A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

But sinecure rectors and rectories are now in the course of gradual suppression, and will soon have entirely passed away; for it is declared by the stat. 3 & 4 Vict. c. 113, that all ecclesiastical rectories, without cure of souls, in the sole patronage of her Majesty, or of any ecclesiastical corporation, aggregate or sole, where there shall be a vicar endowed or a perpetual curate, shall, as to all such rectories as may be vacant at the passing of that act, immediately upon its so passing, and as to all others immediately upon the vacancies thereof respectively, be suppressed; and that as to any such ecclesiastical rectory without cure of souls, the advowson whereof, or any right of patronage wherein, shall belong to any person or persons, or body corporate, other than as aforesaid, the ecclesiastical commissioners for England shall be authorized and empowered to purchase and accept conveyance of such advowson or right of patronage, as the case may be, at and for such price or sum as may be agreed upon between them and the owner or owners of such advowson or right of patronage, and may pay the purchase money, and the expenses of and attendant upon such purchase, out of the common fund in their hands; and that after the completion of such purchase of any such rectory, and upon the first avoidance thereof, the same shall be suppressed; and that upon the suppression of any such rectory as aforesaid, all ecclesiastical patronage, belonging to the rector thereof as such rector, shall be absolutely transferred to, and be vested in, the original patron or patrons of such rectory.

The office of vicar, as distinct from that of rector, would sufficiently appear from what has been already said of the latter. The vicar was originally little more than a stipendiary curate of the present day, being a minister deputed or substituted by the spiritual corporation, who held the revenues of the benefice, to perform the ecclesiastical duties in their stead. Usually, though not always, he was one of their own body; and his stipend was entirely at their discretion, and he was removable at their caprice. The evil results of such a practice are apparent; and an effectual attempt to arrest the evil was made by a statute in the reign of Richard II.; but this was found to be insufficient; and accordingly it was enacted by statute 4 Henry IV. c. 12, that the vicar should be a secular ecclesiastic; perpetual; not removable at the caprice of the monastery; that he should be canonically instituted and inducted; that he should be sufficiently endowed at the discretion of the ordinary to do Divine service, to inform the people, and to keep hospitality. It is under this latter statute, therefore, that our vicarages in their present form came into existence, and the endowments of them have usually been by a portion of the glebe or land belonging to the parsonage; and a particular share of the tithes which the appropriators found it most troublesome to collect, and which are therefore generally called privy or small tithes, the greater or prœdial tithes being still reserved to their own use. But one and the same rule was not observed in the endowment of all vicarages. Hence some are more liberally, and some more scantily, endowed; and hence the tithes of many things, as wood in particular, are in some parishes rectorial, and in some, vicarial tithes.

The distinction, therefore, between a rector and a vicar, at the present day, is this, that the rector has generally the whole right to all the ecclesiastical dues within his parish; the vicar is entitled only to a certain portion of those profits, the best part of which are absorbed by the appropriator, to whom, if appropriations had continued as in their origin, he would in effect be perpetual curate with a fixed salary.

The parson, and not the patron of the parsonage, is of common right the patron of the vicarage. The parson, by making the endowment, acquires the patronage of the vicarage. For, in order to the appropriation of a parsonage, the inheritance of the advowson was to be transferred to the corporation to which the church was to be appropriated; and then the vicarage being derived out of the parsonage, the parson, of common right, must be patron thereof. So that if the parson makes a lease of the parsonage, (without making a special reservation to himself of the right of presenting to the vicarage,) the patronage of the vicarage passeth as incident to it. But it was held in the 21 James I., that the parishioners may prescribe for the choice of a vicar. And before that, in the 16 James I., in the case of Shirley and Underhill, it was declared by the court, that though the advowson of the vicarage of common right is appendant to the rectory, yet it may be appendant to a manor, as having been reserved specially upon the appropriation.

And if there be a vicar and parson appropriate, the ordinary and parson appropriate may, in time of vacation of the vicarage, reunite the vicarage to the parsonage.

From what has been already observed of the distinction between rector and vicar, it will be easy to anticipate what remains to be said of a perpetual curate; for a perpetual curate is, in many things, in the same position as was a vicar previous to the statute of Henry IV. before mentioned. The fact is, that certain cases were exempted from the operation of that statute; for if the benefice was given ad mensam monachorum, and so not appropriated in the common form, but granted by way of union pleno jure, it was allowed to be served by a curate of their own house, consequently not a secular ecclesiastic; and the like exemption from the necessity of appointing a vicar was sometimes also granted by dispensation, or on account of the nearness of the church.

At the dissolution of the monasteries, when appropriations were transferred from spiritual societies through the king to single lay persons, to them also, for the most part, was transferred the appointment of the vicars in the parishes where they were the appropriators, and in places where, by means of exemptions, there was no regularly endowed vicar; and as they were appropriators of the whole ecclesiastical dues, the charge of providing for the cure was laid on them; for neither in fact, nor in presumption of law, nor habitualiter, could a lay rector as such have cure of souls; they were consequently obliged to nominate some particular person to the ordinary for his licence to serve the cure; and such curates thus licensed became perpetual, in the same manner as vicars had been before, not removable at the caprice of the appropriator, but only by due revocation of the licence of the ordinary.

A perpetual curacy was formerly adjudged not to be an ecclesiastical benefice, so that it was tenable with any other benefice; but now perpetual curacies are expressly declared to be benefices within the meaning of that word in the Benefices Pluralities Act, and a perpetual curate is consequently liable to its restrictions in the same manner as any other incumbent; and it has been recently determined that perpetual curates, or their representatives, are liable to be sued in an action for dilapidations in the same manner as other incumbents.

In some cases it might be a matter of considerable difficulty to determine whether a place is a perpetual curacy or a chapelry only; and the more so, since, for most practical purposes, the question would be quite immaterial, and therefore less likely to have been judicially determined; but as an aid in deciding certain other questions which might arise, it might be important: and the following are the rules laid down by Lord Hardwicke for determining whether it is a perpetual curacy or not.

To determine this, he says, “consider it first as to the rights and privileges appearing to belong to the chapel itself; next, as to the right of the inhabitants within the district; thirdly, as to the rights and dues belonging to the curate of the chapelry. If all these rights concur to show the nature of a perpetual curacy, that must determine it.