aw. 347.]

IN this manner, and subject to these conditions, may appropriations be
made at this day: and thus were most, if not all, of the
appropriations at present existing originally made; being annexed to
bishopricks, prebends, religious houses, nay, even to nunneries, and
certain military orders, all of which were spiritual corporations. At
the dissolution of monasteries by statutes 27 Hen. VIII. c. 28. and 31
Hen. VIII. c. 13. the appropriations of the several parsonages, which
belonged to those respective religious houses, (amounting to more than
one third of all the parishes in England[s]) would have been by the
rules of the common law disappropriated; had not a clause in those
statutes intervened, to give them to the king in as ample a manner as
the abbots, &c, formerly held the same, at the time of their
dissolution. This, though perhaps scarcely defensible, was not without
example; for the same was done in former reigns, when the alien
priories, (that is, such as were filled by foreigners only) were
dissolved and given to the crown[t]. And from these two roots have
sprung all the lay appropriations or secular parsonages, which we now
see in the kingdom; they having been afterwards granted out from time
to time by the crown[u].

[Footnote s: Seld. review of tith. c. 9. Spelm. Apology. 35.]

[Footnote t: 2 Inst. 584.]

[Footnote u: Sir H. Spelman (of tythes, c. 29.) says these are now
called impropriations, as being _improperly_ in the hands of laymen.]

THESE appropriating corporations, or religious houses, were wont to
depute one of their own body to perform divine service, and administer
the sacraments, in those parishes of which the society was thus the
parson. This officiating minister was in reality no more than a
curate, deputy, or vicegerent of the appropriator, and therefore
called _vicarius_, or _vicar_. His stipend was at the discretion of
the appropriator, who was however bound of common right to find
somebody, _qui illi de temporalibus, episcopo de spiritualibus, debeat
respondere_[w]. But this was done in so scandalous a manner, and the
parishes suffered so much by the neglect of the appropriators, that
the legislature was forced to interpose: and accordingly it is enacted
by statute 15 Ric. II. c. 6. that in all appropriations of churches,
the diocesan bishop shall ordain (in proportion to the value of the
church) a competent sum to be distributed among the poor parishioners
annually; and th