Diocese of St. Asaph.
This was the most lamentable diocese in Wales.
The Bishop received £8,121 per annum from 23 parishes.
Bishop of St. David’s, £800 from one.
The Dean and Chapter received £1,649 from three parishes. By 29 and 30 Charles II., they received £1,370 from 4 parishes for “Domus and Fabric.”
The Chapter’s eight separate estates amounted to £6,084 from 14 parishes, viz., Dean, £1,987; Precentor, £1,585; Chancellor, £868; Treasurer, £350; four Prebendaries, £1,294.
The Dean and Chapter of Oxford, £2,513 from 4 parishes.
The Dean and Chapter of Winchester, £2,205 from two parishes.
The Vicars-Choral received £846 from three parishes.
The total is £23,588 from 54 parishes; add £2,302 received by the Bishop of Bangor from 4 parishes, which has already been stated under “Bangor Diocese,” or £25,890 from 58 parishes in the Diocese of St. Asaph, was received per annum by three bishops and three chapters.
There were 15 sinecure rectories in this diocese in 1836, with incomes amounting in the aggregate to £6,227 commuted value. The rectors of these benefices had no duties whatever to perform. They received handsome incomes and nothing to do for them. Here was the rich harvest for the bishop’s sons and other relatives. The benefices were all in the bishop’s patronage. Bishop Luxmoore, who was bishop of St. Asaph from 1815 to 1830, had an income of £12,000 per annum, and his two sons and two relatives had between them £15,000 a year from the diocese, i.e. £27,000 per annum received by the father, his two sons and two relatives, at a time when the total net receipts by all the working clergy of this diocese amounted to only £18,000 per annum.[289]