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To the arbitrary consecration of tithes, too, we may ascribe the wealth of monasteries and religious houses at this period, and the great number which, Jabout that time, was founded. A layman, who was obliged to pay his tithes somewhere, thought it good policy to erect an abbey, and there pay them to his own monks; or to grant them to some abbey already erected; since for this donation, he might, according to the superstition of the age, have masses sung for ever for the peace of his soul.

Another great cause of the wealth of the Abbeys was the appropriating the livings. The nature of appropriations it will be necessary to explain, *in order to comprehend the present state of tithes in this country. A benefice or living is said to be appropriated, when it is in the hands of a corporation or individual, by whom the profits are received, and whose business it is to appoint some person to perform the service of the church. The corporation or individual is then the patron of the living, and has the appointment of its clergyman. It is from appropriations that lay-parsons and lay-proprietors of tithes have originated. The practice of appropriating benefices originated in the cunning and avarice of the monks. Finding that a very small portion of the income of the church would serve for the officiating pries they begged and bought, for masses and obits,* and sometimes for money, all the advowsons or right of presentation within their reach, and then appro priated the benefices to their own fraternity. They generally deputed one of their own body, allowing him a small stipend for his maintenance, to perform the service and administer the sacraments.

The practice was first introduced by the Normans; and within 300 years after the monks had become the appropriators of one-third of all the benefices in the kingdom, and these for the most part the richest.

time of

dissolution of the monasteries and religious houses by the 27th and 31st Henry VIII. these benefices, by the common law, would have been disappropriated, had not a clause been inserted in these statutes to give them to the King in as ample a manner as the abbots, &c. formerly held the same at the their dissolution. Having thus become the proprietor of one-third of the bgvloe benefices, as well as all the plate, revenues, and wealth of the Abbeys, the manner this monarch disposed of his plunder, accounts for the present state of ecclesiastical property. With a part of it he founded several new bishoprics and colleges, and the remainder was afterwards given to indivi

* Services performed for the repose of the dead.

Das

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duals by the crown. Individuals, corporations, or colleges, who obtained these grants, obtained also all the rights annexed to them; and the present proprietors of the Abbey-lands are proprietors of the tithes and benefices formerly attached to these lands. Hence it is that so large a portion of the tithes are in the hands of laymen. It is calculated that there are 3845 impropriations in England; that is, benefices in the hands of persons not at all connected with religion, but who receive the tithes, allotting such a portion of them as they think proper for the maintenance of the priest.

The substitution of Episcopacy for Popery cannot be considered any great advantage to the mass of the people. In the revolutions of ecclesiastical property, the poor have been cheated out of their portion of the tithes. The plunder of the Abbeys was divided betwixt the crown, the aristocracy, and the church. Doubtless the monks were lazy, profligate, and corrupt enough, and well merited their fate; but have they been succeeded by a class of men less addicted to those vices? or is their property by its present possessors administered more to the advantage of the people? The mopastic houses were all houses of hospitality. They fed the hungry, and clothed the naked. They were seminaries of education, where all classes were instructed: males were taught grammar and music, and females to read and work. To travellers they were places of refreshment; they were inns where no reckonings were to pay. What equivalent have the clergy of the Church of England provided for these advantages? Do they feed the hungry or clothe the naked? Do they instruct the ignorant or entertain the traveller? For answer to these questions, we may turn to the Robbery of Charitable Foundations, and to the National Schools, where they labour to instil ignorance rather than knowledge.

Besides the profligacy of the monks and Henry's want of money, the opposition of some of the friars to his divorce from Catharine, is one principal cause assigned for their dissolution. By the 27th Henry VIII. c. 28, only such houses as were enabled to spend £200 a year were dissolved. By this act the King obtained a revenue of 30 or £32,000, besides plate and jewels. The suppression of these houses caused great discontent among the people; when this had subsided, a new visitation was ordered, and the great monasteries were suppressed. This completed the work of dissolution. The suppression of the greater houses produced a revenue of £100,000 a year, besides an immense amount of plate and jewels. In Rees's Cyclopedia (Art. Monasteries,) we find the following estimate of the reve nues of part of these houses:

Many of the lesser monastical houses are not included in this estimate; and if we make an allowance for this omission, and for plate, &c. which came into the hands of the king by the dissolution, and for the change in the value of money, which was at least six times as much as the present, and consider also that this estimate was supposed to be greatly under their real worth, we may conclude their whole revenues to have been immense.

The number of persons connected with them has been estimated at 50,000, an immense number, considering the population of the country at that time. From the produce of the plunder, six new bishoprics, namely, Westminster, (afterwards changed into a deanery) Peterborough, Chester, Gloucester, Bristol, and Oxford, were created, and several new deaneries, chapters, and colleges, were founded. The remainder of the produce was given to individuals, principally the aristocracy. As to the poor, they lost their portion entirely.

Of the value of property at present in the hands of the clergy it is impossible to give a correct estimate. Of this, however, we shall speak more particularly when we come to treat of the Revenues of the Church. At present we shall give some account of Church Discipline, as respects the residence of, and the duties performed by the clergy. That this part of the subject may be the more intelligible, it will be necessary to give a short explanation of the different orders in our ecclesiastical establishment.

"

The king is considered the head of the church; but of his duties, and also his income, we have treated in another place. Let us come to the next in order the archbishops. An archbishop is the chief of the clergy of a whole province, and has the inspection of the bishops and clergy of that province, and may deprive them for any notorious offence. The archbishop has his own diocese, wherein he exercises episcopal, as in his province he exercises archiepiscopal jurisdiction. By 25 Hen. VIII. c. 21, he has the power to

Established Clergy.

grant dispensations for holding two livings, and the like. He has authority to grant special licences to marry at any time or place; and he possesses the right of conferring degrees in prejudice of the universities.

Next to the archbishops are the bishops. The office of a bishop, according to Blackstone, besides the administration of certain holy ordinances, consists principally in inspecting and punishing by ecclesiastical censures the manners of the people and the clergy. This part his of duty we believe is very rarely performed, though he has several officers and courts under him for that purpose. It is the bishop's office to institute to all livings within his diocese. Both archbishops and bishops are elected by the dean and chapter. Formerly the laity participated in the election of an archbishop. The mode of election by the dean and chapter has some resemblance to the election of members of parliament in the rotten boroughs. The king, by his congé d'elire, directing them to elect not whom they choose, but the person whom he or his ministers has appointed. This is the sort of freedom of election exercised by the electors of Gatton, Malton, and Appleby.

The dean and chapter are the bishop's council, to assist him with their advice on spiritual and temporal affairs. It is their office also to perform service in the bishop's cathedral. The dean is the president, or head of the chapter. The chapter consists of either canons or prebendaries.* Neither

* In Mr. BENTHAM's Church of England Catechism," page 250, there is a letter from Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, containing some curious observations on the appointment of prebendaries, and their mode of living. The observations it con'tains are worth preserving, and are not less applicable to the clergy, generally, at this period, than they were to the prebendaries in the reign of Henry VIII.

A letter of Thomas, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, to Cromwell, upon the new foundation of Canterbury."

"After my most hearty commendations these shall be to advertise your Lordship, that I have received your letter, dated the 27th day of November, and therewith a bill concerning the devise for the new establishment, to be made in the Metropolitan church of Canterbury: By which your Lordship requireth our advice thereupon by writing, for our mutual consents. Surely my lord, as touching the books drawn and the order of the same, I think it will be a very substantial and godly foundation: Nevertheless, in my opinion the PREBENDARIES, which will be allowed £40 a piece yearly, might be altered to a more expedient use. And, this is my consideration; for having experience, both in times past and also in our days, how the said

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of these offices were known in the first ages of Christianity, and may be reckoned among the corruptions of Popery or Church of Englandism.

The archdeacon is the bishop's deputy, and has an authority subordinate to him, throughout the whole of his diocese, or some particular part of it. He visits the clergy, and has his separate court to punish offenders, and for the cognizance of all other ecclesiastical causes.

We come next to the subordinate classes; namely the parsons, rectors, vicars, and curates. All these are generally included under the name of parsons, though there is a material difference in their degrees and emoluments. A parson, is one that has full possession of all the rights of a parocial church. He is sometimes called the rector or governor, but Blackstone says, parson is the most legal as well as the most honourable title. During his life-time, the parson has the freehold in himself of the parsonage house, glebe, tithes, and dues.

Vicars are an inferior order to the parsons, and had their origin in the practice of appropriation. We have before remarked how abbeys that had obtained possession of benefices, deputed one of their body to perform the

sect of Prebendaries have not only spent their time much in idleness, and their substance in superfluous BELLY CHEER, I think it not a convenient state or degree to be maintained and established, considering first that commonly a prebendary is neither a learner nor a teacher, but a good VIANDER. Then by the same name they look to be chief, and bear all the whole rule and pre-eminence in the college where they be resident: By means whereof, the younger of their own nature, given more to pleasure and good cheer, or pastime, than to abstinence, study, and learning, shall easily be brought from their books, to follow the example and appetite of the same prebendaries, being their heads and rulers: And the state of prebendaries hath been so excessively abused, that when learned men have been admitted into such room, many time have they desisted from their good and godly studies, and all the virtuous exercises of preaching and teaching. Wherefore, if it may stand with the king's gracious pleasure, I would wish not only that the NAME of PREBENDARY were exiled his Grace's Foundation, but also the SUPERFLUOUS. CONDITIONS OF SUCH PERSONS. I cannot deny that the beginning of prebendaries was no less proposed for the maintenance of good learning and good conversation of living than RELIGIOUS men were: But forasmuch as both be gone from their first estate and order, and the one is found like offender with the other, it maketh no great matter if they both perish together: For to say the truth, it is an estate, which ST. PAUL, reckoning up the degrees and estates allowed in his time could not find in the CHURCH OF CHRIST."

Notwithstanding Cranmer's opinion, delivered three hundred years ago, that prebendaries were a "SUPERFLUOUS CONDITION," they are still kept up in our Protestant establishment.