Vestry

A vestry was a committee for the local secular and ecclesiastical government for a parish in England and Wales, which originally met in the vestry or sacristy of the parish church, and consequently became known colloquially as the 'vestry'. A vestry was a committee for the local secular and ecclesiastical government for a parish in England and Wales, which originally met in the vestry or sacristy of the parish church, and consequently became known colloquially as the 'vestry'. For many centuries the vestries were the sole de facto local government and presided over local, communal fundraising and expenditure until the mid or late 19th century with local Established Church chairmanship. More punitive matters tended to be dealt with by the manorial court and hundred court during the epoch of the vestries. Their initial power derived from custom and was very occasionally ratified by the common law or asserted in statute such as the Elizabethan Poor Law. At the high point of their powers before removal of Poor Law responsibilities in 1834, the vestries spent not far short of one-fifth of the budget of the British government which derived much of its income from global trade and imperialism. Secular and ecclesiastical aspects of the vestries were separated, for all areas where they had not earlier been, under a reforming statute of 1894. Their secular duties have been performed in England since then by parish councils or more superior councils, leaving their ecclesiastical duties to the Church of England where they have been performed by parochial church councils (PCCs) since 1921. Realised secularisation of local government was opposed by administrations of the Tory Party preceding the Third Salisbury ministry, the British government led by Lord Salisbury from 1895 to 1900 and several earlier influential High Whigs. A public right in the PCC (church) meeting remains in that all Members of an overlapping civil parish can speak at their annual meetings (which may appoint churchwardens for instance). A right to tax by a PCC for church chancel repairs remains as to liable (apportioned) local residents and businesses across an apportioned area of many church parishes, in the form of chancel repair liability however in some tithes were replaced by no further such taxation. The vestry was a meeting of the parish ratepayers chaired by the incumbent of the parish, originally held in the parish church or its vestry, from which it got its name. The vestry committees were not established by any law, but they evolved independently in each parish according to local needs from their roots in medieval parochial governance. By the late 17th century they had become, along with the county magistrates, the rulers of rural England. In England, until the 19th century, the parish vestry committee equated to today's parochial church councils plus all local government responsible for secular local business, which is now the responsibility of a District Council as well as in some areas a Civil Parish Council, and other activities, such as administering locally the poor law. The original unit of settlement among the Anglo-Saxons in England was the tun or town. The inhabitants met to carry out this business in the town moot or meeting, at which they empowered or tasked men with various positions and the common law would be promulgated. Later with the rise of the shire, the township would send its reeve and four best men to represent it in the courts of the hundred and shire. However, township independence in the Saxon system was lost to the feudal manorial court leet which replaced the town meeting. Assembly of parishes rested on land ownership, so increasingly the manorial system, with parishes assembled by lords of the manor in concert with local clergy and religious institutions by serving via a new church a manor, or more than one manor plus commons, barren land (waste) and land set aside for church benefit as rectory or vicarage lands (glebelands). Initially, the manor was the principal unit of local administration, common customs and justice in the rural economy, but over time the church replaced the manorial court as to key elements of rural life and improvement — it levied its local tax on produce, tithes. Much subinfeudation, division of manors and a new mercantile middle class had widely eroded the old feudal model by the early Tudor period and which changes nationally accelerated with the Reformation in the 1530s seeing the sequestration of religious houses and the greatest estates of the church, but also under Mary I and others a turning to the parish system to attend to social and economic needs. These changes transformed participation in the township or parish meeting, which dealt with an increasing variety of civil and ecclesiastical demands, needs and projects. This new meeting was supervised by the parish priest (vicar/rector/curate), probably the best educated of the inhabitants, and became generally dubbed the vestry meeting.