The parish with its local parish church is the basic unit of the Church of England. The parish within the Church of England structure has its roots in the Roman Catholic Church and survived the Reformation largely untouched. Church of England parishes are currently each within one of 40 dioceses divided between the provinces of Canterbury, with twenty-eight dioceses and York with twelve.
Each parish is administered by a parish priest who may be assisted in his pastoral duties by a curate or curates, who are also priests but not the parish priest. There are wide variations in the size of parishes and church-going populations. A parish priest may have responsibility for one parish or for two or more and some are part of a team ministry. By extension the term parish refers not only to the territorial unit but to the people of its community or congregation.
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From the Greek paroikia, the dwellingplace of the priest, eighth Archbishop of Canterbury Theodore of Tarsus (c.602–690) applied to the Anglo-Saxon township unit, where it existed, the ecclesiastical term parish.
First attested in English late 13th century, the word parish comes from the Old French paroisse, in turn from Latin paroecia,[1] which is the latinisation of the Greek παροικία (paroikia), "sojourning in a foreign land",[2] itself from πάροικος (paroikos), "dwelling beside, stranger, sojourner",[3] which is a compound of παρά (para), " beside, by, near"[4] + οἶκος (oikos), "house".[5]
The reintroduction of Christianity and its development under Ethelbert of Kent (c.560–616) required an organization for ecclesiastical purposes. From the Greek paroikia, the dwellingplace of the priest, eighth Archbishop of Canterbury Theodore of Tarsus (c.602–690) applied to the Anglo-Saxon township unit, where it existed, the ecclesiastical term parish. Generally the township and parish coincided but in the North some townships may have been combined and in the South, where populations were bigger, two or more parishes might be made of one township. Townships not included in a parish were extra-parochial. There may have been much less uniformity than these statements imply. Extended in the 973-975 reign of Edgar (c.943–975) the process seems to have been completed during the fifty year reign of Edward III (1312–1377).
In general Church of England parishes owe their origin at first to the establishment of a minster church by a body of clergy. That usually large parish was soon further subdivided into the smaller parishes described above, each associated with an estate church founded by Anglo-Saxon or, later, Norman landowners copying the minster foundations of their nobles.[6] Having provided the land and usually the church building the landowner retained the right, advowson, to select a parish priest subject to the bishop's approval. One parish may have been situated in different counties or hundreds and in many cases parishes contained in addition to its principal district several outlying portions, usually described as 'detached', intermixed with the lands in other parishes.
A present-day parish boundary may even correspond to that of an Anglo-Saxon estate of more than one thousand years ago but is more likely to date from the 17th century when boundaries were rearranged to fit a parish with a landowner's responsibilities and so avoid further dispute.
Some little-populated areas of England were outside any parish, i.e. extra-parochial, until the 19th century though tiny technical exceptions remain. The term unparished area, used for most urban areas, relates to civil parishes and not ecclesiastical parishes.
Each parish should have its own parish priest (who might be termed its vicar or its rector), perhaps supported by one or more curates or deacons - although as a result of ecclesiastical pluralism some parish priests might have held more than one parish living, placing a curate in charge of those where they did not reside. The church property was technically in the ownership of the parish priest, vested in him on his institution to that parish.
Now, however, it is common for a number of neighbouring parishes to be placed in the charge of a single vicar who takes services at them in rotation, with additional services being provided by lay readers or other non-ordained members of the congregation.
In the Church of England, part of the Anglican Communion, the legal right to appoint or recommend a parish priest is called an advowson, and its possessor is known as a patron. The patron can be an individual (or individuals in rotation), the Crown, a bishop, a college, a charity, or a religious body. Appointment as a parish priest gives the incumbent the enjoyment of a benefice or living. Appointment of patrons is now governed by the Patronage (Benefices) Rules 1987.[7]
In mediaeval times and after, such a right of appointment of the priest could be used to influence local opinions but a patron's candidate had to be approved by the Bishop responsible for the parish.
An example can be seen in the article on Grendon, Northamptonshire. It was frequently used to promote particular religious views. For example Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick presented many puritan clergy. In the 19th century Charles Simeon established a trust to purchase advowsons and install evangelical priests. Ownership of an advowson now carries little personal advantage. [8]
The business affairs of the parish were administered by its vestry, an assembly or meeting of parishioners or their representatives to make the necessary decisions. After 1837 the vestry's civil as distinct from ecclesiastical responsibilities devolved in various steps to the purely civil parish and its parish council. The Established Church also began its own administrative reforms. The ecclesiastical parish's remaining business affairs are now administered by the vestry's replacement, its parochial church council, which is partly appointed and partly elected from the congregation.
Note that a few purely civil parishes had been created long before the 19th century reform, but there were few, Bedfordshire for example had just one in the county and it was not created until 1810.[9]
In the absence of any other authority (which there would be in an incorporated city or town), the vestry, the ecclesiastical parish administration, was from time out of mind the recognised unit of local government, concerned for the spiritual but also the temporal or physical welfare of parishioners and their parish amenities, collecting local rates or taxes and taking responsibility for the care of the poor, the roads, law enforcement, etc. For example, parishes carried out the duties required by the poor law. See Church rate, Parish schools. What follows is a snapshot of the system at a particular point in time.
In 1835 more than 15,600 parishes looked after their own:
- "churches and burial grounds, parish cottages and workhouses, their common lands and endowed charities, their market crosses, pumps, pounds, whipping posts, stocks, cages, watch houses, weights and scales, clocks and fire engines.
- Or to put it another way: the maintenance of the church and its services, the keeping of the peace, the repression of vagrancy, the relief of destitution, the mending of roads, the suppression of nuisances, the destruction of vermin, the furnishing of soldiers and sailors, even to some extent the enforcement of religious and moral discipline. These were among the multitudinous duties imposed on the parish and its officers by the law of the land.
- The parishes spent not far short of one-fifth of the budget of the national government itself."[10]
Central government placed its obligations on parishes without specifying how they should be carried out. So no two parishes were organised in the same way, unless by coincidence.
The responsible householder found himself bound to serve in succession in the onerous and wholly unpaid public offices of
Every one was called upon in church to send his team or go in person to labour for six days on the roads. The whole parish had to turn out, when summoned, to join in the hue and cry after suspected robbers. A sheriff's Posse.
The property-less employee escaped the tithes and taxes and received, when destitute, the parish pay. Under the law of settlement, at the discretion of the Overseers of the Poor, he was liable to be sent back to the parish where he was born or otherwise legally settled, under the Settlement Act 1662. However, he could obtain a settlement certificate to enable him to work elsewhere. He might thus live in a new parish but without "settlement" receive no benefits from the new parish, just from his parish of origin.
The wealthy classes in town or country could buy exemption from, or commute for money, the innumerable personal obligations imposed by the parish, and thought of it therefore only as a taxing authority.
Civil parishes and their governing parish councils evolved as ecclesiastical parishes began to be relieved of what became considered to be civil responsibilities. Their separate boundaries began to vary. Poor law administration did not need the subdivision of old parishes when new populations and congregations mushroomed. Again, it was better for poor law administration districts, civil parishes, to fit county boundaries. Ecclesiastical parishes not always did. So the word parish acquired a secular usage. Since 1895, a parish council elected by the general public or a (civil) parish meeting administers a civil parish and is the level of local government below a district council.