It certainly has been discovered that Parliamentary enquiries are necessary in our day; and it has been found out, even by ecclesiastics, that the appointment of ecclesiastical commissioners could no longer be delayed if the church was to be saved. But ecclesiastical commissioners are but men; the people, therefore, in every parish in England should themselves look into their own ecclesiastical affairs; and demand with one united voice the fulfilment of those religious duties to God and God’s poor, which devolve on those who claim the lands of the church. Sooner or later a demand so just must be fully recognised; and governors will assuredly arise, who will have both the power and the will to execute justice.
Such malversations as those which have been recently exposed by the Rev. Mr. Whiston, and others, cannot last for ever; and the sooner the whole system is altered, if it be the system that is in fault, the better for all parties.
By returns moved for by our honourable member, Sir B. Hall, (to whom the whole country is deeply indebted for the information on ecclesiastical affairs which he has brought to light,) we find that the portion of the “Revenues of the See of London, for the seven years ending thirty-first December, 1850,” arising from the “Share of Paddington Rents, &c.” amounted to £56,939 1s. 6d., while the “share of the various payments in respect of share of Paddington estate,” for the same period, amounted to £1742 10s. 3d. The correctness of that return is certified to, and signed “C. J. London.” [129]
The lay lessees received double this sum, as per agreement, so that for seven years £170,817 4s. 6d. has been paid, chiefly in the shape of increased house-rent be it observed, by that portion of the people of Paddington, who have had the felicity of living on “The Bishop’s Estate.”
A law, which already exists, will affect the income of the next occupant of the See of London, and therefore his relations to the rectory of Paddington; and it has been hinted that something may be done, in that event, for this parish. But the people of Paddington do not desire such patchwork arrangements. They want that which the whole country is asking for, and which cannot be much longer delayed—a law to regulate the whole of the estates of the church; and there is one pleasing anticipation for the people of Paddington in the contemplation of such a measure; viz. that, whatever may be the effect of that law, it cannot make their position worse than it is at the present time.
CHAPTER III.
ANCIENT CHURCHES—ACT OF PARLIAMENT CHURCHES AND CHAPELS—CHURCH-YARDS—CHURCH-RATES—PARSONAGE-HOUSES—ECCLESIASTICAL DIVISIONS—PLACES OF WORSHIP BUILT AND SUPPORTED BY VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTIONS, UPHOLDING THE STATE RELIGION; AND THOSE DISSENTING THEREFROM.
It is not worth while to enter into an elaborate enquiry, to shew that the parish of Paddington was at one time included in the parish of Tybourn, and that the ancient Tybourn church was the mother-church of the whole of those districts, now included in the parishes of St. Mary Abbot’s Kensington, Paddington, and Marylebone; but the facts and arguments which have been already adduced to prove that Westbourn and Tybourn were but synonymous terms; and that the modern manor of Paddington was but a portion of the ancient Tybourn manor, may serve to sanction such a supposition.
Maitland, Lysons, and other authors, tell us that the ancient church of Tybourn was situated near the present Marylebone Court-house—i.e. beside the modern Tybourn; but the only evidence these authorities condescend to give in support of their opinion, is, that in 1729, “a great quantity of bones were dug up at this place.” They offer no proof, however, that these bones belonged to the inhabitants of the ancient village of Tybourn; neither do they attempt to shew that they were not the remains of some of those who had died in London of the plague, which raged there in the previous century. A writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine, part 1, p. 315, 1809, seems to me, to be quietly quizzing those antiquarians who accepted this story of the bones, when he tells the public that “in all ancient documents, Mary la bonne (Mary the Good) is called Sancta Maria de Ossibus, (Saint Mary of Bones).” Lysons, however, does not see the joke, for he gravely replied in his second edition, “I have never seen any in which it is so described.”
It may be worthy of remark, that the ancient Tybourn church, wherever it was situated, was taken down in the year 1400, by order of the Lord Chancellor, Bishop Braybrook, when the honors and estates of the noble family who built and endowed this church, were in the keeping of a youth barely seventeen years of age; [132] and that the Westminster monks never, either by hook or by crook, obtained possession of this ancient advowson. A rival establishment, however, was built either for them, or by them, on their newly acquired property at Paddington, and, as we have already seen, the spiritual direction of the Paddington district was assigned to them as early as 1222; previous to which time a place of worship had been built here; and for upwards of six hundred years this small house, erected both for public worship and public instruction, was deemed sufficient for rich and poor, saint and sinner, and to it an unbought spot of consecrated ground was annexed, the quiet resting-place of all those who had lived in Paddington.