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The History of Patronage, Advowson and Impropriation in Wonersh

 

We appointed our vicar by a process of selection by the Diocese (Bishop & Archdeacon), Churchwardens and our Patron Selwyn College.  He will be paid a wage by the Church Commissioners and he will build up entitlement to a pension.  The selection process and the funding of parish activity has not always been this way.  This page is intended to explain how this process has evolved and the roles played by some of the parties involved.

 

The Rector is the person who has the responsibility to act as priest in a parish and he was entitled to receive the income from tithes and glebe lands in the rectory (note that the house where he lives is also called the rectory).   Some rectories provided a rich living and these were keenly sought after; Wonersh however provided only a modest income.   Rectors did not necessarily live locally and when absent they appointed (and paid) a Vicar to act on their behalf.   Vicars sometimes held more than one post (called plurality) and would appoint Curates to act for them.  Impropriation is the term used after the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII when the great tithes were a seen as a property to be obtained by a lay person not necessarily connected with the parish; the impropriator was the person who owned the great (rectorial) tithes.  This meant that the revenues of the benefice (with the exception of the small tithes assigned to the Vicar) were now secularised. Similarly the advowson , or entitlement in law to present a nominee for the cure of souls (the Vicar) in the parish,  and this was a separate property from the rectory.  The person who has the right is called the Patron.  In Wonersh these two properties passed from the Crown for over three centuries (until  1902) through two distinct but largely parallel lines of succession.

 

Christianity arrived in Britain in Roman times and took root in both the new culture and the indigenous Celtic people.  St Augustine arrived in Kent in 595 and established himself in his base at Canterbury.  Wonersh was somewhere in-between the Saxon Kingdoms of Kent and Wessex and apparently Surrey was one of the last areas of England to become Christian.  Before the Norman Conquest, this Manor belonged to Alnod Cild, a Saxon landholder with many estates in this and neighbouring counties; sometime around the turn of the first millennium a chapel was first built on this site.   Wonersh was under the authority of the Church of England in the ancient Diocese of Winchester.

 

In the 11th century the conquering Normans re-organised the Anglo-Saxon administrative system by imposing the French system of feudal vassalage.  All land was owned by the King and it was in his gift to grant rights of Lordship to manors in return for loyalty, revenue and military support.  These manors were then sub-divided in a number of delegations in a hierarchy of aristocratic peerage in rights and responsibilities. The legal system of aristocratic and ecclesiastical courts and tribunals evolved over time formalising the rights of barons in law and government.

 

Wonersh was not mentioned in the Domesday Book, but most of it would have been included in the vast Manor of Bramley (Brunlei) which covered the inhabited parts of Surrey from Shalford to the Sussex border.  All the Manors were formed out of it.  The names of the Lord of the Manor are traced to some extent in Local History.   The Lord of the Manor would have been a remote figure who would have had local representatives and tenants living in property locally.   He would have benefited from the income from the manor and had the power, known as advowson, to nominate and present the local priest.  The first recorded church was a Norman Chapel of the Hamlet of Wonersh or Wogheners, when it formed part of the parish of Shalford (or Scandeford).  It became a parish in its own right sometime between 1224 when it is spoken of as a chapelry, and  1295 when it is referred to as an ecclesia or parish church.   Nothing is known about the early Rectors, except the name of the last one, Richard de Rollying 1306.  The advowson had been granted to John of Hereford, one of King Henry III’s Chaplains, and in 1304–5 Edward I granted the advowson and Rectory to the Hospital of St. Mary without Bishopsgate,  calling it a church in his charter.

 

The Prior of the Convent of St Mary was the Rector for the benefice or rectory of Wonersh for some 250 years.   He appointed a Vicar to conduct the business of the parish, and was also responsible for the maintenance of the church chancel and other buildings.  In return he received an endowment from the income (known as the Great Tithes) from corn and hay with rents and services of the tenants of the rectory (parish).  The Vicar was remunerated from the small Tithes, derived from mortuaries, obventions, oblations and minor parish activities.   The income from the Great Tithes was used to support work of the asylum (a place for people who are distraught in wits (see Stowe’s Survey of London 1598)) and to provide a pension for the Rector

 

The Prior of St. Mary held the Rectory and advowson till the Dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII in 1536/7, when it came into the hands of the Crown.  Patronage rested for a time with the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Sir John Baldwin.  The greater tithes belonging to be benefice, which had previously been used to aid the pious work of maintaining a lunatic asylum, were now secularised, becoming the property of the King which he could bestow on any person he wished to enrich.  The income became a property which could be bought and sold like any other, something like a perpetual annuity, with no further responsibility than maintaining (or otherwise) the chancel.  This Impropriation (placing of the benefice in the hands of a layperson) created the role of Lay Rector whereby a non church person, who did not require any association with a parish nor even to be resident , would have one of the most important influences on a parish. 

 

The rectory, including advowson, was granted in 1537 on a 99 year lease to John Hynde, Agnes? (Alice), Thomas and Henry Polsted.  In 1549 Henry Polsted acquired the Manor of Albury.  Alice Polsted (Polstead),widow, (now of the Manor of Tyting, St Martha’s), exercises the role of patron of Wonersh in 1557 (with Henry Weston acting on he behalf) and again in 1565.  Their son, Richard Polsted married Elizabeth More of Loseley.  Following Richard’s death Elizabeth Polsted married John Wolley (Wooley) of Pyrford.  Elizabeth had evidently inherited the rectory and in 1585 her husband introduced the vicar on her behalf.  Elizabeth was a favourite Lady in Waiting to Queen Elizabeth I and in 1590 ( SHC Collections Catalogue ref G1/42/11) the Queen granted glebe, tithes and advowson of Shalford and Wonersh rectories to her secretary for the Latin tongue, now Sir John Wolley d1596.  As Patron he introduced a vicar in 1595.  Following his death in 1595/6 his son Sir Francis Wolley held the rectory and advowson until he died in 1609.

 

Information about how or when the rectory and advowson came to George Duncombe is not known; If you find any documentation please contact us.

 

It thereafter (c1650) became part of the estate of George Duncombe of Weston near Albury,  a conveyanceor whose family name arises in many accounts of the time.  He presumably took over patronage of Wonersh because he had married Judith Carrill of Wonersh and introduced the new vicar in 1629 and possibly also earlier in 1614.  His son, George, was dealing with the advowson in 1650, then Roger Duncombe in 1677, George Duncombe in 1693, Henry Duncombe of Albury in 1684 & 1718 and then his nephew John Duncombe of Wribbenhall Kidderminster.  He died leaving another George Duncombe, attorney of Kidderminster as is son & heir.

 

Ownership of the tithes was a property, and consequently could be leased or mortgaged.  This may explain why it was recorded by Aubrey in 1708 ”Impropriator is Mr George Duncomb of Albury, who has leased it to Mr Richard Webb of this Parish, who pays the vicar..”.  The rectory appears to have been heavily mortgaged and there are many papers concerning settlement from 1725.  Advowson of the rectory seems to have passed independently of the tithes to another George Duncombe who lived at Haldersh, and patronage was handed down to his daughter Ann and her husband Nathaniel Sturt (Barrister at Law) ( SHC Collections Catalogue ref:1322).  In 1756 their son George Sturt exercised patronage by introducing the new vicar.

 

The Great Tithes were apparently on the market in 1759 and the register records that expenses were paid for some of the Wonersh parishioners to investigate purchasing them, presumably to return them to their proper purpose. This was unsuccessful and the rectory was evidently leased to Mr Thomas Harris (SHC Ref Collection 5225/1 Letter ).  Harris accompanied Duncombe to Wonersh 'to take a view of the farmers all together in order to form some judgement of their humors' [to assess the likely difficulty in extracting tithes].

 

Fletcher Norton purchased the great (rectorial) tithes from Duncomb in 1765 ( SHC Collections Catalogue ref G60/75 collection 1229) to become, having married a Wonersh lady and now living in Wonersh, the first resident Lay-Rector.  George Sturt died in 1766 and his two sisters Francis Chatfield and Dorothy Sturt sold the advowson to Fletcher Norton.  For some reason it took 4 years for transfer of titles to be completed in 1770.  Whilst becoming Lord of the Manor in 1759 he was not elevated to the Peerage until 1782, becoming the 1st Lord Grantley.  He presented his first vicar, James Hill, in 1779, however it is not clear if it was he or Fletcher Norton who was the driving force for the extensive works that took place to the church in 1793.  The 2nd Lord Grantley introduced two vicars in 1803 and 1806.  In 1852 the new vicar was presented by David Stow, Merchant in the City of Glasgow pro hac vice (on behalf of) the 3rd Lord Grantley.   The titles of lay-rector, patron and Lord of the Manor of Wonersh eventually passed down to the 5th Lord Grantley.

 

The rector (or lay-rector) was responsible for the upkeep of the chancel, however the upkeep of the remainder was a local responsibility.  The nave was often the largest public space in a village and was available to them for festival events.  Wonersh was fortunate that from sometime before 1715 the Bridgham Trust provided a modest income for the church to maintain the fabric of the building.  The 13th C south chapel and 15th C south aisle were built and owned by the Lord of the Manor.  This brought with it the privileges of use (including the right of burial of family members) but the responsibilities of maintenance were not always discharged.    The only person with the right by law to a pew in the chancel was the rector.  Lord Grantley clearly saw this as an important measure of social standing and once he became Lay-rector he ensured that a suitably grand pew was constructed in the chancel for his own use.  This extended into the nave and with a fireplace was the only heated area of the church.

     

George Cubitt, who later became Lord Ashcombe, in 1895 acquired from the Grantley estate rights to the land, tithes and patronage, following an order of court in 1883.  He was appointed a member of the Council of Selwyn College Cambridge in 1887 and subsequently presented patronage to them in 1902.  He retained Patronage of Shamley Green. The tithes were given back to the parishes of Wonersh & Shamley Green for the purpose of payment of the vicars, the parish of Shamley Green having been formed out of part of  Wonersh in 1885  (Blackheath was still part of Wonersh at this time).  The title of Vicar continues to be used in both parishes even though the tithes were returned to the rectory (parish) as the tithe was split between the two parishes.

 

From 1927 Wonersh became part of the newly formed Diocese of Guildford.  

 

The Registers and Vicars

See page Vicars and Registers for details on the incumbents.

 

 

 

See also website     British History Online - Wonersh Parish

 

Very many letters and documents are summarised and published online in the Surrey History Centre Collections Catalogue .  It has not been found possible to link these references directly, however from the SEARCH page it is possible to bring up the relevant collection of documents, with the search criteria highlighted.  These include :-

                  Estates of  Norton Family Collection Ref:1229

                  Loseley Manuscripts, Collection Ref: LM.,

                                          Letter from John Wolley to William Moore LM/COR/3/453

                                          Marriages of  Elizabeth More to Richard Polsted and then John Wolley Section G.6.4

                  County Records & Deeds relating to Manors of Bramley,  Collection ref: 892 – Including a concise summary of the descent of the title.

                  Titles of Ecclesiastical Property, Collection 5308/2

                   

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