Clergy Corporation
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The Clergy Corporation, or the Clergy Reserve Corporation of Upper Canada, existed to oversee, manage and lease the clergy reserves of Upper Canada. The Clergy Reserves represented a large amount of land in Upper Canada that had been put aside for the Anglican and later protestant churches. The main operations of the Corporation were to collect rents on these lands, receive petitions, answer inquiries and settle all disputes arising from the clergy land.
[edit] History
The Corporation began as a body in 1818 when it was established by the Upper Canada Executive Council and was officially commissioned by Lieutenant Governor Sir Peregrine Maitland in 1819. Its origin stemmed from a strict interpretation of the Constitutional Act of 1791 by the Family Compact, led by John Strachan to keep the clergy reserves for the Church of England. In this new Corporation there were twelve members including the Bishop of Quebec who acted as chair, both the Inspector and Surveyors General, the Rectors of York, Kingston, Niagara, Grimsby, Cornwall, Ancaster, Hamilton and Newcastle as well as two other members of the Anglican Clergy. The Corporation directed the local sheriffs to collect the various rents.
The first meeting of the Corporation was held at York on the 25th of March 1820. Stephen Heward, who was Auditor General of Land Patents, was appointed Secretary Receiver of the Corporation. A short five years later, the Executive Council ordered that the Corporation should cease making any new leases of the reserves as it had been thought that the land would be sold to the Canada Company. This option was championed by Egerton Ryerson who was upset at the state of the reserves and who wanted them to be available to the Methodists. In August 1828 Heward, the Secretary Receiver, died and he was succeeded by George H. Markland. Soon after this, the issuance of new leases resumed in April 1829.
However this only continued until 1832 when the Lieutenant Governor advised the Corporation to discontinue the issuance of any further leases after a bill was passed to combine the clergy reserves with Crown land. At this point, Markland was appointed Inspector General and a new Secretary Receiver, Thomas Baines, was appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in 1833. With no new leases being issued, the actions of the Corporation were confined to overseeing former leases which had yet to become very lucrative. Baines undertook a plan to change this and appointed Clerks of the Peace as District Commissioners to undertake a survey of each individual lot in Upper Canada.
The result of this was a huge increase in lease revenues but the full amount of rent was still unattained. In view of this and increased pressure against the idea of Anglican Clergy lands held by the Family Compact, the Executive Council decided in 1838 to dissolve the Corporation and to transfer Baines into Crown Lands Department, where he would continue to oversee the collection of payments in arrears on clergy reserve leases as well as oversee the sale the Crown land in Upper Canada. At this point both the Clergy Corporation and the Clergy Reserves were largely dissolved. The lands were officially secularized in 1854.
