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duly invest the same in the names of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, to be held upon the same trusts as those to which the lands themselves before sale were subject (s. 4).

It now only remains to consider Surplice Fees, being fees payable on burials, marriages, and the like, all fees on baptisms being now prohibited (s); Easter Offerings; and Mortuaries; all of which are called oblations, and are of great antiquity, having been, indeed, at one time, almost the whole revenue of the Church, until tithes were added.

(1.) With respect to Surplice Fees and Easter Offerings. -It is said, that no surplice fees are due to the minister as of common right, but that they depend upon special custom only (t); while as to Easter offerings, it has been laid down, that they are due of common right to him who exercises the spiritual functions of the parish, at the rate of twopence per head, for all the parishioners of the age of sixteen and upwards (u). The liability to pay oblations, generally, is recognized by the statute law; for by the 2 & 3 Edw. VI. (1548), c. 13, it was provided, that all who, by the laws and customs of the realm, ought to pay offerings, should yearly pay them to the incumbent of the parish at the four most usual offering days, or otherwise at Easter. And by the 7 & 8 Will. III. (1695), c. 6, and the Ecclesiastical Courts Act, 1813, it was further provided, that every one should henceforth pay all offerings, oblations, and obventions to those persons to whom they are due (x); and oblations are made recoverable before two justices of the peace, where the amount does not exceed 107. But

(*) Baptismal Fees Abolition Act, 1872.

(t) Com. Dig. Dismes (B. 1); Andrews V. Cawthorne (1745), Willes, 536.

(u) Laurence v. Jones (1724), Bunb. 173; Egerton v. Still (1725), ib. 198. But see R. v. Hal' (1866), L. R. 1 Q. B. 632.

(x) Ayrton v. Abbott (1849), 14 Q. B. 1; Willes, 538 (n.).

no oblations can be recovered, otherwise than before justices, unless the amount exceeds 107. (or, in the case of Quakers, 501.); or unless some matter of title comes in question. Also, in churches and chapels built under the Church Building Acts, or the New Parishes Acts, of which we shall presently speak more at large, the payment both of fees and of offerings, to the minister and clerk respectively, is specifically provided for (y).

(2.) Mortuaries were a sort of ecclesiastical heriots, being a customary gift claimed by and due to the minister, in very many parishes, on the death of any of his parishioners (z). [They seem originally to have been, like lay heriots, only a voluntary bequest to the Church, being intended (as Lyndewoode informs us) as a kind of expiation and amends to the clergy, for the personal tithes and other ecclesiastical duties, which the laity in their lifetime might have neglected or forgotten to pay. For this purpose, after the lord's heriot or best good was taken, the second best chattel was reserved to the Church as a mortuary (a); and in the laws of King Canute, this mortuary is called soul-scot, or symbolum anime (b). It was antiently usual in this kingdom to bring the mortuary to church, along with the corpse when it came to be buried; and thence it is sometimes called a corse-present, a term which bespeaks it to have been once a voluntary donation. However, in Bracton's time, so early as Henry the Third, it had grown into an obligation ; and bequests of heriots and mortuaries were held to be necessary ingredients in every testament of chattels (c). The custom varied in different places, not only as to the mortuary to be paid, but as to the person to whom it was payable. In Wales, a mortuary or corse-present was due

(y) As to the Church Building Acts, vide post, p. 707; as to the New Parishes Acts, post, p. 710. () 2 Inst. 491.

(a) Co. Litt. 185; Provinc. 1. 1, tit. 3.

(b) C. 13.

(c) Bract. 1. 2, ch. 26; Flet. 1. 2, ch. 57.

[upon the death of every clergyman to the bishop of the diocese but this was abolished, upon a recompense given to the bishop, by the statute 12 Ann. (1713), st. 2, c. 6. In the archdeaconry of Chester, a custom once prevailed, that the bishop should have, at the death of every clergyman dying therein, his best horse or mare, bridle, saddle, and spurs, his best gown or cloak, hat, upper garment under his gown, and tippet, and also his best signet or ring (d); but this mortuary also was directed to cease by the 28 Geo. II. (1754), c. 6, which settled upon the bishop an equivalent in its room.

The variety of customs with regard to mortuaries giving frequently a handle to exactions on the one side, and to frauds or expensive litigation on the other, it was thought proper, by the 21 Hen. VIII. (1529), c. 6, to reduce them to some kind of certainty. For this purpose, that statute enacted, that all mortuaries or corse-presents to parsons of any parish should (unless where by custom less or none at all was due) be taken in the following manner :—viz., for every person dying therein who did not leave goods to the value of ten marks, nothing; for every person who left goods to the value of ten marks, and under thirty pounds, 3s. 4d.; if above thirty pounds, and under forty pounds, 6s. 8d.; if above forty pounds, of what value soever, 10s. and no more. And no mortuary was to be paid, in any parish, in respect of a feme covert, nor in respect of any child or person not being a householder therein, nor in respect of any wayfaring man, whose mortuary was to be paid in the parish in which he had his usual residence. And upon this statute stands the law of mortuaries to this day.]

(d) Hinde v. Bishop of Chester (1631), Cro. Car. 237.

CHAPTER IV.

OF NEW ECCLESIASTICAL DISTRICTS AND PARISHES, AND OTHER EXTENSIONS OF THE ORIGINAL CHURCH

ESTABLISHMENT.

THE spiritual ministrations of the Church are mainly entrusted to the parochial clergy; in other words, to the rectors and vicars of the different parishes of which the realm is composed, together with the curates whom they employ for their assistance. Each parish contains a church, the parochial division of the kingdom being indeed itself referable to the establishment of churches therein; and there are, comparatively, but very few and · scanty portions of territory which have remained extraparochial.

But in certain parishes, together with the church, chapels were at an early period founded, in which divine. service, and (in some instances) the rites of sacrament and burial, might be lawfully celebrated, in the same manner as in the parochial churches themselves. Such chapels are of various descriptions. Some are private (a), being erected for the use only of particular persons of rank, to whom this privilege was conceded by the proper authorities; and such chapels are free from the control of the incumbent of the parish church (b). Others are public, and designed for the benefit of particular districts lying within the parochial ambit; these latter having been, in general, founded at some date later than the parish church

(a) Chapman v. Jones (1869), L. R. 4 Exch. 273; Duke of Norfolk v. Arbuthnot (1879), 4 C. P. D. 290; 5 C. P. D. 390.

S. C.-II.

2 ጊ

(b) Private Chapels Act, 1871. This Act only refers, however, to chapels belonging to institutions.

All

itself, for the accommodation of such of the parishioners as lived too far from the parish church, whence public chapels so circumstanced are described as chapels of ease. public chapels are, in general, subject to the control of the incumbent of the parish church, although (under the Church Building Acts, 1831 and 1838) they may be made independent. But there are some chapels of ease which seem to have been coeval with, and always independent of, the parish church, and to have been designed for the benefit of some particular districts never included within the pale of the parish church, though locally embraced by the parochial division (c). Chapels of ease are either parochial, in which both divine worship and the rites of sacrament and burial are performed, or mere chapels of ease, and designed for divine worship only. But as to chapels of ease of both descriptions, these doctrines equally prevail, that of common right the nomination to them is in the incumbent of the parish church, and cannot be taken from him except by agreement between himself, the patron, and the ordinary (d); and that the establishment of a chapel of ease in any parish does not of itself deprive the inhabitants accommodated therein of the right of resorting to the parish church, nor, on the other hand, does it . exempt them from any parochial burthen to which they would otherwise be liable (e). Whence also it is, apparently, that the rector or vicar may, under the provisions of the Augmentation of Benefices Act, 1831, and the District Church Tithes Act, 1865, annex or appropriate to any such chapel of ease portions of the endowments proper of the parish church.

There are also certain chapels which are called free chapels, because not liable to the visitation of the ordinary; and these (it is said) are always of royal foundation, or

(c) Craven v. Sanderson (1838), 7 A. & E. 880.

(d) Farnworth V. Bishop of Chester (1825), 4 B. & C. 568;

Dixon v. Kershaw (1766), Amb. 528.

(e) Ball v. Cross (1689), 1 Salk. 165.

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