APPENDIX D.

Oxford.
£
1. King’s 357
Corpus Christi 1,333
Exeter 807
All Soul’s 2,355
5. Magdalene 2,886
University College 2,958
Jesus[303] 3,576
Oriel 1,487
Pembroke 292
10. Brasenose 115
Balliol 1,491
Queen’s 2,451
Trinity 2,620
Merton 5,125
15. St. John’s 779
Wadham 955
17. Winchester, or New College 10,311
Total £42,898
Cambridge.
£
1. King’s 10,408
Catherine’s Hall 430
Jesus 1,543
Christ 2,637
5. Corpus Christi 150
Magdalene 1,318
University College[304] 4,110
Emmanuel 481
Pembroke 3,154
10. Gonville and Caius 1,292
11. Queen’s 10
St. John’s 5,048
Clare 2,004
Downing 5
St. Peter’s 639
Trinity 33,441
17. Trinity Hall 976
£67,646
Oxford £42,898
Cambridge 67,646
Total for 34 Colleges £110,544
Schools, Charities, and Hospitals=£80,520[305]
Companies and Corporations=£10,971

Christ Church, Oxford, has £39,785 of tithes from eighty-two parishes in eighteen counties. I have not included the amount here, because it is placed among the Chapters, yet all the property is collegiate.

Summary of Colleges, Schools, etc.:—

£
Oxford, 17 Colleges42,898
Cambridge, 17 Colleges67,646
Winchester School7,258
Eton College8,484
Wimborne2,416
Other smaller Schools11,362
Hospitals32,000
Charities8,276
Municipal Corporations5,562
Public Companies6,024
Governors distributing Church Revenues4,129
£196,055

The disclosures made in the Tithe Commutation Return of 1887 (Lord Wolmer’s) as regards the extent of the prebendal and other separate estates, are most astonishing. The four principal officers—Dean, Precentor, Chancellor, and Treasurer—of certain cathedrals, were endowed with separate estates in tithes and lands, in addition to their shares of the Chapter properties. Then the prebendal estates were in the aggregate enormous. I am now dealing only with tithe property. And it is well to remark again that we should add one-half of the commuted value to the commuted value in order to ascertain the original tithe value, according to Sir John Caird’s opinion, that the commuted value of tithes = 4 millions, was 2 millions less than the tithe value = 6 millions. I must also remark, that the rentals of the episcopal, capitular and prebendal tithes, were only one-third their rack-rental value, because the owners had for centuries let all their properties on beneficial leases for years, or on lives for one-third their rack-rental value. The lessees retained the other two-thirds. The tithe-payers had to pay them their tithes in full. In 1835, appeared, for the first time since the reign of Henry VIII., an official Parliamentary Report of the revenues of the Church. The creation of the Ecclesiastical Commission in 1836, and the passing of the Cathedral Act of 1840, led to investigations as to the actual rack-rental value of the episcopal, capitular, and prebendal properties. The leasehold property with which the Act of 1840 vested the Commissioners was ascertained to be only one-third of its rack-rental value, and it was also found that the same remark applied to all the church properties which were let on beneficial leases. This was a vital discovery. The Commissioners set about their Herculean work of enfranchising all the leasehold estates in order that they should obtain for the Church, the two-thirds which the wealthy lessees were receiving. The leases for years are of course long ago in possession of the Commissioners; but a great many leases for lives are still running on, although it is now fifty-one years since the Act of 1840 was passed.

It was never anticipated by Sir Robert Peel, Lord Russell, and other Church reformers, that the net income of the Common Fund of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners would be over one million per annum. Any person who would have said so then would have been considered insane. In 1840 the idea of enfranchising all the leasehold property of the church was not for one moment thought of, and if it were, that it could never be realized.

Without going into the history of the Ecclesiastical Commission, it is essentially necessary to state that this Commission has cleared away, as far as public patronage is concerned with Acts of Parliament, the gross, yes, the disgraceful waste of church endowments. For instance, the present Archdeacon of Surrey, instead of receiving about £6,000 a year, of which £4,539 came from the tithe-rent charges, has a canonry in Winchester Cathedral, gross income £1,000 per annum, and the vicarage of Frensham, with net income £400 and house. An Order in Council divided, respecting vested interests, the Archdeacon’s enormous income among poor benefices and endowed new churches in the parishes where the tithes arose. This is a good specimen of all the operations of the Commissioners. Incumbents possessing enormous incomes, whose benefices were in public patronage, have been dealt with by Orders in Council, and by private Acts of Parliament, in a similar manner, on the next avoidances, when the new incumbents were appointed, on very reduced incomes, and the residue divided among the poorer incumbents in the same parishes. Then as regards the episcopal, capitular, and prebendal revenues, the Commissioners allow the bishops and chapters their incomes as set forth in Acts of Parliament and Orders in Council, and with the residue of the immense property, they satisfy local claims of parishes where the tithes arose or landed estates were situate. As for the prebendal properties, separate estates of capitular offices, sinecure rectories and dissolved canonries, the Cathedral Act of 1840 vested them in the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for the good of the Common Fund, but Parliament allowed local claims on the tithes only. In a subsequent Act (1860), the local claims were extended, rather unwisely, to all kinds of church property. Hence we find many country parishes, with a population of a few hundreds, richly endowed and furnished with comfortable, well-built parsonages. The incumbents claim this by virtue of the extension clause of the local claims. The Commissioners have therefore been bound to satisfy local claims of hundreds of parishes with populations varying from 150 to 300, while the teeming populations of the town parishes have to go without help from the above resources. About £360,000 per annum has been given out of the Common Fund to satisfy local claims up to 1890. The Commissioners were opposed to this extension clause, and it was not in the Bill, but was inserted and carried by members of Parliament after the Bill was introduced, who had churches on their own estates, and in their neighbourhood, where large church endowments existed. The clause included all the landed estates and house property of the bishops, chapters, prebendaries, sinecure rectories, etc. In London there are lamentable cases of small incomes in parishes where there are no local claims, and large incomes of adjacent parishes, arising from local claims.

For example, the Finsbury estate in London consists of three acres of land, which were given, in the fourteenth century, by a layman to St. Paul’s for the support of one prebendary. The Corporation of London leased this estate from the dean and chapter, and built valuable houses upon it. The Act of 1840 vested this property, on the expiration of the lease, in the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. In 1867 the lease expired, and the Commissioners came into possession of £60,000 per annum from the rentals of this property. By the Act of 1840, there would be no local claim, for none of this revenue came from tithes. But by the Act of 1860, there was a local claim. Hence eighteen district churches within the parish had their incumbents’ incomes raised to £500 a year each; new costly parsonage houses were erected, and large annual sums are allowed to the churchwardens of all these churches for the church services and repair of churches. But not a shilling was given to the poor incumbents in the adjacent populous parochial districts.