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Parish Governance

The ecclesiastical parish was, with few exceptions, the unit of local government. From the ecclesiastical standpoint, a parish was a " shrift-shire," the sphere of reciprocal duties between a duly commissioned priest and the inhabitants in his charge; the one party administering the sacraments and supplying religious services generally, whilst the other yielded tithes and oblations. The division of England into parishes was determined by no statute, and, so far as can be ascertained, by no royal decree or authoritative commission.

The English Parliaments of the sixteenth century, for instance, habitually assumed the parish as the common unit of local administration. In so doing, however, they went beyond the facts. The Constable associated with the Churchwardens in parochial functions, was an officer of the manor and not of the parish. With regard to the relation of the parish to the manor it seems difficult to make any general statement.

As for the right to be present at the Vestry meetings, and thus to take part in the government of the parish, it had apparently never been thought of sufficient importance to obtain either statutory or judicial decision, whether it was confined to the payers of one or other of the parish rates, or to residents in the parish, or to heads of households, or to male adults.

For the execution of the obligations and the fulfilment of the functions of parochial government in England, the parish had as its organs the four principal offices of Churchwarden, Constable, Surveyor of Highways, and Overseer of the Poor. Though these offices, as we shall see, differed widely in their origin, in their antiquity, and in their scope, they had many attributes in common. They all rested upon a different basis from the modern conception of a public official. They were unpaid. Service in them was compulsory, with certain legal exemptions, upon all who belonged to the parish. Though the method of selection varied, both by statute and at common law, we find surviving or growing up a widespread local custom that each of these offices ought to be served in rotation by all parishioners qualified according to certain traditional requirements.

The common disinclination to serve differed in intensity according to the office. The position of Churchwarden was one of dignity and importance, without very onerous duties, and was therefore little objected to. Those of Surveyor of Highways and Overseer of the Poor involved unpleasant relations with one's neighbours, besides considerable work and responsibility; and they were accordingly avoided. But the post most objected to was that of Petty Constable, which was either abandoned to humble folk, attracted by its perquisites, or else invariably filled by a substitute. It was, indeed, a common feature of all these offices that the duties could be performed by deputy. Service, moreover, could be avoided by payment of a fine to the parish funds, according to the scale customary in the parish. In many of the crowded parishes of London, and to a lesser extent in some other cities, these fines became an important source of income.

To the poorer folk, the parish government appeared an uncontrollable parish oligarchy. The little farmers or innkeepers, jobbing craftsmen or shopkeepers, who found themselves arbitrarily called upon to undertake arduous and complicated duties and financial responsibilities; ordered about during the year of office by Justices of the Peace; dictated to by Archdeacon, Incumbent, or squire; at the beck and call of every inhabitant; losing time and money and sometimes reputation and health over their work; with no legal way of obtaining any remuneration for their toil and pains,-often felt themselves to be, not the rulers, but the beasts of burden of the parish. The truth is, that the seventeenth-century parish, as an administrative unit, was regarded t>y no one as an organ of autonomous self-government. It was an organ of local obligation - a many-sided instrument by which the National Government and the Established Church sought to arrange for the due performance of such collective regulations and common services as were deemed necessary to the welfare of the State.

Warden

The foremost of the parish officers, alike in representative character, extent of functions, and financial responsibility, were the Churchwardens (called also procuratores, yconimi, guardiani ecclesiae, supervisores fabricae, custodcs bonorum et omamcntorum ecclesiae, and in English, " proctors," " kirkmasters," " keepers of the goods and chattels," " church masters," " churchreeves," " churchmen," or simply " wardens" - two, three, four, or even more parishioners, annually chosen to fill this ancient office, the origin of which is unknown. Sometimes they are distinguished by special titles as "Renter Warden," "College Warden," "Bell Warden," "Newcomen Warden," and " Warden of the Great Account,"; or, frequently, as " Rector's Warden " and " People's Warden " ; or elsewhere the "head" or "chief" or "elder" or "senior" Churchwarden had different duties from those of the "acting " or " second " or "younger," and these again from the work of the third or "junior" Churchwarden. These Churchwardens were directly responsible by custom and common law, to say nothing of the Canons of the Church, to " the Ordinary "- that is, the Bishop or his Archdeacon-as well as to the ecclesiastical courts, for the maintenance and repair of the whole, or at any rate the greater part, of the church fabric,2 for the provision of the materials and utensils necessary for the church services, and, in conjunction with the Incumbent, for the allocation of seats in the church, the keeping up of " church ways," and the administration of the churchyard.

They were bound by oath to inquire at all times, and to report annually to the Ordinary, at the time of his visitation, as to the due performance of duty by the Incumbent and his Curates; as to the state of the church and its furniture, the parsonage and the churchyard; and-most far-reaching of all - as to any moral or religious delinquency of the parishioners. By successive Acts of Parliament2 they had been jointly associated with the Constables and Surveyors of Highways in the civil business of the parish; and, in the relief of destitution, they were, according to the words of the later Elizabethan statutes, coadjutors with the Overseers of the Poor whom the Justices appointed.8 But unlike these officers, the Churchwardens were always assumed to be both directly representative of and responsible to their fellow parishioners.

Down to the latter part of the sixteenth century it is to the Constable and not to the Churchwardens that Parliament entrusts the supervision over beggars, the lodging of the impotent poor, the apprenticing of children, and the general superintendence of the civil economy of the town or village. The Constable had historically little or no connection with the parish as such. Originally an officer of the manor, or possibly of the vill or tithing, and never expressly transferred to the parish.

Parish Clerk

Besides the unpaid and compulsory serving officers of the parish, who held a definite legal position and were clothed with independent powers, most parishes equipped themselves, at one time or another, with a staff of paid subordinates, who served more or less under the direction of the principal officers, the Incumbent, and the Vestry. Foremost among these in antiquity, if not in importance, was the Parish Clerk, holding an immemorial freehold office half-way between that of a curate or assistant minister and that of a church menial.2 The law left the appointment either to the Incumbent or to the inhabitants in Vestry assembled, according to the custom of each parish, where it became the subject of occasional dispute. Once appointed, the Parish Clerk held office for life, with the right to recover from the individual parishioners, if he could, the customary fees and dues attached to his office. During the eighteenth century the Clerk's office was usually filled by an uneducated layman, who united "the menial duties of a useful church servant" to that of taking a humble part in the performance of Divine Service. The Clerk was not only to tag the prayers with an Amen, or usher in the sermon with a stave, but he is also the universal father to give away the brides, and the standing god-father to all the newborn bantlings.

The Servants of the Parish

With the Parish Clerk were the Sexton (or Sacristan) and Bellringer, usually serving during good behavior, appointed either by the Vestry, by the Churchwardens, or by the Incumbent, according to local usage. The Lecturer or Afternoon Preacher, whom the seventeenth and eighteenth century Vestries in Metropolitan parishes delighted to appoint, in order to supplement - and it may sometimes have been to counteract - the ministrations of the Incumbent, over whose appointment the inhabitants had, as a rule, no control. Next among the Servants of the Parish was an indiscriminate medley of ancient offices, one or other of which was found, in particular parishes, inherited, or silently accreted from the defunct Court Leet. Service in one or other of these offices was often locally regarded as compulsory, though whether the Judges would have endorsed this doctrine, in a parish as distinguished from a manor, is not at all clear.

Thus, parish Vestries in the eighteenth century appointed an Aleconner or a Carnival, a Scavenger or a "Town's Husband," a Bellman or a Town Crier, a Hayward or a "Common Driver," a Neatherd or a Hogwardens - here and there, a Dykereeve or a Wallreeve, or occasionally a Bridgereeve. More common than any of these, and perhaps equally archaic, was the Beadman ; or Beadle, a messenger, often acting as an assistant to the Constable, as also to the other officers of the parish. Another frequent figure was the Dog Whipper, who kept quiet during Divine Service the dogs which the parishioners brought with them to church. More important than any of these was the Vestry Clerk, who might or might not be the same person as the Parish Clerk, whom we find beginning to be appointed by the Vestries of the more considerable urban parishes. Finally, we have to add to the staff of Servants of the Parish during the eighteenth century, an organist and sometimes other musicians, an organ-blower or " bellows-blower," and not infrequently a pew-opener. The ecclesiastical authorities made repeated attempts to get these minor church functionaries into their own hands. So long as they were paid from the Church Rate the practical power of the Vestry over them was irresistible. The number and variety of these appointments, and the method of election, differed from parish to parish, and from generation to generation.

Sexton (sacristan)

Sexton (sacristan), derives his name from the nature of his office, which was the care of the sacred vestments and vessels, the care of the church by keeping it clean, ringing the bells, opening and closing the doors for Divine Service. When such are his duties, the presumption, frima facie, is, that the churchwardens have the right of appointment. "Where his duties are confined to the churchyard in digging graves, &c., the presumption is that the incumbent appoints ; where his duties contain both kinds of employment, the presumption is that the appointment is vested in the incumbent and churchwardens jointly.

The Parish Vestry

The parish passed from an ecclesiastical organisation of churchmen for their own special purposes, to a machinery which, in addition, could discharge various functions for the civil power. The Vestry became the chief council of the community, and, having authority to tax the whole area of the parish, it was able to provide for any dropt duties and expenses. By successive stages it became the highway board appointing its waywardens and levying its Highway Rates. The care of the pound, the appointment of hayward, the repair of the stocks, and appointment of tythingman often lapsed into its hands.

The Vestry is a pretty modern institution ; there is hardly trace it beyond the fourteenth century ; it belongs to the parish, a purely ecclesiastical entity, not to the township ; it is the outcome of the Church Rate, which in its turn is the outcome of the appropriation of tithes and the poverty of the parochial clergy. Gradually the Vestry may take upon itself to interfere with many things ; the manorial courts are falling into decay, and the assembly which can impose a Church Rate may easily aspire to impose other rates ; but the germ of the Vestry is an ecclesiastical germ. The Vestry belongs to the parish ; and the temporal law of the thirteenth century knows nothing of the parish.

The duly summoned "town meeting" or Vestry meeting had an undefined right to make by-laws on matters of parish concern, which were binding on all the parishioners, whether they consented or not, or whether or not they were present. It was, indeed, apparently on this power to make by-laws that rested the legal right of the parish to make the Church Bate, to settle the assessment on which this should be levied, to impose fines for non-acceptance of parish offices, to administer the pound, the common pasture, and the wastes of the parish, and generally to perform all the miscellaneous services of public utility which here and there it undertook.

There was no formal procedure, no rigid adherence to law, and no regular or systematic outside supervision. The labourers, who included two-thirds of all the heads of families, were not rated, and held no other position in the parish organisation than that of recipients of relief. The so-called "Vestry" was, in fact, in no sense a body representative of the population as a whole. It raised its revenues by direct taxation of its own members, and exercised by its expenditure autocratic power in the details of parish government, but it was, in its turn, subject to a very real, if somewhat spasmodic control at the hands of the squire, the parson, or other neighbouring Justices of the Peace. Moreover, the official relationships between the parties were inextricably woven into the economic relationships that existed between the same individuals in their private capacities. The Justice of the Peace was probably the landlord of the whole of the parish officers; the officers were the employers of the paupers; and even the clergyman, who was in many respects the most independent person in the village, often owed his position to the squire, let his glebe to the Churchwarden, bargained with the Overseer as to the rates on his tithes, and drew these tithes from every occupier of land in the parish. Hence, though there might be grumbling, there could be no effective resistance to the action of the governing group.