Church: how the Church is governed

Post date: Feb 12, 2012 11:39:45 AM

Greville Livett, Wateringbury's long serving vicar from 1895 to 1922, used the Wateringbury Parish magazine as an education medium for a wide variety of religious and secular topics, both national and secular. In December 1904 he explained the history of the church's governance as this was apparently not very well understood by his parishioners. 

SOME   HISTORICAL  NOTES.

The Rectorial tithes of Wateringbury and the advowson, or right of presenting to the Vicarage, belonged in mediaeval times to the Abbey of Leeds.  At the Great Suppression in the sixteenth century the rectorial tithes passed, no doubt with the lands that formerly belonged to Wateringbury Place, into private lay-possession, while the advowson was granted by the King to the Dean and Chapter of Rochester.When, a few years ago, the property attached to the Place, was distributed by public auction into the hands of various owners, the rectorial tithes remained in the hands of the vendor, Mr. Stockdale, while the cost of keeping the chancel of the Church in structural repair devolved upon Lord Falmouth as the purchaser of a certain parcel of land charged in the deed of conveyance with that responsibility; and as, when there exists a prescriptive right to a particular seat in a church, that right attaches not to possess on of lands [sic] but to occupancy of a house, the right to sit in the chancel of our Church passed to the purchaser of the house of Wateringbury Place, and to his successors in ownership or to the tenant for the time being.

Thus, at the present time, the Dean and Chapter of Rochester are the patrons of the living, Mr. Stockdale is lay-rector, Lord Falmouth is responsible for the structure of the chancel, and Sir George Donaldson possesses a prescriptive right to seats in the chancel. This is a very uncommon distribution of rights and possessions, and as it is not, geneialiy understood by the parishioners a record in the Parish Magazine is not out of place.

Wateringbury has old associations with Rochester that are independent of the patronage of the Dean and Chapter. Until the year 1846 the Diocese of Rochester consisted of the Deaneries—as the sub-divisions of an Archdeaconry are called—of Rochester, Dartford, Malling, and Shoreham, all included in one Archdeaconry of Rochester. Until that year Wateringbury, situated in the Deanery of Malling, belonged to the Diocese of Rochester; but in order to provide more efficient Episcopal oversight of Essex and Herts, these two counties were added to the Diocese of Rochester, the Deaneries of Malling and Shoreham and Dattford being detached from it and added to the Diocese of Canterbury. The arrangement was intended to be merely temporary, but when in 1877 the new Diocese St. Albans relieved Rochester of the two counties, Rochester immediately found itself saddled with the addition of South London and part of Surrey in relief of the fast growing dioceses of London and Winchester. Thus the restoration to Rochester of its old Deaneries was rendered impossible for the time being.

The deanery of Mailing, since its inclusion in the diocese of Canterbury, has been divided into three deaneries, called North  Malling, South Malling (including Tunbridge Wells), and Tonbridge. Three or four years ago,  in view of the probable creation of a new diocese for South London  and Surrey,it was  thought that North Malling would naturally revert to its old mother-diocese ; and after keen and prolonged discussion a resolution to that effect was passed in Conference of the lay and clerical members of the chapter ; but the force of the resolution was weakened by a petition against the proposal, circulated privately for signature among the minority of the chapter and their sympathisers and sent to the late Archbishop. An act creating the new see has recently been passed and will come into force as soon as the bishopric fund reaches the stipulated sum ; then the final re-arrangement of the dioceses will be constituted by Order of His Majesty in Council. Any arrangement  that robs the diocese of Rochester of its ancient dignity and makes it quite small in area and population, while archi-episcopal Canterbury remains large and unwieldy, cannot be permanent. Moreover, as compared with Canterbury, Rochester Cathedral is easy of access to churchmen of this neighbourhood, and there are many ways in which propinquity to the mother-church might foster church life amongst us.

Rochester Cathedra! celebrated the thirteen-hundredth anniversary of its foundation on St. Andrew's Day, when the Bishop of the Diocese dedicated a new tower and the Archbishop of Canterbury preached. The first cathedral church was a small building (hardly so large as our own parish church), founded by Ethelbert, King of Kent, in the year 604. The foundations of that church were discovered in the year 1889.* Its Norman successor was built by Bishop Gundulf, the founder of the Benedictine Abbey of Malling. The central tower of the cathedral was finished by Bishop Hamo de Hethe (Hythe), in 1343. In 1826 the old spire was taken down and the tower recased in the poor style of the period. It was the keen desire of Dean Hole in his later years to restore the tower to its ancient form, and to make it worthy of the mother-church of the diocese ; and it was by the munificence of a sympathetic citizen that he was able to inaugurate the work of restoration before his death. It was a solemn and grand ceremony in the Cathedral on St. Andrew's Day, a certain sadness in the hearts of those who knew and loved the late dean was lightened by the thought, 'our loss, not his !'

*See a paper in Arch. Cant., vol. xviii