The year 1836 was a turning-point in the episcopal and capitular endowments; the 6 & 7 William IV. c. lxxvii. created the Ecclesiastical Commission. The commissioners utilized the endowments in order to provide for the spiritual destitution of large parishes. Up to 1890, upwards of 5,700 benefices have received £971,700 per annum in perpetuity towards augmenting the incumbent’s incomes. We must add to this the enormous capital sums which have been expended out of the Common Fund of the Commissioners, in erecting some thousands of new parsonages, repairing and clearing off mortgages of others. The average net income of the “Common Fund” is more than one million a year. The gross income of the “Common Fund” of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, on the 31st August, 1890, was £1,722,709; it disbursed that year £1,140,334, leaving a balance of £582,374.[252]
Fully four-fifths of the properties in the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners has come, partly from the ancient public landed endowments granted to archbishops, bishops, and chapters by Anglo-Saxon kings with the consent of their respective Witenagemóts; and partly from the monastic rectorial tithes which were transferred by the Crown to the above corporations in lieu or exchange of landed estates surrendered to the Crown at the period of the Reformation.
The duties performed by the parochial priests for the tithes were their regular duties, including (1) saying mass, (2) praying for the dead, and (3) invoking the saints. But by Acts of Parliament the mass has been suppressed, the dead by some are not prayed for, and the saints are no longer invoked by some who now enjoy the tithe-rent charges.
It is stated in the “Brief” that “when the principal parochial endowments were given, papal supremacy was not admitted by the Church of England, and Roman doctrines were not held.” I have already explained the active part the popes and legates of Rome had taken to introduce the payment of tithes in England. There is not a shadow of doubt that the supremacy of the popes of Rome was admitted by the Church of England when tithes, the principal endowment, commenced to be paid first by custom and afterwards by compulsion in the Anglo-Saxon Church. The Roman doctrines followed the supremacy. The archbishops from the time of Augustine received their palls from the Pope, and Pope Boniface V., in a letter dated A.D. 624, conferred the primacy of all Britain on Justus, Archbishop of Canterbury. The letter contained these remarkable words, “Hanc autem ecclesiam utpote specialiter consistentem sub potestate et tuitione sanctæ Romanæ ecclesiæ.”[253]
Again in 634 Pope Honorius I. conferred the primacy to Canterbury, and again in 668 Pope Vitalian gave the supremacy over all England to Archbishop Theodore.[254]
It must be noted that the endowments of the Church were not all given at once, but were spread over a period of about six hundred years. The period will be longer if we take the time in which the waste and barren lands of Edward VI.’s Act were brought into cultivation; and again the lands and corn-rents awarded by the Inclosure Acts of last and present centuries in lieu of tithes. So the above quotation from the “Brief,” like a great deal more of the book, is nothing but twaddle. The parochial endowments commenced on a small scale in the latter part of the seventh century, when landowners commenced to build churches upon their own estates, and they increased in the eighth and ninth. First the endowments consisted of church, parsonage and glebe; then tithes were added first as free-will offerings. The Norman Conquest made great changes in the Church of England. The Norman monks, who looked on the Pope and obeyed him as the supreme head of the Church, introduced a new plan by inducing landowners to appropriate their churches with their glebe and tithe endowments to them. To give an idea of the enormous impetus which had been given to the erection of monasteries from 1066 to 1215, or 150 years, there were 427 erected in England, possessing extensive endowments in lands and tithes. Add 130 up to A.D. 1066, and we get 557, as the total number in 1215. I have selected 1215, for by the Council of Lateran tithes were henceforth to be paid to the parochial clergy, thus abolishing from 1215 the system of appropriating parochial tithes to monasteries and other bodies. The decadence of building and endowing monasteries commenced with the reign of Richard I. (1189). Tithes were not given to monasteries until after 1066, and from this year to 1215 they had received the tithes of some thousands of parishes. Of course they put vicars in the parishes to perform the religious duties, and allowed them at first certain stipends, but afterwards the small tithes. The question now is, In what respect did the Church of England differ in doctrines and discipline from the Church of Rome from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries, and from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries? The parochial system continued in course of formation for 600 years. During this time the Church received the principal parochial endowments. It cannot be stated with truth that the “Roman doctrines were not held by the Church of England” during this period of 600 years. Neither can it be said with truth that “papal supremacy was not admitted by the Church of England” during the same period.
There is no doubt whatever that the original donors of Church endowments would never have given them to men who not only ignored but utterly detested their most dearly cherished doctrinal views, viz: (1) the mass, (2) prayers for the dead, and (3) praying to the saints. To support this statement, I shall give a quotation from a speech delivered in the House of Lords by Archbishop Howley, in 1840, when speaking on the Cathedral Bill. “They must consider,” he says, “in what times many of the donations of property were made. The persons who have made them might, and probably would, if living in the present day, wish to see them applied in a very different manner.” These remarks were made in reply to the following observations delivered in the same debate by Dr. Sumner, Bishop of Winchester. “What right” he asked, “had the Legislature so to deal with property given for certain specific purposes, not by the State, but by individuals, for ever?” The Archbishop pointedly stated in the speech quoted above, that the “certain specific purposes” existed no longer.[255]
It is again stated in the “Brief” that tithes are not endowments(!) and that they were given “without any specific conditions being attached to their payment.” Is it reasonable to think that tithes were given to the parish priest without a “quid pro quo”? Is not the “quid pro quo” implied in his office? The “Brief” further observes at p. 52: “It is an interesting work for all zealous people concerned in such matters to see, as a matter of public trust, that those who now possess such property[256] shall fulfil the conditions attached to its original grant or bequest.” I cannot defend for one moment the enrichment of the nobility and gentry of this country with Church spoliation. But I ask myself the question: “Do the Bishops of Chester, Gloucester and Bristol, Oxford and Peterborough and their respective chapters, ‘fulfil the conditions attached to the original grant or bequest of the property which they possess?’” We must not forget that the King who endowed them with monastic property, passed the Act commonly called “The Whip with its Six Strings,” and, further, that he died in the full belief of the doctrines of the Church of Rome, then the doctrines of the Church of England, of which he was the supreme head.