ON THE POWERS AND DUTIES OF Parish Vestries IN ECCLESIASTICAL MATTERS: BEING A VESTRYMAN'S GUIDE. BY ALFRED WILLS, OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, ESQUIRE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW. London: W. MAXWELL, LAW PUBLISHER, 1855. PREFACE. THIS Volume has been written to supply a want which, I believe, is felt by many persons interested in the subject of which it treats, by affording, in a concise and accessible form, a view of the rights and duties of parishioners in their character of vestrymen. No great difficulty exists in finding ample information as to the powers of the parochial authorities. With respect to the office of churchwarden in particular, Mr. Prideaux's book leaves little to be desired. But his work, from its very nature, and most others, practically, look at the subject from a churchwarden's, rather than from a vestryman's, point of view, and are more explicit. upon the powers of churchwardens, than upon the rights of parishioners. It has been my object to place within the reach of the vestryman the information which he requires to enable him to assert those rights to which, as a vestryman, he is by law entitled, and to indicate to him the extent and the limits of his powers and obligations as a parishioner. While this work is thus intended to be useful and intelligible to the vestryman, it is, I trust, not destitute of legal accuracy. With a view to the practical usefulness of this volume, I availed myself, on undertaking to write it, of the offer of a learned friend, who procured for me a mass of letters, written by persons in different parts of the country to a society in London, to ask advice on various matters connected with parochial contests. These letters, and a quantity of correspondence on similar subjects, gathered from the pages of certain clerical periodicals, to which I was also referred, disclosed an amount of ingenuity on the part of the chairmen of parish vestries (usually the ministers of parishes), exerted for the purpose of preventing the free discussion of the questions brought before vestry, and of putting down or rendering nugatory inconvenient opposition, which, apart from the use to which it was put, would have done honour to a very different profession. I mention this fact, because there are supposed cases of unfair or improper conduct by the chairman discussed in the following pages, which might otherwise seem farfetched or improbable. Some certainly would never have occurred to myself, had they not been thus suggested to my notice. I fear that, notwithstanding great pains to ensure accuracy in printing, more errors than I had hoped have crept into the text and notes. I have been obliged to correct most of the following sheets on circuit, where it has been impossible to give that kind and degree of attention which the correction of the press often requires, or to do more than rely upon the accuracy of the manuscript for references and quotations. I believe, however, that in this respect few errors will be found to exist. As I have frequently been unable to find passages in Gibson, Degge, and some other writers, from the references made to them in later books, I have inserted a list of the editions of certain works to which reference has uniformly been made in the following pages. It will be found at the end of the Index of Statutes. MIDLAND CIRCUIT, WARWICK, March 29th, 1855. A. W. |