orthodoxy than those who claimed to be their successors and their heirs. Such pleas, however elaborate and ingenious, did not prevail; and in 1842 the House of Lords gave judgment against the trustees and in favour of the claimants. They decided that orthodox Dissenters alone were qualified to act as trustees and to share in the endowments. The Wolverhampton chapel case was settled on the same lines; and it seemed as if the Unitarians at a single stroke might lose almost all the places of worship which were then in their possession.83 ་་ In their alarm, the Unitarian leaders laid their case before the Government, and appealed for some measure of relief. Sir Robert Peel and his Ministry came to their aid, and brought in the Bill generally known as the Dissenters' Chapels Bill. This Act was intended to secure undisturbed possession of any place of worship to a congregation that had occupied it continuously for a certain period, and it provided that "the usage of twenty-five years should be taken as conclusive evidence of the right of any congregation to the possession of their place of worship, and of the schools, burial-ground, and endowments pertaining thereto." 84 The Bill was resisted both by the orthodox Dissenters and by the bishops. But it passed through both Houses by decisive majorities in the Lords, by a vote of 44 to 9; and in the Commons, of 307 to 117--with the combined support of Peel, Lyndhurst, Brougham, Russell, Gladstone, and Macaulay. 85 The Law, it is known, gives weight to the fact of possession: the Lord Chancellor, in his advocacy of the Bill, illustrated we 83 "The suit being at an end," wrote Mr. Aspland to his son, must look for something more, the event having thrown down all our fences, and exposed us to inroads from our enemies. The opinion of almost all our professional friends is, that, according to the law as now declared, all our foundations before 1813 are endangered, say even the Gravel Pit"-his own place of worship-" and also Dukinfield where his son preached-" you having built upon a Trinitarian foundation, as the law, the perfection of reason,' will have it." Life of Aspland, 577, in Stoughton, Religion in England, 1800-1850, ii. 302. And see Aspland, 578-582, for the subsequent history. 84 An Act for the Regulation of suits relating to Meeting Houses and other property held for religious purposes by Persons dissenting from the United Church of England and Ireland. 7 and 8 Vict. cap. 45, § 2. 85 Parl. Debates (Hansard : T.S.), lxxiv. 831; lxxv. 391. Annual Register, 1844, lxxxvi. 206-213. See also Stoughton, Religion in England, 1800-1850, ii. 301-305; Waddington, iv. (1800-1850), 310–312; the maxim. Evidence is lost, he said, with the lapse of time. It may be no longer possible to establish a claim by direct testimony. But what time takes with the one hand it restores with the other; for "the lapse of time establishes by continued possession another title balancing and confirming the title that has been lost." 86 The Unitarians got the benefit of legal tradition, and the wisdom of the settlement is no longer seriously challenged. A rigid enforcement of rights would have led to serious injury, if not to serious injustice. A mass of litigation would have ensued, involving enormous expense -the costs in the Hewley case alone amounted to £30,000which would have drained the Churches of resources better applied to other purposes. And strife prolonged would have left lamentable results in bitter exasperation and lasting enmity between men pledged by their principles to unity of spirit in spite of divisions in doctrine. For the Churches of the orthodox faith any material gain would have been immeasurably outweighed by moral loss. NOTE A Marriages in Dissenting Chapels before Hardwicke's Act Sir Erskine May (Constitutional History, iii. 151) and Mr. TaswellLangmead (Constitutional History, 589) use language which implies that for all legal purposes marriages celebrated in Dissenting chapels before Hardwicke's Act were valid. According to the canon law it is no doubt true that "the absence of the solemnities prescribed by that law did not violate a marriage once contracted"; 87 and the canon law largely governed the practice of the Ecclesiastical Courts which had cognisance of marriage cases. But in the case of Haydon and Gould, determined in the ninth year of Queen Anne, the Court held that a marriage performed by the minister of a Sabbatarian congregation, in the presence of the congregation, was void. At the end of seven years the reputed wife died, and the administration of her effects was granted by the Ecclesiastical Court to her next of kin in preference to her reputed husband. "And it was observed, Bennett, History of Dissenters, 293–299; Joseph Hunter, Shore versus the Attorney General (a defence of the Hewley Trustees); and T. S. James, History of the Litigation and Legislation respecting Presbyterian Chapels and Churches in England and Ireland. 86 Parl. Debates (Hansard: T.S.), lxxiv. 579–588. 87 Phillimore, Ecclesiastical Law, 552, note n. that if the same advantages attended marriages solemnised by Dissenters, as those celebrated by the Established Church, there would then be no occasion for licence or banns, for giving security that there were no legal impediments, but every one who should get himself introduced into a Dissenting Congregation might do what was right in his own eyes."88 In the article referred to above there is a copy of a "Marriage Covenant," engrossed on parchment and stamped with a five-shilling stamp, attesting the marriage of Francis Smith and Elizabeth Toone at the Independent Meeting-house at Melbourne in the county of Derby. The document is drawn up with a great show of technical legal accuracy, and is signed by twenty-two witnesses. It bears the date August 20, 1753. Lord Hardwicke's Act came into operation on March 25, 1754.89 The true state of the law before 1754 seems to be described in the following words :-" A Marriage by mere consent of parties, until the passing of the Marriage Act in 1753, constituted a binding engagement; though if application were made to the ecclesiastical courts for letters of administration, etc., under a title derived through such irregular marriage, these courts sometimes showed their resentment of the irregularity by refusing their assistance, more especially where the non-compliance with the usual formalities could be traced to disaffection to the Established Church." 90 NOTE B The churchyard was a source of considerable income to the clergy. In addition to their fees for reading the Burial Service, they received special fees for the right of making bricked graves and constructing vaults; for the right to reopen bricked graves and vaults; for the right to erect gravestones, tombstones, and monuments; and the fees were proportioned to the size of the stones and the monuments. When the churchyard was closed because it was filled, there were some persons who thought that this source of clerical revenues would naturally come to an end. But the Acts declare that the consecrated part of a public cemetery is " to be deemed the Burial Ground of the parish or parishes" for which it has been provided; and the incumbent is entitled to claim the same fees for performing the service in this part of the cemetery that he could claim for performing the service in the closed churchyard; and he is to receive such fees in respect to vaults, monuments, gravestones, tablets, monumental inscriptions, etc., in the consecrated portion as shall be fixed by the Burial Board, "with the approval of the bishop"; and, if 88 Sidhold's Reports, 119; Congregational Magazine (April, 1837), 232. 89 Ibid., 231-232. The details are taken from The General Baptist Magazine, i. 453 90 Standard Cyclopædia of Political Knowlebge: s. v. Marriage. no scale of fees is agreed upon between the Board and the bishop, he is to receive such fees as he would by law or custom have been entitled to in the parochial churchyard. The claims of the parish clerk and sexton were also maintained.91 The interments in the consecrated portion of the cemetery ought, therefore, to be more expensive than the interments in the unconsecrated; for in the unconsecrated portion the only charges are the charges due to the Burial Board; in the consecrated portion there are, in addition to these, the charges due to the clergy. In some cases the Boards equalised the total fees, and some Boards gave to the Dissenting minister performing the service in one part of the cemetery the same fees for monuments, etc., that were given to the clergy of the parish in the other. But irregular charges still continued, and the attention of the Select Committee on Burial Fees (1882) was called to the fact that some Burial Boards illegally charged the same fees in unconsecrated as in consecrated ground, by including the clerical fees, and that the Home Secretary had improperly sanctioned the tables. The following table, dated March 1, 1883, and sanctioned by the Home Office, was in force at Mitcham, Surrey : Every one of the sums in the second and third columns is charged in the unconsecrated ground in distinct violation of the Act of Parliament.” 92 It will be noticed that in every case the clerical fees are more than double the fees of the Board acting for the inhabitants who had paid for the ground. 91 15 and 16 Vict. cap. 85, §§ xxxii., xxxiii.; and 16 and 17 Vict. cap. 134, § vii. The payment of fees to the clergy, except for services actually rendered in the consecrated part of public cemeteries, was abolished by the Burial Act, 1900. But monumental and other fees (not being service fees) in the consecrated part of cemeteries provided prior to July, 1900, were continued until the Incumbency was vacated, or for fifteen years, whichever was the longer period. The Act of 1900 did not apply to churchyards, where ecclesiastical fees are still payable. 92 Liberator, Nov., 1883. The Act referred to is the Act of 1857, the 17th Section of which enacted that "No fees shall be charged or received by any Burial Board in respect of any service done or right granted in the unconsecrated portion of any burial ground provided by such Board, but such as are identical in amount with the fees charged and received in respect of the same service or right in the consecrated portion of such ground, less any such portion of such corresponding fees or payments which may be received for, or on account of, any Incumbent, Churchwarden, Clerk, or Sexton." This section was repealed by the Burial Act of 1900, the provisions of that Act rendering it no longer necessary. CHAPTER II CONGREGATIONALISTS AND NATIONAL EDUCATION BRITISH SCHOOLS-BROUGHAM'S COMMITTEE ON THE EDUCATION OF THE POOR IN LONDON-BROUGHAM'S BILL-LORD MELBOURNE'S PROPOSALS SIR JAMES GRAHAM'S BILL-CONGREGATIONALIST OBJECTIONS TO A SYSTEM OF NATIONAL EDUCATION-CONGREGATIONAL BOARD OF EDUCATION-MINUTES OF COUNCIL, 1846— THE CLERGY AND THE SCHOOLS-MOVEMENT OF NONCONFORMIST OPINION THE NATIONAL EDUCATION LEAGUE-AGITATION FOR A COMPULSORY AND AN UNSECTARIAN SYSTEM-W. E. FORSTER'S BILL DEFECTS IN THE FIRST DRAFT-NONCONFORMIST OPPOSITION -CONFLICT IN PARLIAMENT THE AMENDED BILL-NONCONFORMIST REVOLT-THE TWENTY-FIFTH CLAUSE-MANCHESTER CONFERENCE-EFFECTS OF THE ACT. Co ONGREGATIONALISTS were among the most ardent advocates of popular education at a time when large and powerful classes of English society were sincerely afraid that if the children of the great masses of the people were taught to read and to write they would become a serious peril to the State. The British and Foreign School Society, established in 1808, found among Congregationalists some of its most earnest supporters. There were some Congregational Churches that opened day schools of their own; but as the day school was never regarded by Congregationalists as an institution for training children in the principles of Congregationalism, it was more usual for them to unite with persons of other religious denominations in order to create and maintain what were called "British Schools." 1 1 The original name of the British and Foreign School Society was "The Royal Lancastrian Institution." It is described in the Rules and Regulations adopted in 1817-twelve years after its foundation—as "The Institution for Promoting the Education of the Labouring and Manufacturing Classes of Society of every Religious Persuasion." The National Society, founded in 1811, was established for the education of the children of the poor in the principles of the Church of England. |