General to introduce a Tithe Bill, and by appointing a Commission to inquire into the distribution of Church revenues. The fail of his ministry deprived him of the credit of carrying out his policy, but it did not save him from the abuse of Churchmen. He was denounced in Whitehall Chapel as Pontius Pilate. But the denunciation of the Church was powerless to stop the current of reform. Russell, in 1836, succeeded in carrying a comprehensive and successful measure for the commutation of tithe.2 The Whig Ministry renewed the Ecclesiastical Commission which Peel had originated,3 and its reports became the basis of the most important legisla tion which had as yet been applied to the Church.

The inquiries of the Commission established the fact, which had previously been surmised, that the net revenues of the

The wealth of the

Church and its unequal

distribution.

Church amounted to nearly £3,500,000 a year. The gross annual income of the 27 individuals who constituted the Episcopate amounted to £150,000; the revenues of the Cathedral establishments absorbed a further £217,000; while the 10,700 beneficed clergy, who carried on the real work of the Church, received only £3,050,000 among them. But these figures only imperfectly illustrated the unequal manner in which the wealth of the Church was distributed. It was admitted by the Commissioners that Durham was worth £17,800, Canterbury £17,000, London £12,200, Ely £11,500, and Winchester £10,700 a year, while critics who wrote with less kindly feelings towards the Church placed the revenues of these sees at far higher sums, and declared that the smaller estimates had only been arrived at by ignoring much of the valuable property which the bishops really possessed.5

1 Edinburgh Review, vol. cccxiv. p. 311. 2 Ante, vol. iv. p. 65 seq.

3 Hansard, vol. xxxv. p. 14.

They had been estimated at this amount by Althorp in 1833. Ibid., vol. xvii. p. 274. After the Commissioners Report the gross revenues were placed by Russell, in 1838, at £3,738,951, the net revenues at £3,439,767. Ibid., vol. xlii. p. 821.

5 The case against the Church is stated in an exaggerated form in the BlackBook, where its income is placed at £9.459,000, p. 52. The figures set out in the text are given on the authority of Melbourne in Hansard, vol. xxxii. p. 127.

quences of

the unequal

If the revenues of the bishops had been equally distributed among the twenty-six sees into which England and Wales were divided, each bishop would have enjoyed a net The conse income of about £6000 a year. Unequally endowed, some prelates had enormous incomes, others distribution. had smail and inadequate stipends. For the purpose of increasing the revenues of the poorer bishops, they were usually allowed to hold prebendary stalls in other Chapters or livings in commendam-that is, livings granted only till some suitable person was appointed to them. Thus the unequal distribution of the episcopal revenues led to the appropriation by the poorer bishops of revenues which would otherwise have been available for the working clergy, and the usefulness of the Church was necessarily decreased by the accumulation of incompatible appointments on the same individuals.

How far these abuses had extended may be discovered by any one who will take the trouble of ascertaining the benefices held by bishops in 1832. Bagot, Bishop of The bishops. Oxford, was Dean of Canterbury; Bathurst, Bishop

of Norwich, was Rector of Sapperton; Bethell, Bishop of Bangor, was Rector of Kirkby Wiske; Blomfield, Bishop of London, was Provincial Dean of Canterbury; Burgess, Bishop of Salisbury, was Provincial Precentor of Canterbury; Carey, Bishop of St. Asaph, was Archdeacon of the Diocese; Carr, Bishop of Worcestor, was Canon of St. Paul's; Copleston, Bishop of Llandaff, was Dean of St. Paul's; Gray, Bishop of Bristol, was Prebendary of Durham; Jenkinson, Bishop of St. David's, was Dean of Brecon and Dean of Durham; Maltby, Bishop of Chichester, was Preacher at Lincoln's Inn; Marsh, Bishop of Peterborough, was Professor of Divinity at Cambridge; Monk, Bishop of Gloucester, was Prebendary of Westminster; Murray, Bishop of Rochester, was Dean of Worcester, Rector of Bishopsbourne, and Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury; Percy, Bishop of Carlisle, was Chancellor of Salisbury

Russell in the same session placed Durham at £19.480 and Canterbury at £18,090, vol. xxxv. p. 16, and these figures have been apparently adopted by the Hon. A. Elliot in his excellent little book on the State and the Church.

VOL. V.

R

and Prebendary of St. Paul's; Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter, was Prebendary of Durham; Ryder, Bishop of Lichfield, was Rector of Pitchley and Prebend of Westminster; Sumner, Bishop of Winchester, was Sub-Dean of Canterbury; Sumner, Bishop of Chester, was Prebend of Durham and Rector of Waverton; Ward, Bishop of Sodor and Man, was Prebend of Salisbury and Rector of Great Horkesley. Such were some of the lucrative and incompatible appointments held by the bishops in 1832.

The wealth-the unnecessary wealth-of these great dignitaries may perhaps be inferred from the fortunes which they left behind them. The bishops who died between 1828 and 1848 are said to have left £1,500,000 of personalty.1 But the fortunes which they accumulated formed, perhaps, the least vicious part of the system. The property from which their income was derived was managed by themTheir wealth. selves; and men who succeeded to their estates in their declining years, and who had no personal interest in their successors, naturally desired to make as much as possible for themselves and their families, and to do as little as possible for those who came after them. No worse system could have been devised for their tenants, for the Church, or for the nation. The patronage which the bishops possessed was divided among the sees as unequally as the estates. But in

Their patronage.

almost every case it was large, and perhaps in every case it was abused. No enemy to the Church, but a man like Croker-a Tory among Tories-declared: "There is not (at least there has not been to my knowledge) any single case in which the promotion to the Bench has not been preceded or followed by circumstances connected with patronage which would look very unseemly to the public eye. I remember to have heard that old Bishop Law, of Elphin, saluted a newly-mitred bishop with this congratulation, 'My dear Lord, I give you joy; you will now be able to provide

1 Hansard, vol. cx. p. 962. It was stated in 1845 that the eleven Irish Bishops who had died in the preceding forty or fifty years had left £1,875,000. Ibid., vol. lxxix. p. 1292.

for your large family; you will unite all your sons to the Church, and the Church to all your daughters.""1

residence.

Great as were the abuses of the Episcopate, those connected with Cathedral establishments were almost greater. The vast estates of the Chapters were managed on the same vicious principles as those of the bishops. Their patronage was lavishly bestowed on members of their own body, or on their personal friends and acquaintances. In consequence, the clergymen appointed to these benefices were frequently, perhaps even usually, non-resident. It was not, in- Nondeed, among Cathedral dignitaries alone that nonresidence was specially visible. The mischief in their case was that they-who from their position should have set an example to the Church-sanctioned the worst abuses by their conduct. So prevalent was non-residence that, in about 10,550 benefices, it was variously estimated that from 3687 to 6120 clergymen were non-resident. The stipends which in many cases were allowed by these absent pluralists to the curates who did the work were notoriously inadequate. In a parish of 10,000 acres, the whole of the tithes, worth £2000 a year, went to an ecclesiastical corporation; and there was only one service in the parish church on Sunday because the corporation would not, or could not, afford more than £24 a year as a stipend to the vicar. Richmond and Kingston were united in one benefice because King's College, Cambridge, would not, or could not, afford to endow the two out of the tithes. A senior Fellow of Brasenose held, in 1837, a stall in Hereford, two livings worth £1100 a year, with a cure of 3000 souls, and was resident in Paris. In such circum

1 Croker's Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 82.

2 The bishops set a notable example. Watson, the author of the Apology, Bishop of Llandaff, permanently resided in the Lake district. Ashwell's Life of Wilberforce, vol. i. p. 343.

3 The larger estimate will be found in Parl. Papers, 1830, vol. xix. pp. 36, 37, where it is given for 1827. The smaller estimate was given by Sir J. Wrottesley in 1833. In 1837 the number of non-residents was placed at 4975. Hansard, vol. xlii. p. 915.

Both these statements rest on the high authority of Peel. See Croker, vol. ii. p. 265. 5 Hansard, vol. xxxvii. p. 1006.

stances it was only natural that Dissent was rapidly increasing. The number of Dissenting chapels in England was said to have risen from 4302 in 1812 to 8490 in 1836.1

Such, stated briefly, was the rotten and corrupt condition of the Church in 1835. In 1836 the first legislative step was taken to reform these abuses. A perpetual Commission was incorporated, in which the surplus revenues of the Church were vested, and the Commissioners were empowered to frame schemes for the redistribution of the bishops' incomes, for the

The Eccle siastical Commissioners.

amalgamation of some of the smaller sees, and for the creation of fresh sees in populous districts.

Notwithstanding that the Radicals complained that the measure was insufficient, and that the Tories regarded a bill which made the bishops stipendiaries as prejudicial, the moderate nature of the measure commended itself to most people; and, to the great advantage of the Church, the funds set apart for the support of bishoprics were made adequate for the purpose without allotting stalls and livings to spiritual peers.3 1 Hansard, vol. xlii. p. 910.

26 and 7 William IV., c. 77. Peel's Commission had proposed to unite St. Asaph and Bangor; Llandaff and Bristol (subsequently changed to Gloucester and Bristol); Sodor and Man and Carlisle; to form two new sees at Manchester and Ripon; to reduce, as vacancies occurred, the value of the nine richest sees from a nominal £102,860 to £70,700, and to raise the income of twelve sees from £33,560 to £54,000. Hansard, vol. xxxv. p. 16. The union of Gloucester and Bristol was effected in the October following the passage of the Act, Allen, Bishop of Bristol, being transferred to Ely. The other amalgamations were not carried out. The Manx raised so much opposition to the union of the see of Man with that of Carlisle that the Commissioners in 1838 abandoned that part of the scheme. Ibid., vol. xli. p. 4. The Welsh, imitating the example of the Manx, clamoured against the union of St. Asaph and Bangor. Lord Powis, making himself their mouthpiece, introduced bills to prevent it in 1843-44-45-46. Wellington, on the part of the Government, resisted the measures, on the ground that if they were carried the bishopric of Manchester could not be created, since the ministry could not add an additional bishop to the Lords and could not contemplate a bishop who was not a peer. On the Bishop of St. Asaph dying in 1846, the Whig Ministry gave way, and formed the new see of Manchester, providing that the junior bishop-not being the Bishop of Durham, London, or Winchester-should have no seat in the Lords. For some very curious debates, see ibid., vol. lxix. p. 756, vol. lxxv. p. 484, vol. lxxvi. pp. 122, 591, vol. lxxx. p. 41, vol. lxxxvii. p. 1269, vol. xciii. p. 294, vol. xciv. p. 236.

3 Duncombe complained of the constitution of the Ecclesiastical Commission,