From "The Pilot", 1969, comes this, an interesting historical ramble.
The Revd Charles Dodgson was perpetual curate of All Saints’ Church, Daresbury in Cheshire. He was the father of C.L.Dodgson, otherwise known as Lewis Carroll.
Perpetual curacies had long been liable to remain poorly paid and inadequately housed relative to other full incumbencies of the Church of England, even when augmented from Queen Anne's Bounty; consequently the Perpetual Curate commonly features in mid-Victorian literary culture as a figure endeavouring to maintain the social standing of beneficed clergyman, but whose family aspirations (especially marital) were being frustrated by constricted financial expectations; most notably in The Perpetual Curate by Mrs Oliphant, and in The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope.
While not a "perpetual curate", the Minister of St Paul's Church in Jersey comes under a similar system, appointed and chosen by members of the lay congregation.
Some Church Customs Explained
By S.G. Thicknesse
What is a Perpetual Curate?
Most of the old churches of England were built by laymen, who endowed them with freehold land also sufficient for a graveyard, and sometimes for a parsonage house, and for a plot-the glebe-by which the rector could maintain himself for ever.
In addition, from the earliest centuries the parishioners brought annually to the tithe barn, or other convenient place, the tenth part of the yearly increment of their land, stock, and personal skill for the maintenance of their church and the clerk, or person, in holy orders who held it.
The right of nominating and presenting such a person to the living was clearly a valuable one. It was often handed down from father to son in the family of the original benefactor, or added to the dowry of a daughter, or sold, or given away as a pious act to a monastic foundation. Especially after the twelfth century it proved a very small step for such recipients to use their right to present to a living, if they were a monastic or other religious corporation, to nominate themselves to it in perpetuity.
By this legal fiction they were able to appropriate to the use of the house at least the valuable `great tithes' of the parish, those of corn, hay, grain, and wood, leaving the others, on other crops, on stock, and on personal skill, with freehold in church, etc., to the substitute whom they nominated-the vicar.
At the Dissolution such appropriated rectories, and the rights that went with them, in many cases fell into the hands of lay-men, the `gray coat parsons', where it still sometimes remains. Before the Reformation there were many spectacular cases of laymen holding clerical benefices, even bishoprics.
His Eminence Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Archbishop of York, Abbot of St. Albans, and Bishop of Durham, secured for his natural son four archdeaconries, a deanery, five prebends and two rectories, and only failed to get him accepted as his successor in the fabulously rich see of Durham, although the young Thomas was not yet in priest's orders.
After the Reformation, however, if allowance is made for monastic wealth that came back into lay hands, the number of laymen living on what had been clerical benefits was greater than ever before.
Where such layman swallowed, impropriated, the vicarage tithes of the living, as well as the rectorial, the parson instituted to its shorn freehold was, and is, called a perpetual curate. He holds, as does every rector or vicar, a benefice and cure, or care, of souls. Rectors and vicars are also `curates'. Any unbeneficed clergyman who assists them, whether he be priest or deacon, is an assistant curate.
Before the middle of the nineteenth century it was quite often this assistant curate alone who was left to look after the parish. Realistic England therefore tended to drop the word `assistant' from his title.
Although there are far more parochial benefices in England than benefices of other types, there are also others, as for example those attached to cathedrals and collegiate churches. Some of these were served before the Reformation by monks, as at Durham, or by canons living together under a rule, as at Salisbury, but where such foundations survived they became `secular' at the dissolution.
A dean, for example, holds a cathedral benefice; so do those canons residentiary who have definite full-time or periodic duties to perform in the cathedral or collegiate church. The subdean is often a beneficed canon, as is also a precentor. The latter, the leader of the music, as his Latin name implies, traditionally holds the stall opposite and corresponding to that of the dean.
Between them they have supplied the names of the sides of the choir-decani, the side of the dean (decanus: originally a man set over ten); and cantoris, that of the precantor.
At first such beneficed canons were called prebendaries. This was because, about the tenth century, they tired of living together under a common roof and split up among themselves the prebend, the revenues of the foundation.
To-day, on the contrary, a prebendary, as at St. Paul's, tends to be an honorary, not a beneficed canon. Among the rights which he enjoys is a seat on the cathedral chapter.
The Revd Charles Dodgson was perpetual curate of All Saints’ Church, Daresbury in Cheshire. He was the father of C.L.Dodgson, otherwise known as Lewis Carroll.
Perpetual curacies had long been liable to remain poorly paid and inadequately housed relative to other full incumbencies of the Church of England, even when augmented from Queen Anne's Bounty; consequently the Perpetual Curate commonly features in mid-Victorian literary culture as a figure endeavouring to maintain the social standing of beneficed clergyman, but whose family aspirations (especially marital) were being frustrated by constricted financial expectations; most notably in The Perpetual Curate by Mrs Oliphant, and in The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope.
While not a "perpetual curate", the Minister of St Paul's Church in Jersey comes under a similar system, appointed and chosen by members of the lay congregation.
Some Church Customs Explained
By S.G. Thicknesse
What is a Perpetual Curate?
Most of the old churches of England were built by laymen, who endowed them with freehold land also sufficient for a graveyard, and sometimes for a parsonage house, and for a plot-the glebe-by which the rector could maintain himself for ever.
In addition, from the earliest centuries the parishioners brought annually to the tithe barn, or other convenient place, the tenth part of the yearly increment of their land, stock, and personal skill for the maintenance of their church and the clerk, or person, in holy orders who held it.
The right of nominating and presenting such a person to the living was clearly a valuable one. It was often handed down from father to son in the family of the original benefactor, or added to the dowry of a daughter, or sold, or given away as a pious act to a monastic foundation. Especially after the twelfth century it proved a very small step for such recipients to use their right to present to a living, if they were a monastic or other religious corporation, to nominate themselves to it in perpetuity.
By this legal fiction they were able to appropriate to the use of the house at least the valuable `great tithes' of the parish, those of corn, hay, grain, and wood, leaving the others, on other crops, on stock, and on personal skill, with freehold in church, etc., to the substitute whom they nominated-the vicar.
At the Dissolution such appropriated rectories, and the rights that went with them, in many cases fell into the hands of lay-men, the `gray coat parsons', where it still sometimes remains. Before the Reformation there were many spectacular cases of laymen holding clerical benefices, even bishoprics.
His Eminence Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Archbishop of York, Abbot of St. Albans, and Bishop of Durham, secured for his natural son four archdeaconries, a deanery, five prebends and two rectories, and only failed to get him accepted as his successor in the fabulously rich see of Durham, although the young Thomas was not yet in priest's orders.
After the Reformation, however, if allowance is made for monastic wealth that came back into lay hands, the number of laymen living on what had been clerical benefits was greater than ever before.
Where such layman swallowed, impropriated, the vicarage tithes of the living, as well as the rectorial, the parson instituted to its shorn freehold was, and is, called a perpetual curate. He holds, as does every rector or vicar, a benefice and cure, or care, of souls. Rectors and vicars are also `curates'. Any unbeneficed clergyman who assists them, whether he be priest or deacon, is an assistant curate.
Before the middle of the nineteenth century it was quite often this assistant curate alone who was left to look after the parish. Realistic England therefore tended to drop the word `assistant' from his title.
Although there are far more parochial benefices in England than benefices of other types, there are also others, as for example those attached to cathedrals and collegiate churches. Some of these were served before the Reformation by monks, as at Durham, or by canons living together under a rule, as at Salisbury, but where such foundations survived they became `secular' at the dissolution.
A dean, for example, holds a cathedral benefice; so do those canons residentiary who have definite full-time or periodic duties to perform in the cathedral or collegiate church. The subdean is often a beneficed canon, as is also a precentor. The latter, the leader of the music, as his Latin name implies, traditionally holds the stall opposite and corresponding to that of the dean.
Between them they have supplied the names of the sides of the choir-decani, the side of the dean (decanus: originally a man set over ten); and cantoris, that of the precantor.
At first such beneficed canons were called prebendaries. This was because, about the tenth century, they tired of living together under a common roof and split up among themselves the prebend, the revenues of the foundation.
To-day, on the contrary, a prebendary, as at St. Paul's, tends to be an honorary, not a beneficed canon. Among the rights which he enjoys is a seat on the cathedral chapter.
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