AT THIS time of 12 months, it’s customary for parish churches to carry their annual general meeting — actually, two distinct meetings, often held on the identical day. The first is the Annual Meeting of Parishioners, sometimes called by the traditional title of “Easter Vestry”. Its business is now limited to the election of two churchwardens, to serve for the approaching 12 months. This is then swiftly followed by the Annual Parochial Church Meeting (APCM).
Eligibility to vote in these meetings differs. Those entitled to vote on the Annual Meeting of Parishioners (the Vestry) are lay people resident within the parish, no matter whether or not they are churchgoers, and lay people whose names are entered on the church electoral roll, no matter whether or not they are resident within the parish. Entitlement to vote on the APCM, nonetheless, is restricted to those on the electoral roll, resident or not. Nowadays, the 2 constituencies are likely to overlap, because it is unlikely that anyone attending the Vestry wouldn’t even be eligible to vote within the APCM.
IT WAS not at all times thus. The Vestry, named after the place where it once met, has a protracted and vibrant history. Of ancient origin, it was the earliest type of local government. Besides coping with ecclesiastical matters, it handled bridges, boundaries, paths, vagrants, and administration of the Poor Law. From the Reformation within the sixteenth century until the Local Government Act of 1894, the Vestry was the one local forum, each civil and ecclesiastical.
Parish records reveal how our ancestors, as a matter after all, combined sacred and secular. In 1885, the Vestry at Holt handled water supply, drains, constables, maintenance of the highway, gas inspectors, widening of the road, and the dismantling of the west gallery within the church (Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church: Volume 2, 1970).
To assist it in its deliberations, the Vestry didn’t lack refreshment. For the 12 months 1559-60, the churchwardens’ accounts for St Martin-in-the-Fields — then a small, rural parish — include money paid “for kracknells 6d, for figges, reasons and almonds 12d, for apples 3d, for wine 16d, for sewgar 7d, for bere and ale 4d” (Old Parish Life, edited by Justin Lovill, 2022).
HISTORICALLY, it was assumed that everybody in England belonged to the Church of England. It was, subsequently, not mandatory to discover their beliefs or religious affiliation. This meant that parishioners who weren’t Anglican, or not even Christian, and who wished to take part in local affairs, had no alternative but to resort to an Anglican forum under the chairmanship of the Church of England parson.
This unsatisfactory state of affairs may lead to bother. In his diary, the Revd Benjamin Armstrong, Vicar of East Dereham 1850-88, records occasional riots at his Easter Vestry. On 3 March 1868, he writes: “A really large and excited Vestry as regards to the brand new burial ground, at which each and every rate-paying dissenter within the parish was present. The dissenters were all for a cemetery . . . however the church people were mainly for an extension of the prevailing churchyard.”
It took three hours of vigorous debate before the Vicar steered the meeting to a compromise. He reserved his private opinions for his journal, where he records: “The Vestry took place within the Assembly Room, and so saved our beautiful chancel from the profanation of puritans and freethinkers with their hats on and that peculiar and irreverent class who never miss a Vestry, but are never seen in church at every other time” (Benjamin Armstrong, Under the Parson’s Nose, edited by Christopher Armstrong, 2012).
IN Just a few parishes, the Vestry had a more ecclesiastical character. In 1797, the Easter Vestry at St Peter Mancroft, Norwich, had an unusually full agenda. The meeting elected two churchwardens, two sidesmen, a pew-opener, a bellows- blower, an organist, an upper sexton, an under sexton, a clerk, 4 overseers of the poor, and 12 auditors. Most vestries were less lively (Lovill, op. cit.).
In other parishes, there was an try and restrict the attendance. In 1622, a bunch of parishioners of St Botolph’s, Aldgate, supported by their vicar and churchwardens, petitioned the Bishop of London to permit a bunch of 48 “to be appointed continually to be vestrymen” to run the affairs of the parish. They were concerned about “the good confusion and disorder” of the parish meetings, and “the ignorance and weakeness in judgement” of a few of the parishioners who had recently moved in. We can recognise that familiar hostility to newcomers.
The same situation prevailed at St Andrew’s, Holborn, where the churchwardens’ accounts were passed at an annual meeting of all parishioners, but “some affairs belonging to the church are consulted upon and are ordered by the rector and churchwardens, and a particular vestry of twelve individuals, grave and ancient inhabitants, men of approved honesty and discretion” (Lovill, op. cit.).
WHAT hastened the decline and eventual demise of the Vestry was the Local Government Act of 1894, which faraway from the meeting all secular business. The effect will be clearly seen, for instance, at Holt, where, up to now, the quantity of business had required it to fulfill several times a 12 months. After 1894, it met only every year, to elect one churchwarden and to receive the vicar’s nomination of the opposite one (Chadwick, op. cit.).
The virtual disappearance of this ancient body didn’t appear to cause many ripples, and was welcomed in some quarters. In the House of Commons, the president of the Local Government Board declared: “Vestries are a decrepit survival of former days. . . They have the shape but not the facility of local government; they don’t possess the boldness of the agricultural population; they usually are within the primary useless and obstructive”; and, he added, “They don’t meet at convenient hours” (Chadwick, op. cit.).
The 1894 Act provided for an elected parish council in villages with a population of greater than 300. Smaller ones were grouped. Ancient boundaries were modified. Of the 15,000 civil parishes, about one third now had different boundaries from the ecclesiastical parishes. Churchwardens ceased to have any civil function The parson was now not chairman — nor even an ex officio member. Administration of local charities was transferred from the Vestry to the brand new Parish Council. Only “ecclesiastical charities” were to stay the responsibility of the Vestry, though what was an ecclesiastical charity, and what was not, led to considerable confusion. People asked why the newly created body needs to be called a parish, when it was not (Chadwick, op. cit.).
THE Church began to search for an ecclesiastical substitute of the now moribund Vestry. As early as 1871, Bishop Harold Browne of Ely encouraged every parish in his diocese to have its voluntary church council. In 1897, the Bishops resolved to encourage every incumbent to form a parochial church council, comprising churchwardens, sidesmen, and councillors, who needs to be communicants and elected by members of the C of E. It was not until 1921 that the Parochial Church Council was formally established.
Although many were glad about these developments (which allowed the Church to administer her own affairs, untrammelled by secular interference), there have been others who believed that the growing separation of Church and State diminished each. The Church of England had change into the Church in England: a non secular denomination providing on-demand liturgical settings for weddings and funerals, and for state occasions, but otherwise of diminishing relevance in modern society.
Some lamented this decline, but others, perhaps with greater faith and clearer vision, welcomed the Church’s freedom to explore latest varieties of worship and ministry in a changing, albeit largely indifferent, world.
The Revd Adrian Leak is a retired priest. His most up-to-date publication is After the Order of Melchizedek: Memoirs of an Anglican priest (Book Guild, 2022).
