The church rate was a tax formerly levied in each parish in England and Ireland for the benefit of the parish church. The rates were used to meet the costs of carrying on divine service, repairing the fabric of the church and paying the salaries of the connected officials. [1]
Except for a brief period during the Commonwealth of England in the 17th century, the raising of church rates has never been confirmed by statute. [2] It was always a matter of common law. The compulsory levying of the church rate was abolished by statute in 1868; however, it remains on a voluntary basis in many parishes. Chancel repair liability in England, however, remains enforceable by law. [3]
The church rates were set by the churchwardens together with the parishioners, who were duly assembled after proper notice had been posted in the church vestry or the church. The rates thus set were recoverable in the ecclesiastical court, or, if the arrears did not exceed £10 and no questions were raised as to the legal liability, before two justices of the peace. Any payment made out of the rate which was not strictly recognised by law destroyed its validity. [1]
The church rate was a personal charge imposed on the occupier of land or of a house in the parish, and, though it was compulsory, it was often difficult to enforce: especially so in the case of Nonconformists, who had conscientious objections to supporting the Established Church; in Ireland, where the population was mostly Roman Catholic, the grievance was specially felt and resented. [1]
The objections of the Nonconformists were not only on principle. The Church of England received financial support from Parliament, while Nonconformist congregations were entirely dependent on voluntary contributions. They did not want to have to support another parish as well as their own.
Enforcement of the rate was not uniform across the country. Resolutions were passed protesting against the rate, and societies to abolish the rate were formed all over the country. In 1836 at a public meeting in London, a central committee, the Church Rate Abolition Society, was formed to co-ordinate the efforts of local abolitionist Societies.
In 1837, Parliament made two concessions to the Nonconformists: a more acceptable marriage ceremony, and the civil registration of births, deaths and marriages. However, the parish rate remained compulsory until 1868. The Whig leader in the House of Commons, Lord John Russell, supported the rate but in 1856 The Times called the government's attention to what the editor believed was a civil war raging throughout the country on the church rate question. [4]
Compulsory Church Rate Abolition Act 1868 | |
---|---|
Act of Parliament | |
Long title | An Act for the Abolition of compulsory Church Rates. |
Citation | 31 & 32 Vict. c. 109 |
Dates | |
Royal assent | 31 July 1868 |
Other legislation | |
Amended by | |
Status: Amended | |
Text of statute as originally enacted | |
Text of the Compulsory Church Rate Abolition Act 1868 as in force today (including any amendments) within the United Kingdom, from legislation.gov.uk. |
The Compulsory Church Rate Abolition Act 1868 (31 & 32 Vict. c. 109) church rates no longer compulsory, but merely voluntary, with those who were not willing to pay the rate being excluded from inquiring into, objecting to or voting in respect of their expenditure. [5] [1]
Parochial church councils may continue to levy voluntary rates by virtue of the Parochial Church Councils (Powers) Measure 1956 (4 & 5 Eliz. 2. No. 3). [6]
All Church of England churches within the City of London continue to levy the church rate. [7]
Hampstead Parish Church has documented their procedures for raising a voluntary rate, [8] by way of good practice.
Nonconformists were Protestant Christians who did not "conform" to the governance and usages of the state church in England, and in Wales until 1914, the Church of England.
In English history, the penal laws were a series of laws that sought to enforce the State-decreed religious monopoly of the Church of England and, following the 1688 revolution, of Presbyterianism in Scotland, against the continued existence of illegal and underground communities of Catholics, nonjuring Anglicans, and Protestant nonconformists. The Penal laws also imposed various forfeitures, civil penalties, and civil disabilities upon recusants from mandatory attendance at weekly Sunday services of the Established Church. The penal laws in general were repealed in the early 19th-century due to the successful activism of Daniel O'Connell for Catholic Emancipation. Penal actions are civil in nature and were not English common law.
In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, which for centuries were the principal unit of secular and religious administration in most of England and Wales. Civil and religious parishes were formally split into two types in the 19th century and are now entirely separate. Civil parishes in their modern form came into being through the Local Government Act 1894, which established elected parish councils to take on the secular functions of the parish vestry.
A parochial church council (PCC) is the executive committee of a Church of England parish and consists of clergy and churchwardens of the parish, together with representatives of the laity. It has its origins in the vestry committee, which looked after both religious and secular matters in a parish. It is a corporate charitable body.
A vestry was a committee for the local secular and ecclesiastical government of a parish in England, Wales and some English colonies, which originally met in the vestry or sacristy of the parish church, and consequently became known colloquially as the "vestry". At their height, the vestries were the only form of local government in many places and spent nearly one-fifth of the budget of the British government. They were stripped of their secular functions in 1894 and were abolished in 1921.
Edward Miall was an English journalist, apostle of disestablishment, founder of the Liberation Society, and Liberal Party politician. He founded and edited the weekly newspaper The Nonconformist.
The Eady Levy was a tax on box-office receipts in the United Kingdom, intended to support the British film industry. It was introduced in 1950 as a voluntary levy as part of the Eady plan, named after Sir Wilfred Eady, a Treasury official. The levy, paid into the British Film Production Fund, was made compulsory in 1957 and terminated in 1985.
In England and Wales, an extra-parochial area, extra-parochial place or extra-parochial district was a geographically defined area considered to be outside any ecclesiastical or civil parish. Anomalies in the parochial system meant they had no church or clergymen and were therefore exempt from payment of poor or church rates and usually tithes. They were formed for a variety of reasons, often because an area was unpopulated or unsuitable for agriculture, but also around institutions and buildings or natural resources. Extra-parochial areas caused considerable problems when they became inhabited as they did not provide religious facilities, local governance or provide for the relief of the poor. Their status was often ambiguous and there was demand for extra-parochial areas to operate more like parishes. Following the introduction of the New Poor Law, extra-parochial areas were effectively made civil parishes by the Extra-Parochial Places Act 1857 and were eliminated by the Poor Law Amendment Act 1868. This was achieved either by being integrated with a neighbouring or surrounding parish, or by becoming a separate civil parish if the population was high enough.
The Elementary Education Act 1870, commonly known as Forster's Education Act, set the framework for schooling of all children between the ages of 5 and 12 in England and Wales. It established local education authorities with defined powers, authorized public money to improve existing schools, and tried to frame conditions attached to this aid so as to earn the goodwill of managers. It has long been seen as a milestone in educational development, but recent commentators have stressed that it brought neither free nor compulsory education, and its importance has thus tended to be diminished rather than increased.
The Parochial Church Councils (Powers) Measure 1956 is a measure passed by the Church Assembly of the Church of England that gave parish-level parochial church councils (PCCs) various miscellaneous powers such as framing an annual budget, power to make levy and collect a voluntary church rate, power jointly with the minister to appoint and dismiss the parish clerk and determine his salary, and the right to make representations to the bishop "with regard to any matter affecting the welfare of the church in the parish".
Chancel repair liability is a legal obligation on a small number of property owners in England and Wales to pay for certain repairs to a church, often the local parish church.
The Poor Relief Act 1601 was an Act of the Parliament of England. The Act for the Relief of the Poor 1601, popularly known as the Elizabethan Poor Law, the "43rd Elizabeth", or the "Old Poor Law", was passed in 1601 and created a poor law system for England and Wales.
A chapelry was a subdivision of an ecclesiastical parish in England and parts of Lowland Scotland up to the mid 19th century.
The Scottish poor laws were the statutes concerning poor relief passed in Scotland between 1579 and 1929. Scotland had a different poor law system to England and the workings of the Scottish laws differed greatly to the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 which applied in England and Wales.
William Brock (1807–1875), was the first minister of Bloomsbury Chapel in Central London (1848–72), an abolitionist, biographer and supporter of missionary causes.
St John-at-Hampstead is a Church of England parish church dedicated to St John the Evangelist in Church Row, Hampstead, London.
The parish with its parish church(es) is the basic territorial unit of the Church of England. The parish has its roots in the Roman Catholic Church and survived the English Reformation largely untouched. Each is within one of 42 dioceses: divided between the thirty of the Province of Canterbury and the twelve of that of York. There are around 12,500 Church of England parishes. Historically, in England and Wales, the parish was the principal unit of local administration for both church and civil purposes; that changed in the 19th century when separate civil parishes were established. Many Church of England parishes still align, fully or in part, with civil parishes boundaries.
Rates are a tax on property in the United Kingdom used to fund local government. Business rates are collected throughout the United Kingdom. Domestic rates are collected in Northern Ireland and were collected in England and Wales before 1990 and in Scotland before 1989.
The Liberation Society was an organisation in Victorian England that campaigned for disestablishment of the Church of England. It was founded in 1844 by Edward Miall as the British Anti-State Church Association and was renamed in 1853 as the Society for the Liberation of Religion from State Patronage and Control, from which the shortened common name of Liberation Society derived.
In 1986 (Hampstead's Millennium year) our church raised a voluntary rate towards the appeal for redecorating the interior of our Georgian building. The response was so good and the feedback so positive that we have continued to raise this rate every year since. We do, however, only make the appeal for the benefit of the maintenance of the building. It has never been suggested that money so raised, from people of other faiths and none, should be used for the running costs of the Parish.