The almost invariable custom was for the body of the parishioners at a vestry meeting in Easter week to choose two church-wardens for the next year. But neither the number nor the mode of appointment was at this time quite fixed. During the first half of the seventeenth century clergymen were inclined to magnify their office, and the canons of 1603 and 1639 gave to the minister of the parish some control over the choice of the wardens; although whenever the rights of the parishioners were asserted and an established custom shown, the courts upheld this custom against ecclesiastical encroachments. [Footnote: Toulmin Smith, The Parish, 78-87.]
The financial powers of the church-wardens were considerable, though exercised in most cases along with the constable, and in many only after the approval of the whole body of parishioners at a vestry meeting. They had, of course, the duty of providing for the repairs of the church and of taxing their neighbors for this purpose. Unless previously settled upon by the parishioners themselves, they levied and collected the local taxes already described as being imposed by the justices upon the parishes for various purposes. They had the power to seize and sell the property of such parishioners as refused or neglected to pay the amounts assessed upon them. Many of the parishes also received considerable sums by gift or bequest, which were invested, and the income expended for the poor or other parish objects. [Footnote: Ibid., chap, v., App.]
Property in land and houses also belonged to some parishes, apart from the minister's glebe, and the renting and accounts fell within the church-warden's duties. Various means of combining the securing of funds with much neighborhood merriment, even in those days of militant Puritanism, were used by the parish authorities, such as "church-ales," "pigeon-holes," Hock-tide games, Easter games, processions, and festive gatherings, at all of which farthings, pence, and shillings were gathered. [Footnote: Various quotations in Toulmin Smith, The Parish, chap, vii., S 12.] Such accounts of these various funds and the record of the thousand and one petty expenditures for local purposes as were kept were usually the work of the church-wardens and made their office one of real local importance. In fact, a whole cycle of parish life passes before us in these accounts. "Paid the carpenters 5s. for a barrow to carry the people that died of the sickness to church to bury them." "For a coat for the whipper, and making, 3s." "For too payre of glovys for Robin Hode and Mayde Maryan, 3d." "Received for the May- pole, 1 pound 4s." "Paid Robert Warden, the constable, which he disbursed for carrying away the witches, 11s." [Footnote: Ibid., 465- 472.]
The church-wardens, under a law of Queen Mary, [Footnote: 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, chap. viii.] with the constables and parishioners, selected the surveyors of highways; and under two statutes of Queen Elizabeth [Footnote: 8 Eliz., chap, xv., and 14 Eliz., chap. xi.] every year appointed two men who should be named "the distributers of the provision for the destruction of noisome fowle and vermine." A tax was levied upon the parishioners to provide these officers with funds, and it then became their duty to pay bounties for the heads and eggs of crows, rooks, starlings, and many other birds. A long list of four- footed beasts is also included in the definition of "vermine," and rates ranging from a shilling for a fox to a halfpenny for a mole were established. [Footnote: Lambarde, Office of Distributers, etc., 92.] The mole-catcher was a regular employe of some parishes. [Footnote: Hist. MSS. Commission, Report III., App., 331; V., App., 597.]
Finally, the church-wardens were ex-officio overseers of the poor. By the great poor law of 1597 the church-wardens, along with four overseers of the poor appointed each year at Easter by the justices, had the whole charge of the relief of the poor. [Footnote: 8 Leonard, The Poor Law, 76, etc.]
They were to estimate the annual costs and to tax their fellow-townsmen for this purpose. From this time forward taxation for the poor under the control of parish officers became the most important, as it was the heaviest, of local charges. The constant efforts of the Privy Council, through the justices of the peace, to enforce the poor law, kept church-wardens and other overseers of the poor up to their duties and engaged them in constant conferences with the justices and in making reports, as well as in the actual work of poor relief.
A vestry clerk existed in some parishes, and later such an office became quite general and influential, but at this period the records were generally preserved by one of the church-wardens or by the minister. The vestry-clerk is of special interest as being apparently the prototype of the town-clerk in the American colonies. [Footnote: Howard, Local Constitutional History of the U. S., 39.]
Various other petty officers existed, but their duties were either identical with those already described, or insignificant, or so exceptional as not to reward inquiry and description here. Such were the beadle, sexton, haywards, ale-conners, waymen, way-wardens, sidesmen, synodsmen, swornmen, questmen, and perhaps some others. [Footnote: Discussed in Charming, Town and County Government in the English Colonies (Johns Hopkins University Studies, II.), No. 10, p. 18, etc.]
Such being the officers whose sphere of activity was the parish, it remains to describe the general assembly of the people of the parish, the vestry. This name arose apparently from the practice of meeting in the part of the church in which the vestments were kept. Ordinarily, all who held house or land in a parish, no matter on what tenure, were members of the vestry of the parish. All inhabitants, therefore—land- owners, free tenants, copy-holders, laborers occupying cottages, even those who held land in the parish but lived somewhere else—were by law at liberty to attend the meetings of the parishioners and to join in the exercise of their functions.
Such a body is of great interest. [Footnote: Coke, 5 Report, 66, 67.] Those officials whose positions and functions have been discussed in the two preceding chapters drew all their powers from the crown, and the duties that they performed were imposed upon them by statute law or by royal instruction. The same is true of a considerable part of the activity of constables and church-wardens. But the vestry of the parish existed as a body which within certain limits had powers of government of its own, and could impose duties upon parish officials, appoint committees and require services from them, adopt by-laws which bound all the inhabitants, and impose taxes upon the landholders of the parish which they were bound to pay.