Paddington: Past and Present

by William Robins

I think it not at all unlikely that those who cultivated the soil in Paddington received no friendly visits from the tithing man till the time of Edgar. Dunstan, at this time Abbot of the Monastery he had restored at Westminster, looked, without doubt, pretty keenly after the loaves and fishes which were to feed his little flock; and as the enclosure of the Pædings was not too far north to escape his acute glance, he might have been the first who took tithe here. When Bishop of London, which he was at the time of his pretended gift of the little farm, he might, too, have obtained property here, as elsewhere, by the means above indicated. For, if any of the accounts we have of him be true, he was evidently not the man to fail in carrying out any scheme of aggrandisement which he had once planned, even when the law was not, as it was in this case, in his favour. And even so late as the tenth century of the Christian era, some inhabitant of this place might have been found, whose refractory and pagan spirit prevented his seeing all the justice and good policy there might be in giving up quietly the tenth portion of his produce to the monks of Westminster. Those monks, in Dunstan’s time only ten in number, though able to visit Paddington occasionally, were too much engaged at Westminster to pay that attention to this little settlement which was required to teach the inhabitants all their christian duties.

If this saint, who so honoured the old gentleman’s nose, did in truth first tithe Paddington, he may, in one sense, be said to have bestowed on his monks a small estate here; for this impost remained from his time to the Conquest as a fixed charge on the land. And those who first received tithe here (being, in all probability, sufficiently impressed with the necessity of appropriating it according to law) may have built a chapel in Paddington, with that portion which was legally assigned for the support of a material structure in which the services of the church might be performed.

There is yet another “probable supposition,” viz. that a speculating builder existed among the Pædings, even in those days, who, for the sake of what he could get for himself, built a chapel here; and the clever Dunstan, or some other bishop, having caught him in thus defrauding God, and God’s poor, made him give a hide of his land to endow the place he had built for his own profit: and who knows, if this were so, but that this churl (ceorl) was aping his betters in some other mark, by aspiring to be greater than he really was; for by a law of Athelstan’s a freeman “who had the possession and property of full five hides of land, and had a church, a kitchen, a bell-house, and a hall, was henceforth entitled to the rank of a Thane.” [121]

We have already seen that a chapel was built and endowed in Paddington before the ecclesiastical decree of 1222 assigned this district, with those of Westbourn and Knightsbridge, to St. Margaret’s, Westminster. And one may well suppose, if no Tybourn rector interfered, that a parson was appointed to the cure, and a district assigned to him, whenever this building was erected; and to say that one of the monks who lived in the Convent at Westminster, under the laws and regulations of St. Benedict, was the person first appointed to this cure, does not, surely, invalidate that supposition.

Paddington, therefore, may have existed as a rectory and a separate parish, before the beginning of the thirteenth century—before the decree of Stephen Langton, and his brother-priests, converted it into an appendage to a vicarage. But this benefice having been thus appropriated to the use of their own corporation by the company of Benedictin monks, the rectory, if there had been one, became a sinecure; and the poor souls in Paddington were transferred to the tender care of the vicar of St. Margaret’s.

How long Paddington remained in this unenviable condition I cannot say; but we are told by Blackstone, that the appropriating corporations served the churches “in so scandalous a manner, and the parishes suffered so much by the neglect of appropriators, that the legislature was forced to interpose: and accordingly it is enacted by statute 15th Richard II, cap. 6, that in all appropriations of churches, the diocesan bishop, shall ordain (in proportion to the value of the church) a competent sum to be distributed among the poor parishioners, annually; and that the vicarage shall be sufficiently endowed.” And this great Judge adds, “It seems the parish were frequently sufferers, not only by the want of divine service, but also by witholding those alms, for which, among other purposes, the payment of tithes was originally imposed: and therefore in this Act a pension is directed to be distributed among the poor parochians, as well as a sufficient stipend to the vicar.” And he goes on to say, “but he being liable to be removed at the pleasure of the appropriator, was not likely to insist too rigidly on the legal sufficiency of the stipend: and therefore by statute 4, Henry IV, cap. 12, it is ordained, that the vicar shall be a secular person, not a member of any religious house; that he shall be vicar perpetual, not removable at the caprice of the monastery; and that he shall be canonically instituted and inducted, and be sufficiently endowed, at the discretion of the ordinary, for these three express purposes, to do divine service, to inform the people, and to keep hospitality. The endowments in consequence of these statutes have usually been a portion of the glebe, or land, belonging to the parsonage, and a particular share of the tithes, which the appropriates found it most troublesome to collect, and which are therefore generally called privy or small tithes; the greater, or predial, tithes being still reserved to their own use.” [122a] And thus, the appropriates of those days were compelled by statute to provide, in some sort, both for the souls and bodies of those, from whom proceeded the revenues of the church.

But before these statutes could be obtained, the voice of Wickliffe had been heard not only at Lutterworth, but in London and Westminster; and the degenerate Church, which this worthy rector denounced, could no longer resist some of those reforms, which the State had long seen to be necessary. [122b]

We have seen by Tanner’s note that Paddington was spoken of as a parish in the time of Richard the second, and by the Valor Ecclesiasticus of Henry the eighth that the rectory, no longer an appendage to St. Margaret’s, yielded, like the manor, a separate revenue to the Abbey.

Since, then, the ancient laws were totally disregarded, and tithe, and other church property, was perverted to individual uses for so long a period with perfect impunity, we cannot be surprised to find these more recent appointments were gradually evaded, or abused; so that, step by step, the doings of that church, which still boasts of its rule and guide over millions of minds, was so utterly detested in this country that even the genius of a Wolsey could not save it from perdition.

And what secures and sustains the present structure? How has the church in Paddington been supported since the Reformation?