say, the benefice is perpetually annexed to some spiritual corporation, either sole or aggregate, being the patron of the living, which the law esteems equally capable of providing for the service of the church as any single private gentleman. This contrivance seems to have sprung from the policy of the monastic orders, who have never been deficient

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in subtile inventions for the increase of their own power and emoluments. At the first establishment of parochial clergy, the tithes were distributed between the bishop and the incumbent. But when the bishops' sees became otherwise endowed, the bishops were prohibited from demanding their usual share of the tithes, and hence it was inferred by the monasteries, that a small part was sufficient for the officiating priest, and that the principal part of the tithes should be appropriated to the use of their fraternities, subject to the burden of repairing the church and providing for its constant supply; the endowment of which was construed to be a work of the most exalted piety. And therefore they begged, and bought for masses and obits and sometimes for money, all the advowsons within their reach, and then appropriated the benefices to the use of their own corporations. But it was necessary, in order to complete such appropriation effectually, to obtain the king's license and the bishop's consent; because some time or other either the king or the bishop might have an interest by lapse in the presentation to the benefice, which can never happen if it be appropriated to the use of a corporation, which never dies; and also because the law reposes a confidence in them, that they will not consent to anything prejudicial to the interests of the church. The patron's consent is also necessarily implied; because, as was before observed, appropriation can be originally made to none, but to such spiritual corporation as is also the patron of the church. The whole being indeed nothing else, but an allowance for the patrons to retain the tithes and glebe in their own hands, without presenting any clerk, they themselves undertaking to provide for the church. When the appropriation is thus made, the appropriators and their successors are perpetual parsons of the church, and must sue and be sued, in all matters concerning the rights of the church, by the name of parsons.

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This appropriation may be severed, and the church become disappropriate, two ways: as first, if the patron or appropriator presents a clerk, who is instituted or inducted to the parsonage; for the incumbent to be instituted and inducted, is to all intents and purposes a complete parson; and the appropriation, being once severed, can never again be reunited, unless by a repetition of the same solemnities. And when the clerk so presented is distinct from the vicar, the rectory, thus vested in him, becomes what is called a sinecure; because he has no cure of souls, having a vicar under him to whom that cure is committed. Professor Christian is of opinion, that the appropriator cannot create a sinecure rector. But if he should either by design or mistake present his clerk to the parsonage, it is held that the vicarage will ever afterwards be dissolved, and the incumbent will be entitled to all the tithes and dues of the church as rector. Wherever a rector and vicar are presented and instituted to the same benefice, the rector is excused all duty, and has what is properly called a sinecure. But where there is only one incumbent, the benefice is not in law a sinecure, though there should be neither a church nor any inhabitants within the parish. Also if the corporation which has the appropriation is dissolved, the parsonage becomes disappropriate at common law, because the perpetuity of person is gone, which is necessary to support the appropriation. In this manner were most, if not all of the appropriations at present existing, originally made; being annexed to bishoprics, prebends, religious houses, nay even to nunneries and certain military orders, all of which were spiritual corporations. And although, subject to the same conditions, appropriations may be made at the present day, yet it surely may be questioned whether such a power any longer exists. It cannot be supposed that at this day, the inhabitants of a parish, who had been accustomed to pay their tithes to their officiating minister, could be compelled to transfer them to an ecclesiastical corporation, to which they might perhaps be perfect strangers. Appropriations are said to have originated from an opinion eagerly inculcated by the monks, that tithes and oblations, though payable to some church, yet were an arbitrary donation, which might be given, as a reward for religious services to any person from whom he received those services. Till the monks got complete possession of the revenues of the church, they spared no pains to recommend themselves as the most deserving objects of the gratitude and benefaction of the parish. There probably have been no new appropriations, since the dissolution of the

*Burns' Ecc. Law.

monasteries by Henry VIII.* At which time the appropriations of the several parsonages which belonged to those respective religious houses (amounting to more than one-third of all the parishes in England) would have been by the rules of the common law disappropriated, had not a clause in these statutes intervened to give them to the king in as ample a manner as the abbots, &c., formerly held the same at the time of their dissolution. Although this was far from being defensible, it was not without a precedent. The same thing was done in former reigns, when the alien priories, that is, such as were filled by foreigners only, were dissolved and given to the crown. From these two roots have sprung all the lay appropriations of secular parsonages which we now see in the kingdom. Having been granted out after the Reformation by the crown; and Sir Henry Spelman says, "these are now called impropriations, as being improperly in the hands of laymen."

These appropriating corporations, or religious houses, were wont to depute one of their own body to perform divine service, and administer the sacraments, in those parishes in which the society or corporation was the parson. This officiating minister was in reality no more than a curate, deputy, or vicegerent of the appropriator, and therefore was called vicarius or vicar. His stipend was at the discretion of the appropriator, who was however bound of common right to find somebody to be responsible to him for the temporalities, and to the bishop for the spiritualities. But this was done in so scandalous a manner, and the parishes suffered so much by the appropriators' (that is the monks') neglect, that the legislature was forced to interpose. Accordingly it was enacted, that in all appropriations of churches, the diocesan bishop shall ordain (in proportion to the value of the church) a competent sum to be distributed among the poor parishioners annually; and that the vicarage shall be sufficiently endowed. It seems the parishes were frequently sufferers, not only by the want of divine service, but also by withholding those alms which had formerly been collected for the poor; and therefore in this act a pension is directed to be distributed among the poor parochians, as well as a sufficient stipend to the vicar. But being liable to removal at the pleasure of the appropriator, he was not likely to insist too rigidly on the legal sufficiency of the stipend; and therefore by a later statute§ it is ordained, that the vicar shall be a secular person, not a member of any religious house; that he shall be vicar perpetual, and not removable at the caprice of the monastery; that he shall be canonically instituted and inducted, and be sufficiently endowed, at the discretion of the bishop for these three express purposes: “to do divine service, to teach the people, and to keep hospitality." The endowments in consequence of these statutes, have usually been by a portion of the glebe or land belonging to the parsonage, and a particular share of the tithes which the appropriators found it most troublesome to collect, and which are therefore generally called privy or small tithes, the greater or prædial tithes being still reserved to their own use. [] But one and the same rule was not observed in the endowment of all vicarages: hence some are more liberally, and some more scantily endowed; and hence the tithes of many things, as wood in particular, are in some parishes rectorial, and in others are vicarial tithes.

From this act we may date the establishment of vicarages. Before this time the vicar in general was nothing more than a temporary curate, and when the church was appropriated to a monastery, he was generally one of their own body, that is, one of the regular clergy. The monks, who lived secundum regulas, that is, according to the rules of their respective houses or societies, were denominated regular clergy, in contradistinction to the parochial clergy, who performed their ministry in the world, in seculo, and who from thence were called secular clergy. All the tithes or dues of the church, of right belonged to the rector, or to the appropriator or impropriator, who have the same rights as the rector; and the vicar is only entitled to that portion which is expressed in his endowment, or what his predecessors have enjoyed by immemorial prescription, which is equivalent to a grant or endowment. And where there is an endowment, he may in general recover all that is contained in it; and he may still retain what he and his predecessors have enjoyed by prescription, though not expressed in it; for such a prescription amounts to evidence of another

*27 and 31 Henry VIII.

Henry IV., c. 1.

Selden on Tithes.
See article Tithes.

15 Richard II., c. 6. ¶ Henry IV.

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