he had no hesitation in officiating. He was a fine reader and an able speaker, his delivery of the Church ritual being a model of correct elocution.
Like his predecessor, he held the living a long time, the tenure of the two covering a century. Mr. Fisher resided for a number of years at Bentley Hall.
In 1887, soon after Mr. Fisher’s “Jubilee” in Willenhall, a public movement was instituted, in which many Dissenters took part, to acknowledge his fifty years of devoted service among all classes of the community. A presentation was made to him of a silver service and his portrait in oils—the latter the work of Thomas Hill, a native of Wednesfield, and which now hangs on the walls of the Free Public Library.
XX.—The Election of 1894, and Since.
Although St. Giles’s Church is known as the Parish Church, and a church has probably been on the same site some six centuries, the church of Willenhall is really a Proprietary Chapel of Ease, and its Incumbent legally nothing more than a Perpetual Curate, or Curate in Charge, though Incumbent of Willenhall, and receiving in respect of that office a very substantial “living.” The official return set forth in Crockford’s Clergy Directory for 1893 was: Tithe rent charge, £640, net Income, £1,300.
Strictly, there is no St. Giles’s parish, nor any parish attached to St. Giles’s Church, and in law the Incumbent might, if he wished, ignore the so-called parish so long as he performed satisfactorily certain duties in the church. The unappropriated district, commonly known as St. Giles’s parish, includes that part of Willenhall which has not been allocated to the properly constituted parishes (or ecclesiastical districts) of St. Stephen’s, St. Anne’s, and Holy Trinity, Short Heath, plus the entire civil parish of Bentley—the whole being really part of the ecclesiastical parish of Wolverhampton.
The position is extraordinarily anomalous. The Incumbent is elected by the inhabitants of the township of Willenhall being sufficient householders and having lands of inheritance there; that is to say, the voters must be freeholders as well as householders. Litigation followed the choice of the Rev. William Moreton in 1788, and also the election of the Rev. G. H. Fisher in 1834. It is understood that this system of “patronage” has been condemned by the Privy Council; and that application has been made for the proper constitution of a St. Giles’s parish, but the Bishop demands a quid pro quo.
All attempts to create a Parish of Willenhall have, so far, utterly failed. The existing system of patronage is always the obstacle, and nothing will induce the voters either to sell or to surrender their rights in the Advowson.
To fully realise the position it must be borne in mind that in addition to the three constituted “parishes” created within the original township of Willenhall since Mr. Fisher became Incumbent of Willenhall in 1834, Short Heath is now a separate township, with separate District Council, and that Bentley has its Rural District Council—so that persons who live in Bentley parish, Short Heath parish, the three constituted ecclesiastical district parishes or districts, and the unappropriated remainder of the township (nominally St. Giles’s parish), have all the right to vote for the clergyman if they have the necessary other qualifications of householder and freeholder.