The total rateable value of the episcopal, capitular and parsonage houses = £11,151 + £18,928 + £518,054 respectively = £548,133. The rack-rental value is about £800,000 a year.
Dealing with the fluctuating part of the beneficed clergy’s income, we may safely estimate fees, pew-rents and Easter offerings at £1,000,000 a year. In arriving at this amount I have been guided by certain well-known official data. (1) The average fluctuating incomes of the 115 rectors in the old parish of Manchester were, for 1890, £142 each. (2) The 987 benefices of Wales and Monmouth had, in 1890, £10 each. My conclusion, therefore, is that 4,600 benefices get, like Manchester, £653,000; 4,600 get £300,000; and 4,779 get the Welsh rate, viz., £48,000. Total, £1,000,000. It varies from one to one and a half millions a year.
In 1890 we may safely take the following as the correct gross aggregate revenues of the beneficed clergy:—£3,941,057 + £272,605 + £617,000 (C.F.) + £1,000,000 = £5,830,662 or £415 each; net £334 calculated like the net £262 above. But £6,000,000 a year for the 13,979 incumbents is nearer the truth. Add to 11,667 with parsonages, a rental of £52 a year for house = net average for each of the 11,667 £386. We have, at last, a correct idea of the immense wealth of the beneficed clergy alone.
FOOTNOTES
[1] “The History of Tithes from Abraham to Queen Victoria,” 1887.
[2] “Facts and Fictions,” pp. 280, 281.
[3] Selden’s “History of Tithes,” p. 169.
[4] Van Espen, “jus Univ. Canon,” pars. ii. sec. 4.
[5] See Kemble’s “Anglo-Saxons,” New Ed.: 1876, vol. ii. 473.
[6] “Facts and Fictions,” pp. 9, 47.