tion of the peace. Local taxation is almost entirely levied through their intervention. And although, under the New Poor Law, parishes have been combined into unions, it is by the separate parishes that the administrators of the new system are elected; and to these we have to recur when we investigate the right of the poor to relief, their privilege (or disability) of settlement, and their liability of removal. The legislation relating to these and many other topics is embraced in the general expression "parish law." It is a wide field, which in the professional library embraces bulky volumes, and it is, therefore, with due diffidence and a becoming sense of imperfection, that we submit this slight attempt to place a mastery of its salient features within the compass of a few hours' reading.

Since the tenth edition of this work was published there has been no legislation of a large or comprehensive character in relation to that portion of Local Government which forms the subject of the present work. But the law, on a number of points embraced in the following pages, has been altered, added to or indirectly affected by the Allotments Acts, 1887-90, the Local Government Act, 1888, and by other Acts incidentally dealing with branches of local government that are more or less connected with or dependant upon parochial organisation. A good many modifica tions of the text on matters of detail, often of considerable importance, having been thus rendered necessary, the present edition has been carefully revised; the new legislation and the result of recent decisions being

noted and incorporated with the text. And we venture to hope that with these corrections this eleventh edition of our little work will be found to contain a correct summary of Parish Law as it exists at the present date.

1, TEMPLE GARDENS, February, 1891.

HANDY BOOK OF PARISH LAW.

CHAPTER I.

OF THE PARISH AND PARISHIONERS.

THE parish is the integer both of our political and our ecclesiastical systems. But although in modern times it has been equally important in relation to either, there is no doubt that, in the first instance, it bore exclusive reference to the latter system. The earliest territorial divisions recognized by the church were, unquestionably, dioceses. The subsequent division of these into parishes was the result of the growth of population. When Christianity was struggling with surrounding heathenism, it is probable that the whole of the spiritual staff of a diocese was attached to the person of the bishop, and that its members were despatched by him, more as missionaries than as permanent ministers, into the different portions of his diocese. But as the numbers of believers increased, it became necessary that resident clergymen should be always at hand to administer to them the consolations of religion; and the natural result was, the division of the diocese into separate parishes, each with its own pastor. Moreover, the landlords, partly from motives of piety, and partly from a desire to strengthen the ties which bound their tenants to them, early began to

build churches upon their estates, and (with the sanction of the ecclesiastical authorities) to compel their dependants to pay their tithes to the support of these, instead of distributing them amongst the clergy of the diocese generally. The district whose tithes were thus appropriated to a particular church became a distinct parish. That parishes were, for the most part, thus formed, is clear from the fact that the boundaries of the oldest parishes are generally conterminous with those of one or more manors-probably originally belonging to the same lord. Considerable difference of opinion prevails amongst antiquaries as to the period at which the division of England into parishes took place. No doubt it was not a sudden, but a gradual process, extending over one, or perhaps two centuries. It appears, however, nearly certain that it was completed before the Norman Conquest, which occurred A.D. 1066. It must not, however, be supposed that the existing distribution of parishes ascends, in all cases, to that remote period. As population increased, the more extensive districts-particularly those embraced in the large towns were divided and sub-divided, in order that their inhabitants might be brought more closely and immediately under clerical supervision. Besides those portions of the kingdom which thus became included in parishes, there were other lands which, either because they were in the hands of irreligious or careless owners, or were situate in forests or deserts,* or for other unsearchable reasons, were never united to any parish, and were, therefore, extra-parochial.

Although such places are still, in a certain sense, * Blackstone's Commentaries, p. 114.