United States or Australia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was made at Gouda in Holland, and was a present from the magistrates of Dort to Henry VIII. for the chapel of Whitehall Palace. The glass suffered many removals and vicissitudes, being at one time buried to escape Puritan zeal, but it was eventually bought by the churchwardens of St. Margaret's for 400 guineas.
Parish dinners were held on the choosing of the churchwardens, the visitation of the Archdeacon, etc. The parish officials invoked the aid of the law when parochial rights were infringed, especially by neighbours. The church was the centre of parochial life and in it the business of the parish was transacted. "Parishes were grouped as wards.
That none be admitted but such as are without any probable means of being provided for otherways; nor without a due certificate from the minister, churchwardens, and three or four of the principal inhabitants of the parish whence any children come, certifying the poverty and inability of the parent to maintain such children, and the true age of the said child, and engaging to discharge the hospital of them before or after the age of fifteen years if a boy, or fourteen years if a girl, which shall be left to the governor's pleasure to do; so that it shall be wholly in the power of the hospital to dispose of such child, or return them to the parent or parish, as to the hospital shall seem good.
"Come, come, Master Kenton, this wont do, give 'un up or you'll be made to. Times are changed, and we don't want no parsons nor churchwardens now, nor no such popery!" "I'm accountable to the vestry for the church," gravely said Kenton. "I will come and see what is doing, and open the church if so be as the parish require it." "Don't you see! The parish does "
Sir J.F. Stephen, Hist. of Criminal Law, ii. 404. In the Canons of 1571 the churchwardens are called "aeditui," in those of 1604 "oeconomi." They do not always appear in small country parishes, neither are they generally found before the latter half of Elizabeth's reign. For rector, etc., see p. 30 infra. But the authorities he cites are post-Elizabethan.
"There's nothing for it but pluck," said Mr. Newte. "We must make a new Poor Rate. They've been asking a new one for years; and, bejimbers! I hope they'll like the one they get." The old Squire stroked his chin. "That's a bit too dangerous, Newte." "Where's the danger? Churchwardens and Overseers, we can count on every man." "The parish will appeal, as sure as a gun.
The churchwardens and their allies have all sorts of experiences: they break in upon "exercises" or conventicles; they peep in at victuallers' houses or at inns where irate hosts slam doors in their faces and give them bad words on being caught offending; they come across merrymakers dancing the morris-dance on the village green during Sunday afternoon service, or they surprise men at a quiet game of cards at a neighbor's house during evening prayer.
They were to delete him from the category of those who might be taken. Armed with a certificate from the minister and churchwardens of his parish, this migratory farm-hand, provided always he were not a sailor masquerading in that disguise, could traverse the length and breadth of the land to all intents and purposes a free man.
So close is the supervision of the ordinary over the churchwardens, so effective the discipline of the church courts, that we seem to hear occasionally a sort of dialogue going on between judges and wardens, the former directing certain things to be executed, the latter replying and reporting from time to time that progress is being made on the work to be performed, or that the missing objects will be soon supplied.
Speaking generally of the average parish, Elizabethan churchwardens accounts and vestry minutes show that for the purposes of raising money amongst themselves to meet every-day parish expenditures, the parishioners of the period did not commonly resort to rates, if by "rate" be understood a general assessment of all lands or all goods alike at a fixed percentage of their revenue or value above a minimum exempted.
Word Of The Day