Vestry

[1][2] At the high point of their powers before removal of Poor Law responsibilities in 1834, the vestries spent not far short of one-fifth of the budget of the British government.

This secularisation of local government was unsuccessfully opposed by administrations of the Conservative Party led by Lord Salisbury and several high church Liberal politicians from 1895 to 1900.

The only aspect of the original vestry remaining in current use is the annual meeting of parishioners, which may be attended by anyone on the local civil register of electors and which has the power to appoint churchwardens.

The inhabitants met to conduct business in the town moot or meeting, at which they would assign tasks, and the common law would be promulgated.

However, township independence in the Saxon system was lost to the feudal manorial court leet, which replaced the town meeting.

[6] By the early Tudor period the division of manors and the new mercantile middle class had eroded the old feudal model, These changes accelerated with the Reformation in the 1530s, with the sequestration of religious houses and the greatest estates of the church, and under Mary I and others, a parish system developed to attend to social and economic needs.

[7] As the complexity of rural society increased, the vestry meetings acquired greater responsibilities and were given the power to grant or deny payments from parish funds.

At the high point of their powers, just prior to removal of Poor Law responsibilities in 1834, the vestries spent not far short of one-fifth of the budget of the national government itself.

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, and the enforcement of religious and moral discipline.

These were among the many duties imposed on the parish and its officers, that is to say, the vestry and its organisation, by the law of the land, and by local custom and practice.

This was an administrative committee of selected parishioners whose members generally had a property qualification and who were recruited largely by co-option.

[8] This took responsibility from the community at large and improved efficiency, but over time tended to lead to governance by a self-perpetuating elite.

By the late 17th century, a number of autocratic and corrupt select vestries had become a national scandal, and several bills were introduced to parliament in the 1690s, but none became acts.

This continues to this day as an archaic custom in the Lords to assert the independence from the Crown, even though the select vestries have long been abolished.

The term vestry continues to be used in some other denominations, denoting a body of lay members elected by the congregation to run the business of a church parish.

This is the case in the Scottish,[13] and the American Episcopal Churches, and in Anglican ecclesiastical provinces such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand.