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The Church of St. Paul, Daybrook.
Daybrook church.
Anything more beautiful than the canopied west front, the traceried windows, and the soaring spire of the Church of St. Paul, Daybrook; or more impressive than the clustered columns and spreading arches of the arcades within, will seldom be found in a modern parish church; while the delicate wrought iron screenwork, the mosaic paving of the chancel and the morning chapel, the carved pulpit, the font, the sculptured alabaster reredos (by Nathaniel Hitch) all add to the sense of harmony and completeness.
The dignity and repose of the marble effigy on the canopied altar-tomb in the north wall of the chancel, placed there in loving-memory of the wife of the Founder and Patron, Sir Charles Seely, Bart., cannot fail to evoke admiration. It is a masterpiece of modern sculpture executed by Sir Thomas Brock, K.C.B., R.A., and a fitting tribute to the worth of the lady it commemorates.
The Church stands in the centre of the parish, on the eastern side of the main rain road from Nottingham to Mansfield, on a plot of ground presented by Sir John Robinson, upon which a Mission Church was built in 1889. Daybrook was formerly included partly in the ecclesiastical parish of St. Mary, Arnold, and partly in the parish of St. John, Carrington, but owing to the rapid increase of population in the district it became necessary for a separate parish to be formed.
The new Parish Church, designed by the late J. L. Pearson, R.A., and built by J. W. Woodsend, of Nottingham, was commenced in May, 1893, and completed (with the exception of the tower and spire, subsequently added) in December, 1895. It was consecrated on the 4th day of February, 1896, in honour of St. Paul, whose life and labours supply the subjects for the painted glass in the aisle windows. The walls are built of hammer-dressed Bulwell stone with dressings of Weldon and Stamford stone. The tower contains a beautiful bracket clock and a peal of 8 bells cast by Mears and Stainbank, of Whitechapel. There are also two small bells in the turret over the chancel arch.
Where a Monastery was Rector and appointed a Vicar the tithes were as a rule apportioned as follows:—Tithes of the immediate produce of the land (as corn, wood, hay, herbs, &c), were reserved to the Monastery and were known as the Great or Rectorial Tithes; tithes of the produce of animals receiving their nourishment upon the land, e.g., the tithes of calves, lambs, kids, pigs, chickens, wool, milk, cheese, eggs, &c, were assigned to the Vicar, and were known as the Vicarial Tithes. This was the general usage in the assignment of tithes, though it was varied in particular cases; it varied slightly from this rule in Arnold.
The dissolution of the monasteries had of course a very important bearing on the history and ownership of tithes, which is concisely stated by a modern writer on tithes as follows:—
"By a series of statutes in the reign of Henry VIII. the benefices previously appointed to the religious houses, which were dissolved, became vested in the Crown, which granted them to Lay Persons; and are now held by their descendants, or by those who have purchased them from such grantees. These are called Lay Impropriators."
As a rule the Impropriator of any benefice not only owns the Rectorial tithes and is therefore called the Lay Rector, but he is also Patron and therefore has the right of nominating to the Bishop a clergyman to be the Vicar of the parish, who as such will own the Vicarial tithes. But this is not always so; the rights of Impropriation and Patronage may from many different causes become vested in two separate individuals, and we shall see later, for instance, that for many generations the two rights were in the hands of separate persons as regards the Parish of Arnold.
The foregoing remarks bring us up to the state of things generally existing all over the country up to the year 1836, when by the Tithe Commutation Act, the payment of tithes in kind was commuted into payment of money, styled a Tithe Rent-charge: the necessity for the Act is obvious. We will now notice how and with what variations the history of tithes up to 1836 affected the Parish of Arnold, so far as can be gathered.
The history of the Manor of Arnold is given elsewhere in this book, but it is clear from a document known as the Torre Manuscript that King Henry II. (crowned 1154) owned the Rectory and Church of Arnold, and gave it to the Prior of the Monastery of Launde, in the County of Leicester. This Monastery therefore received the tithes of Arnold and was responsible for providing a priest or priests to carry on the service of God at Arnold.
In 1408, the Rectory having been granted by the will of John Elvet (perhaps a Prior of Launde) to Henry IV., the king in his turn gave it to Richard Elvet, Dean of the Collegiate Church of St. Mary, at Leicester. The then Archbishop of York interfered in this arrangement, assigning a small portion of the emoluments to be retained by the Monastery of Launde, and a small portion to the Dean and Chapter of York in recompense for the indirect loss to that body, but otherwise appropriating the Rectory to the Dean and College of Leicester as desired by the King.
In accordance with what was becoming a general custom, as referred to above, the Archbishop of York further ordained that there should always be a priest permanently appointed to the Church at Arnold by the College, and that this priest (or Vicar, as he was legally called) should receive always the Small (Vicarial) tithes as part of his subsistence, while the College retained the Great (Rectorial) tithes.
Thus from 1408 the Dean and College of Leicester owned the Rectorial tithes of Arnold and appointed the Vicar till the dissolution of the monasteries began and the Rectory of Arnold, being a possession of the College of Leicester, would fall into the hands of the Crown. Queen Elizabeth (crowned 1558) gave the Rectory of Arnold (including tithes and advowson) in 1599 to John Flint and William Jenkinson and their heirs (Patent Roll 41 Elizabeth, Part 2). One of these heirs was apparently John Wood, Esquire, who appointed the Vicar in 1623; John Wood's successor was Christiana, Countess of Devon, and so in 1694 (in which year the third Earl of Devon was created Duke of Devonshire) the Rectory of Arnold became the property of the Duke of Devonshire.
Up to 1907 the Duke of Devonshire for the time being apparently continued Patron of the Living, but not always Impropriator (i.e., owner of the Rectorial tithes). Here then, in the benefice of Arnold, we have one of those cases referred to above where the two rights of Impropriation and Patronage became at some time vested in two separate persons; for in 1764 we find that while the Patron is the Duke of Devonshire, the Impropriator was Lord Charles Cavendish; again in 1789 we find the Patron was William, Duke of Devonshire, while Henry Cavendish, Esq., was Impropriator, and as such owned the Great tithes, which in this case were the tithes of corn, hay, and wool.
Apparently the two rights continued in separate hands, because in 1849, while the Duke of Devonshire is still Patron, the Impropriator is Thomas Holdsworth, Esq.
We are, however, anticipating, and must now notice an Act of Parliament which very much affected these matters at Arnold. In 1789 (the 29th year of George III.) there was passed an Inclosure Act for the Parish of Arnold. This Act will doubtless be mentioned in other parts of this History; we mention it here only as it affects the history of tithes in Arnold. It ordered that henceforward the Parish of Arnold should be exempt for the Great (or Rectorial) tithes and that there should be given to the Impropriator (Henry Cavendish, Esq.) and his successors in lieu of his Tithes, Glebe Lands, and Right of Common, a large portion of land within the parish; this land amounted in all to between 800 and 900 acres in extent.
Now the owner of the Rectorial tithes and glebe was in virtue of his possession of them Lay Rector of Arnold; as such he also owned the Chancel of Arnold Church, and was responsible for its repairs. The Act therefore further enacted that the estate given to Henry Cavendish should "continue liable" to these responsibilities. Thus the owner, for the time being, of this land has always been Lay Rector of Arnold ever since.
The estate has been recently divided, but the greater portion of it is now (1912) in the possession of Sir Charles Seely, Bart., who is the present Lay Rector of Arnold.
We may here mention that the present Lay Rector happens to be also Patron of the living, for, although as noticed above the two rights of Impropriation and Patronage became at one time (in the case of this Parish) in separate hands, and continued to be so till a few years ago, Sir Charles Seely has now become owner of the advowson of the Benefice as well as owner of the land referred to; thus the two separate rights have reverted again to a single ownership after many generations.
So much for the history of the Rectorial Tithes of Arnold; we will now briefly summarise the history of the Vicarial (or Small) tithes of Arnold up to the present date.
We have called them the Small or Vicarial tithes, because, while the expression Small tithes seems originally to have been confined to the tithe of products of the land other than corn, hay, and wool (e.g., beans, peas, potatoes, &c), yet such tithes were usually allotted to the Vicar in addition to the tithe of animals grazing on the land, and the term Small tithes became extended to mean generally Vicarial tithes.
When Henry IV. and the then Archbishop of York appropriated the Rectory of Arnold to the Monastery of Leicester, and ordained that there should thenceforth be one perpetual Vicar at Arnold, the terms of the agreement stated in regard to tithe that the said Vicar "shall have the tythes of lamb, piggs, broodgeese, colts, pidgeons, line and hemp, ducks, and all other and singular tythes to the church appertaining (the tythes of garbs of what kind soever, of blades, hay, and wool only excepted)."
In 1455, as the living was very small, it was found necessary to add to the Vicar's portion a certain amount of other tithe on line, hay and garbs.
Such then is the original allotment of the Vicarial tithes in the Parish of Arnold and it is very similar to the allotments made to Vicars all over the country about the same period.
We can well imagine in such cases how many disputes would arise between the farmer and his Vicar as to what constituted the tithe of a year's produce, and there were inevitable differences which caused many heartburnings; for instance:—
- When the parson had had his tithe-egg out of ten, was he entitled to wait about and take a tithe of any chickens that came out of the other nine?
- If your vegetables were stolen, must the parson bear his tenth of the loss, by losing the tithe on what was stolen?
and so on and so on. Many efforts were made to come to agreements which would avoid such disputes, and from 1189 onwards we find agreements arranged in very many parishes by which money payments or "Compositions" were made in lieu of tithes. Some such agreements were evidently tried in Arnold between the Vicar and Landowners, for we find by the documents in Arnold Church safe, known as the Terriers of Arnold, that by some agreements which were made some time before 1764, there were
"due to the Vicar at Easter, for every Husbandry three pence, for every Cottage one penny, for every person of age to communicate two pence; and due at the same time for every hen two eggs, for every cock one egg, for every Milch cow three halfpence, for every Straper one halfpenny, and for every Foal one penny."
Again we find an agreement dated 1792, by which landowners in Arnold agreed for 14 years to pay to the Vicar a sum fixed by arbitration in lieu of tithes.
All such difficulties were however put an end to throughout the country in 1836 when Parliament conferred an inestimable boon on tithe-owners (and surely on tithe-payers too) by the Tithe Commutation Act which abolished compulsory payment in kind in favour of a compulsory payment of annual tithe in cash. The work of bringing about this great change was entrusted to three Tithe Commissioners, whose duty it was with their assistants to draw up a complete list of all tithes payable in every parish in England and Wales, and by means of local valuers to commute them into a money payment styled Tithe Rent-charge, and to decide what amount each landowner should proportionately pay.
Further details might be uninteresting in these pages, but we cannot omit to mention (because it applied to Arnold) that under this Act the tithes on hops and fruit-gardens were treated specially. This was necessary because the value of the produce of hops and fruit per acre was not ordinary but extraordinary. For this reason lands cultivated as hop-grounds or market-gardens were made liable to a higher charge so long as they were so cultivated; this higher charge is known as the Extraordinary Tithe Rent-charge.
In 1886, however, the Extraordinary Tithe Redemption Act was passed which ordered "that no land in future, newly set apart for hops, fruit or market-gardens, should have an extraordinary charge upon it; that land then having the extraordinary charge upon it should have the capital value of this charge ascertained; that a charge of 4 per cent, of this ascertained capital value should be the annual fixed rent-charge for the future; that the annual charge could at any time be redeemed by the payment of the ascertained capital." The lands in the Parish of Arnold which this Act left subject to this extraordinary Rent-charge amount to about 147 acres.
Ordinary Rent-charge varies slightly from year to year, being fixed according to the current average prices of English corn in a manner rather too complicated to explain in these pages; suffice it to say that tithe nominally valued at £100 under the Act of 1836 would at present (1912) produce only about £70to the tithe-owner. This amount is further liable both to rates and taxes and is still further reduced by the cost of collecting, so that a Vicar's ordinary tithes of nominally £100 in 1836 would probably to-day be worth about £60 net value. We have seen how by the Act of 1886 Extraordinary Rent-charge can be redeemed. It should also be noted that ordinary Rent-charge can at any time be redeemed on the landowner paying to the Board of Agriculture an amount equal to 25 years' purchase of the annual charge to which he is liable, and in the long run the landowner would appear to gain by redeeming the tithe, as land free from tithe rent-charge is generally regarded as of greater market value than land which remains subject to the charge. Small portions of land in the Parish of Arnold have already been redeemed from rent-charge; and such lands will remain free from tithe charges for ever.
The last important Tithe Act was that passed in 1891, which made the landowner responsible for the payment of tithes; up to that year the tenant had been held responsible for payment of tithes on the land he occupied.
In concluding this paper on the Tithes of Arnold, the writer would point out that there are two documents which are vital to the clear comprehension of these matters as they affect the Parish. One is the Award of the Commissioners under the Arnold Inclosure Act of 1789, with the Old Inclosure map; the other is the deed of Apportionment (with map) of the Commissioners for the Parish of Arnold under the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836. Both the original documents are presumably in the Government offices in London, and sealed copies of both, originally deposited in Arnold Church parish chest for local use, were, under the provisions of the Local Government Act, 1894, transferred to the custody of the Arnold Urban District Council, who are now responsible to the Parishioners for the safe keeping of the same.
II.—THE GLEBE LANDS.
From the Torre MS. it is evident that in Arnold as elsewhere gifts of land as well as tithe were made by the landowners for the local work of the Church from very early times, and when Henry II. gave "the Church of Ernhale" to the Priory of Launde, the gift of course included the Church land as well as the tithe.
When Henry IV., in 1408, gave the benefice to the Monastery of St. Mary, in Leicestershire, very definite arrangements were made by the Archbishop of York as to the division of the Church land in Arnold between the Monastery and the perpetual Vicar, who was henceforth to live at Arnold; the Vicar was to have "all the lands arable, rents and meadows anciently due to the rectors of the Church, excepting one croft on the north side which shall be assigned to the said Dean and College."
But the Monastery's share was not limited to the last-mentioned croft, for it was also arranged that "a croft in the town of Arnale and one oxgang of land shall entirely go to the use of the Dean and College of Leicester and their successors for ever."
Thus we get the earliest division of the Arnold Church land into Rectorial glebe and Vicarial glebe, the first being the property of the Monastery and the second the property of the Vicar for the time being.
We will now briefly trace the history of the Rectorial glebe. At the Reformation the property of the Monasteries fell into the hands of the Crown, and became the property of those laymen to whom the Crown granted them, as we have seen.
We have also seen that Queen Elizabeth in this way granted the Rectory of Arnold to John Flint and William Jenkinson and their heirs, and we know how the Devonshire family became eventually heirs to the Rectory. Hence it is that from that time till now there has always been a Lay Rector of Arnold who owns the modern equivalent for the Rectorial tithe and glebe, and is responsible on that account for the Repairs to the Chancel of Arnold Church.
We have already noticed how under the Inclosure Act of 1789, the then Lay Rector (Henry Cavendish, Esq.) was compensated for his loss of Rectorial tithe; but his Rectorial glebe was also affected by the new division, and he was exactly compensated for it by an additional allotment of other land. Like other landowners he also lost his Right of Common by the Act which compensated him by a further allotment. These two items appear in the Inclosure award.
It may here be noted again that by the Inclosure Act all the lands set out and allotted to Henry Cavendish in lieu of his tithes, Glebe and Right of Common were to "continue liable to the Whole of the Repairs of the Chancel of the Parish Church of Arnold aforesaid in such and the same manner as the Estate in respect whereof such Allotments shall be made was liable."
By the same Act all the lands allotted to him were to continue liable to Vicarial tithe, and in consideration of that liability he was allotted an extra 31 acres and 10 perches so as to make "a full and adequate compensation for the Tythes due to the said Vicar and to which the Lands to be allotted to the said Henry Cavendish in lieu of Tythes shall remain liable."
It remains to summarise briefly the history of the Vicarial glebe of the Benefice of Arnold.
The division of 1408 has already been noticed, but the Torre MS. does not give the acreage of the Vicar's portion, although its wording makes it fairly clear that the Vicar's portion, so far as the lands were concerned, was larger than the portion assigned to the Monastery.
The history of the Vicarial glebe for the next three centuries can only be surmised from various references here and there; but when we come to the year 1759 we are at a period in which the practice had become general of carefully tabulating the Church's possessions in every parish on proper documents from time to time. Accordingly there are at Arnold Church documents known as "Terriers," which indicate the exact acreage and whereabouts of the Vicar's lands at each date ; from these documents we see that in 1759 these lands amounted to 54 acres. In 1764 and in 1770 they were about the same in extent. But the Inclosure Act of 1789 involved taking away certain portions of the land and also deprived the Vicar of his Right of Common, which he had possessed, like other freeholders, up to this time; in compensation therefore for this double loss the Act made the Vicar fresh allotments of about 50 acres in all, bringing up the total acreage of his glebe to 90 acres. The Terrier of 1803, and likewise that of 1817, shew the land to have remained about the same in extent at those dates.
In 1857 and 1858 the then Vicar (Rev. G. F. Holcombe) made some exchanges of land which, though maintaining the value, slightly reduced the acreage; he also a little later gave out of the Vicarial land one square close of about an acre in extent for the site of the National School (with two playgrounds and a garden), now known as the Calverton Road Schools.
These changes reduced the acreage in his possession in this parish to 71 acres or thereabouts, of which, however, 11/2 acres were his personal property and no part of that which he held as Vicar.
The latest Terrier is that drawn up in 1908, which states the total acreage of the Vicarage glebe to be 71 acres, 2 roods and 35 perches, including "11/2 acres purchased recently by the Patron to be added to the glebe; "a map is attached to the Terrier showing the exact position and boundaries of each field and garden.
The history of the Vicarage house presents no features of particular interest. A house with outbuildings is mentioned in the early Terriers, but it appears to have been a very small residence, which was however considerably improved about 1803 by the Vicar of that time (Rev. William Walker).
The Terrier of 1870 states that the house was at that time in "a very dilapidated state," and it was therefore enlarged, improved, and partly rebuilt before Mr. Truman came into residence. It is at present in a state of very good repair throughout, one wing which seemed superfluous having been so altered internally in 1907 as to form a pleasant and commodious Parish Room which is used by the Vicar's consent for the many activities of Church work. This improvement is due to the generosity of the Patron (Sir Charles Seely).
Partly beneath the Vicar's house and partly beneath the garden is a large cellar cut out of the rock, admission being gained through a trap-door in the house. No particular history seems attached to it, and there are other similar cellars in the neighbourhood. The rock is of a soft nature, and the probability is that it was as cheap and easy to make a cellar in this as in any other way.