11. The life-trustees, or church wardens, of the new churches or chapels, are authorized to dispose of vaults and burial-places, and to pay to the incumbent of the parish such dues as he would be entitled to for similar vaults or burial-places in the parish-church, and to invest the remainder of the monies in the funds, and out of the interest or dividends to make good any deficiencies in payment of the salaries of the minister or clerk, or any other payments or incidental expences to which the pew-rents being liable, were found inadequate, and in the next place to repair the building, with further provisions for applying any surplus income. (Sect. 15.)

12. The commissioners under the former Acts, with consent of a majority of the subscribers entitled to elect the trustees, and of the Bishop, patron, and incumbent, are empowered to make any such new church or chapel, a district church or chapel under the provisions of the said Acts and this Act. (Sect. 16.)

13. After forty years all new churches and chapels shall, without such consent, become district churches, if His Majesty in council shall have made a division of the parish or place for that purpose, as directed by the former Acts; or they shall remain parochial chapels, if no such division shall have been made. (Sect. 17.)

14. Certain officers of the duchy of Cornwall are empowered to grant and convey lands belonging to the duchy for the purposes of the Acts. (Sect. 19.)

Several Acts were also passed, during the last Session of Parliament, relative to the Church and Clergy in Ireland; the objects of which partly appear from their respective titles, viz.

5 Geo. 4. ch. 8. "An Act to amend an Act of the last Session of Parliament, for amending the Laws for the Improvement of ChurchLands in Ireland."

5 Geo. 4. ch. 63. "An Act to amend an Act of the last Session of Parliament, for providing for the Establishing of Composition for Tithes in Ireland."

5 Geo. 4. ch. 80. "An Act for disappropriating, disuniting, and divesting from and out of the Chancellors, Archdeacons, and Precentors of the Diocese of CONNOR, in the County of ANTRIM, in IRELAND (after the decease or removal of the present Incumbents) certain Rectories, and the Rectorial Tithes thereof, Parts of the Corps of the said respective Dignities and for annexing and uniting the said respective Rectories when so disappropriated, and the Rectorial Tithes thereof, to the respective Vicarages of the said several Rectories, whereby the Incumbent of each Parish and Rectory shall have the actual Cure of Souls, and for other Purposes."

:

5 Geo. 4. ch. 91. "An Act to consolidate and amend the Laws for enforcing the Residence of Spiritual Persons on their Benefices; to restrain Spiritual Persons from carrying on Trade or Merchandize; and for the Support and Maintenance of Stipendiary Curates in Ireland."

The only Acts passed relating exclusively to the Church and Clergy in Scotland, are the following, viz.

5 Geo 4. ch. 72. entitled, "An Act for amending and rendering more effectual an Act for augmenting Parochial Stipends in certain Cases in Scotland."

And 5 Geo. 4. ch. 90. being " An Act to amend an Act for building additional Places of Worship in the Highlands and Islands of Scot land."

CITY OF LONDON TITHES.

THE interest which, more particularly during some months past, has been excited by the consideration of the unpleasant disputes arising out of the situation of the Tithes in several parishes within the city and liberties of the city of London; and of the proposed measure for the relief of some of those parishes, lately pending in Parliament, has attracted much of our attention.

The Bill introduced in the House of Commons was opposed and lost on the second reading, upon the ground that the House could not interfere to take away the rights and properties of parties without their consent, in the manner proposed by such Bill.

The Bill in question, of which a copy is before us, proposed to afford relief to the several parishes of Allhallows Barking, Allhallows the Less, St. Botolph without Aldgate, St. Giles without Cripplegate, and St. Gregory by St. Paul's, (as also, we presume, to such other parishes as might have been added to the Schedule of the Act before it passed,) by allotting specific sums to be paid, in lieu of tithes, to the several impropriators and incumbents, and (we infer from the blanks left in the Schelude) to the several other parties in possession of, or claiming to be entitled to, the tithes of those parishes respectively; and containing also a clause, "That in any parish or parishes where any impropriations be, it shall not be necessary for the impropriator, or impropriators, henceforth to pay, or allow, any sum or sums of money to the respective incumbents of such respective parishes."

That the Bill, for the reason alleged in opposition to it, should not have succeeded, occasions us no surprise; but supposing it had passed into a law, it seems that it was intended still to have left, in the same situation as at present, the very injurious disputes existing in several parishes within London and its liberties, which were included in the Fire Act, (22 and 23 Chas. 2. ch. 15.); and it would certainly not have affected any of the parishes not included in that Act, except those before mentioned, and such as might have been added to the Schedule of the Bill during its progress through Parliament.

The Bill, in its preamble, professes to apply to those parishes only, which are not included in the Fire Act; but as the very first parish which, in a few lines afterwards is mentioned, in the enacting part of

I

the Bill, is the parish of St. Gregory, which is included in the Fire Act, as united to the parish of St. Mary Magdalen, Old Fish-street,-—we presume the framers of the Bill must have overlooked that circumstance: and it seems doubtful, whether the clause, before extracted, in consequence of the generality of its terms, "any parish or parishes where any impropriations be," would not, and was not intended, to have extended to parishes included in the Fire Act; particularly as that Act is noticed and referred to by the preamble of the Bill.

As, notwithstanding the failure of this Bill, we entertain considerable hope that some means may yet be provided for putting an end to the very unpleasant disputes, not less injurious to the best interests of religion, than vexatious to the parties immediately interested, which have so long disturbed the tranquillity of many parishes in the city and liberties of London, in consequence of the present state of the law respecting their tithes; we propose, in a future Number, to resume this subject, which, at present, we are laboriously investigating; and if such suggestions or observations as we shall then offer, may prove ultimately of service in so good a cause, we shall think our labours abundantly repaid. In the mean time we will only observe, that it is evident parliamentary interference only can accomplish the object desired ;-that, in our judgment, before it can be expected the Legislature will interfere, either agreements must be concluded between the several tithe-owners and parties liable to pay tithes; or such proposals for an accommodation of differences be made by the latter and refused, as Parliament may think ought to have been acquiesced in, in cases where the claims to tithes are doubtful;-and that the most probable mode of bringing about such an accommodation of differences is, in the first place, to ascertain, as correctly as possible, what are the legal rights of the parties; and, with that view, to clear up, as far as may be, the doubts which at present exist in the construction of the Acts of Parliament affecting the question,-which doubts have partly arisen out of the several decisions upon the London Tithe cases, that have been adjudged in our Courts of Law.

HISTORY

OF THE

DIOCESE OF CANTERBURY.

(Continued from No. II. page 599.)

No part of the island seems to have suffered more from the northern pirates than the long line of coast which the county of Kent exposed to their invasion. In Mercia and in Northumberland they formed settlements, and thus lost much of their ferocity. In Cornwall, the reliques of the Britons appear even to have taken part with them against their earlier oppressors; but every season brought flesh fleets into the mouths of the Thames and the Stour, which rarely abstained from laying waste the country, even after having received the purchase of their forbearance, and prosecuted their voyage only to leave the miserable inhabitants of Kent a prey to the next Sea-King that made for their harbours. Few of the religious societies outlived this system of alternate tribute and plunder; their endowments, finally, devolving upon that of Canterbury which escaped. Nor was the wreck which she thus saved her only compensation for the inflictions of the period.

The manor of Chartham was bestowed upon Archbishop Ethered, and the convent of Christ Church by Alfred in 871, the year before his accession to the throne, in which he fought no less than nine general actions, the last of which was at Marden, probably in Kent.

The individual character of Alfred threw a short-lived gleam across this period of gloom. If the fleets which he fitted out and the armies which he led against them were, by no means, attended with invariable success, his intrepidity, nevertheless, rendered his kingdom a far less inviting field than the invaders had found it in former reigns, and they were contented, for several years, to direct their course to other shores. In this season of comparative tranquillity, the mind of Alfred was still actively employed for the advantage of his kingdom. The Romish Clergy had now been established in England for nearly three centuries, without the slightest manifestation of moral improvement in the national character; and the lamentation of Alfred, that scarcely one of his subjects understood the liturgy, coupled with his assiduous cultivation of the Saxon language, evinces an awaking sense of the folly of using the Latin in religious offices. We are not authorized in assuming that the overthrow of this vicious system was contemplated by Alfred and

his coadjutors in England; but the attempt was made in other countries, at the close of the ninth century, and the opposition it met with from the Romish Clergy illustrates what our own history leaves in darkness. Short of that attempt, however, Alfred did much to render instruction accessible to his subjects in general, by the translation of works, then held in repute, into their native language. He employed himself upon a Saxon version of the Psalter, of the works of Orosius, of Boetius, and of Bede, and Werfrid, Bishop of Worcester, was employed by him upon those of St. Gregory. The selection proves the depth of ignorance from which the age remained to be extricated.

Among the eminent men whom Alfred assembled, it is worthy of a passing remark that John the Saxon is, apparently erroneously, confounded with Johannes Erigena. Grimbald appears to have been recommended to his notice by Archbishop Ethered; upon whose death, in 889, he rejected the Primacy, recommending, in his turn, Plegmund, who seems to have been the first compiler of the Saxon Chronicle; and who, in the language of the continuator of that record, was chosen by God and all his saints to succeed. The little that the Historians of the Cloister have suffered to come down to us of Plegmund, is hardly worthy of the preceptor of Alfred. He is said to have returned from Rome, where he was invested with his pall, with the costly acquisition of the relics of one of those fabulous worthies, with whose worship the Romish Church strove to overlay the religion of Jesus, which he deposited in his Cathedral; and immediately set to work to repair the omission of his predecessors, and despatched to the Pope the alms of Alfred and all his subjects. The most remarkable occurrence in his Primacy, was, however, the consecration of seven Bishops, at Canterbury, in one day. "Nam Papa Formosus maledictionem suam dederat Regi Edwardo et Anglis propter nimiam carentiam Episcoporum in terra Anglorum, quæ per septem annos Episcopis caruerat.' This "maledictio" has been converted by Romish writers into a Bull of excommunication, and pleaded in proof of the Papal authority over the Anglo-Saxon Kings. There is an awkward stumbling-block, however, in the shape of dates, which, if it were worth while to contend for a straw in a whole superstructure of stubble, would vindicate the royal culprit from the charge of crouching at the fulmination, namely, that the aforesaid redoubtable Pope was dead five years before Edward the elder came to the crown. Plegmund died in 923, and was succeeded by Athelm, whom he had previously consecrated Bishop of Wells. He crowned Athelstan in 924, and probably died the following year, when Ulfelm, who had succeeded him at Wells, succeeded him also in the Primacy.

The site of the desecrated nunnery of St. Eanthswithe (Folkestone), which Athelstan is said to have given to Christ Church, in honour of Ulfelm, was not destined to remain to that church. A less transient good, however, is ascribed to him, which must not be forgotten. He went beyond the example of Alfred, his grandfather, in promoting a careful translation of the Scriptures into the Saxon language, which, combined with the declaration that all persons, as well ecclesiastical as