ditaments, is authorised to be made for the purpose of a site for any church or chapel, or churchyard, or parsonage house, or glebe, or for the use or benefit of any church or chapel, or of the incumbent or minister thereof, or for the repairs thereof, such endowment, grant or conveyance, whether made before or after the passing of the amending act, shall be good and valid, without any license or writ of ad quod damnum, the statutes of mortmain, or any other Not exceeding statute or law to the contrary notwithstanding. But this does not authorise an endowment of more than the clear annual value of 300l.; and if any endowment is made to exceed that value, the mortmain acts are at once to apply. It became necessary therefore to make some provision be ascertained. for ascertaining such clear annual value, for which 3001. per annum. How value to Church Endow Vict. A. D.1843. b purpose it is enacted that the church building commissioners, or the bishop of the diocese, may cause such clear annual value to be determined and ascertained by any two persons whom they or he shall appoint for that purpose, by writing under the common seal of the commissioners, or by writing under the hand of the bishop, which writing is directed to be afterwards annexed to the instrument by which such endowment shall be effected; and a certificate of such clear annual value, written and indorsed on the instrument by which such endowment shall be effected, and signed by such persons as aforesaid, shall, for the purposes of the act, be conclusive evidence of such clear annual value.d Additional endowments to these churches or their ministers may at any time be made, so long as the total clear annual value is not thereby increased to above 3001. Finally, by the recent act, commonly called the Church ment Act, 6 & 7 Endowment Act, which provides for the creation of new parishes for ecclesiastical purposes, powers similar to those conferred upon the governors of Queen Anne's Bounty, enabling them to hold lands in trust for the benefices augmented by them, are conferred upon the ecclesiastical commissioners for holding lands in trust for the incumbent of the new parishes created by that act: for every person or body corporate, having in his or their own right any estate or interest in possession, reversion or contingency, in any lands, tithes, tenements or other hereditaments, shall have full power, license and authority, by deed enrolled in such manner and within such time as is directed by the statute 27th Hen. VIII. c. 16, in the case of any lands, tithes, tenements or other hereditaments, or without deed in the case of goods or chattels, or by his or their b 3 & 4 Vict. c. 60, s. 2. Ecclesiastical pur e Ibid. s. 3. d Sect. 4. testament in writing, duly executed according to law, to give and grant to and vest in the ecclesiastical commissioners all such their estate, interest or property in such lands, &c., or any part or parts thereof, for and towards the endowment or augmentation of the income of such ministers, or for or towards providing any church or chapel for the purposes and subject to the provisions of the act, and to be for such purposes respectively applied, according to the will or deed of such benefactors respectively, as by such deed, &c. may be expressed; or in the case of no deed or instrument, as may in some other manner be directed, and in default of such expression or direction, then in such manner as shall be directed by the commissioners; and such commissioners shall have full capacity and ability to purchase, receive, take, hold and enjoy, for the purposes aforesaid, as well from such persons as shall be so charitably disposed to give the same, as from all other persons who shall be willing to sell or alien any lands, tithes, tenements or other hereditaments, goods or chattels, without any license or writ of ad quod damnum, the statute of mortmain, or any other statute or law to the contrary notwithstanding.d In the preceding sketch of the statutes, which make General rules exceptions from the general effect of the mortmain acts in from the preceding statutes. favour of persons ecclesiastical, we have omitted the several permissions given for granting land for sites of churches and churchyards, which do not appear to belong to this place. The multiplication of statutes, providing in different manners for purposes not very essentially dif ferent, has caused many complaints to be made of their obscurity. The result, however, of the preceding statutes, so far as our present purpose is concerned, appears sufficiently simple and intelligible. The following rules may be deduced from them. 1. No person is by these acts empowered to make any indiscriminate grant of lands in favour of any incumbent or of any benefice he may select. The mortmain acts would prevent him in all such cases generally. 2. But if any person is disposed to make such general grant, there are two corporations, namely, "The Governors of Queen's Anne's Bounty," and " The Ecclesiastical Commissioners," to whom they may make the grant, either specifying particular purposes or not, who are empowered to accept the benefaction, and by whom it will be rightly applied. 3. In the case of old parishes, and whether there exists d 6 & 7 Vict. c. 37, s. 22. Encroachments on the waste. glebe land and a good house of residence or not, impropriators of tithes may reannex the same to the benefice, so long as the annual value is not made to exceed 3001. 4. In the same cases as in the last rule incumbents, to whom in right of their benefice manorial lands belong, may annex them, or any part of them, to the benefice as glebe. 5. In the case of old parishes, where there is insufficient house of residence, and less than fifty acres of glebe lands, persons are empowered to grant not exceeding five acres for glebe; but the glebe must not be so made to exceed fifty-one acres altogether. 6. In the same cases as in last rule lords of manors may grant not exceeding five acres of the waste. 7. Where there is no house of residence, or an inconvenient one, any person, not under legal disability, may give one to the benefice, with gardens, appurtenances, &c. 8. Where the existing glebe does not exceed five acres, the incumbent may purchase for glebe not exceeding twenty acres, money for which purchase may be raised on mortgage of the benefice, certain conditions and restrictions being observed. 9. Where a benefice exceeds 1007. per annum, and becomes void after 1838, and new buildings are necessary for residence, the bishop may purchase for the benefice a house or land for building; money for which may be raised as in rule 8. 10. In the case of new churches built under the church building acts, persons not under legal disability may give any lands, &c. as endowment in such manner as they think fit, so long as the whole amount of the endowment does not exceed in value 3007. per annum. 11. In the same case as in last rule, persons may give endowment in or out of lands, vesting the same in private trustees, in the governors of Queen Anne's Bounty, or in the ecclesiastical commissioners as their trustees; and private trustees may transfer such trust to the governors of Queen Anne's Bounty. There is one other case in which it is possible that lands may be acquired as glebe, notwithstanding the statutes of mortmain, a case more frequent now than may be commonly supposed; for it may very frequently have happened, especially since the building of parsonage houses has become much more common than heretofore, that waste lands or common or old roads may have been inclosed, or ponds filled up by the incumbent, converted into yard or garden, and occupied as such with the parsonage house; and in some counties, where waste lands in the villages is very frequent, such conversion may have been of considerable extent. In cases where the incumbent enclosing such lands has acquired a title to them by lapse of time, it may be doubtful whether they would devolve upon his heir, or would pass to his successors, as having been considered part and parcel of and appurtenant to the parsonage. But as the statutes of mortmain would operate to prevent lands from becoming the property of an ecclesiastical corporation, without some special enactment, it is presumed that lands so acquired would pass to the heir of the incumbent, to the great inconvenience of his successor. SECTION 6. Houses of Residence upon Glebe Lands, and building new Having in the last section seen in what manner and Origin of parunder what restrictions lands may be acquired to the use sonage houses. of an incumbent, and become glebe, we come now to speak more particularly of the houses erected upon such lands for the residence of the incumbent therein. At the original endowment of churches, it is probable that in many cases some house of residence was given with the glebe land for the accommodation of a residing minister, but that this was by no means universal. In the case of those benefices which lay contiguous to some abbey or monastery, and where the monks, appropriating the revenues, provided for the performance of the ecclesiastical duties by some member of their own bodies, the houses of residence would of course soon become dilapidated, and in many cases be removed. In many other cases, also, the incumbent, having but a life estate, would only take care that the house was kept in such repair as by the law of dilapidations he was compelled to leave it in at his decease, while the change of times, and of the habits of living, required a home larger and of a different description for the proper accommodation of the incumbent. Consequently, until a very recent period, the houses for Recent alterathe residence of ministers throughout the country were tions in style of mean, inconvenient and ill-adapted for their purpose, when houses, &c. the subject engaged the attention of the legislature; and The present section relates to houses built upon lands which are already glebe, a subject, therefore, quite distinct from the preceding. New houses the present law on this subject is almost entirely regulated by statute. In speaking of the mode in which new glebe lands may be acquired, we have already mentioned some of the methods in which houses of residence may be provided; as where persons who are willing to give and grant houses with the land are enabled under certain limitations or restrictions so to do; or where the incumbent is enabled, with the consent of the patron and ordinary, to sell or exchange the glebe or house of residence for the purpose of obtaining some more convenient house; or where he is empowered to purchase land for the purpose of building on it.f We now come to the methods by which an incumbent built on the old is enabled to erect a suitable house upon glebe already glebe. belonging to the benefice, without personally incurring more than a just proportion of the cost. The Gilbert Proceedings under. The first act for this purpose, commonly called "The Gilbert Act," was passed in 1776, but some of its provisions have subsequently been extended and altered by acts passed in the present reign; as there are still, however, some cases which may be entirely regulated by the first act, and every case is in a great measure dependent upon the provisions contained in it, it will be best to state the substance of it. Whenever the parson, vicar or other incumbent of any benefice, being under the jurisdiction of the bishop or other ecclesiastical ordinary, whereon there is no house, or one so mean or ruinous that one year's net income and produce of such living would be insufficient to put it in repair, shall think fit to apply for the assistance of that act, he must first procure from some skilful workman or surveyor a certificate containing a statement of the condition of the building on his glebe, and of the value of the timber and other materials thereon fit to be employed in such building or repairs or to be sold, and also a plan and estimate of the work proposed to be done; which statement and estimate must be verified upon oath before some magistrate, or ordinary or extraordinary master in chancery; and he must lay the same, together with a particular account in writing, signed by him and verified upon oath taken in the same manner, of the annual profits of the living, before the ordinary and patrons of the living, and obtain their consent to such proposed new buildings or repairs in writing, Money may be in the particular form prescribed by the act; and having complied with these requisitions he may borrow and take borrowed for building. |