It has been a question much agitated in our courts, whether a presentation is valid where the person presented enters into a bond or agreement, either generally to resign the benefice at the patron's request, or to resign it in favour of a particular person specified in the instrument. After several contrary decisions in the courts below, it was finally decided by the House of Lords, towards the latter end of the last century, that general bonds of resig nation were simoniacal and illegal. A similar decision has lately been made by the same tribunal with respect to bonds of resignation in favour of specified persons. As there is no objection on the grounds of public policy to the last-mentioned instruments, if restrained within due limits, the interference of the legislature has been thought necessary in order to regulate transactions of this nature. On this account, after a retrospective act (7 & 8 Geo. IV. c. 25) had been passed, to remedy the hardships that might other wise have been occasioned by the last mentioned judgment of the House of Lords, it was finally enacted by the 9 Geo. IV. c. 94, that every engagement, bond fide made for the resignation of any spiritual office or living, in favour of a person, or one of two persons to be spe cially named therein, being such persons as were mentioned in a subsequent section of the act, should be valid and effec tual in law, provided such engagement were entered into before the presentation of the party entering into the same. By the section referred to, where two persons are specially named in the engagement, each of them must be, either by blood or marriage, an uncle, son, grandson, bro ther, nephew, or grand-nephew of the patron (provided the patron is not a mere trustee), or of the person for whom the patron is a trustee, or of the person by whose direction the presentation is in tended to be made, or of any married woman whose husband in her right is patron, or of any other person in whose right the presentation is intended to be made. The deed containing the engage ment to resign must be deposited for inspection with the registrar of the dio cese wherein the benefice is situated, and every resignation made in pursuance of such an engagement must refer to the same, and state the name of the person for whose benefit it is made and becomes void, unless that person is pre sented within six months. The statute is limited in its operation to cases where the patronage is strictly private property.
There are certain benefices of which the patronage is either by custom or act of parliament vested in certain public officers or corporations. Thus, the lord chancellor has the absolute patronage of all the king's livings which are valued at 20/. per annum or under in the king's books. It is not known how this patron age of the chancellor was derived ; but it appears from the rolls of parliament in the 4 Edward III., that the chancellor at that time had the patronage of all the king's livings of the value of 20 marks or under, and it is not improbable that at the time of making the new valuation of benefices in the reign of Henry VIII., a new grant was made to the chancellor by the mown, in consideration of the altered value or ecclesiastical property By the Municipal Corporations Act (5 & 6 Will. IV. o. 76) all advowsons, rights of presentation or nomination to any bene fice or ecclesiastical preferment in the gift of any body corporate, according to the meaning of the act, were required to be sold under the direction of the eccle siastical commissioners, and the proceeds invested in government securities, the in terest on which was to be carried to the account of the borough fund (§ 139).
The act 1 & 2 Viet. c. 31, was passed for facilitating this transfer of patronage.
By stet. 3 Jac. I. c. 5, popish recusants are disabled from exercising any right of ecclesiastical patronage ; and the pa tronage of livings in the gift of such per sons is vested in the two universities, ac cording to the several counties in which the livings are situate. This disability was confiimed by the subsequent statutes 1 William and Mary, c. 26, 12 Anne seas. c. 14, and extended to cases where the right of patronage was vested in a trustee for a papist; and is not removed (along with the other disabilities affecting ROD)&11 Catholics) by statute 10 George IV. c. 7. But the last-mentioned act provides, that where any ecclesiastical patronage is con nected with any office in the gift of the crown, which office is held by a Roman Catholic, thepatronage, so long as the office is so held, shall be exercised by the archbishop of Canterbury. The clause in 3 Jac. I. c. 5, relating to patronage held by Roman Catholics, is saved in the act 7 & 8 Viet. c. 102, for repealing a number of penal enactments against the Roman Catholics.
The church of Ireland being the same with that of England, the ecclesiastical polity of each is to its main principles the same. The same law of .ecclesiastical patronage, the same classification of bene fices, the same circumstances of lay impro priations, and, in short, the same ecclesias tical privileges and disabilities, may pre vpil in each country. But a most important alteration in the distribution of the re venues of the Irish church was effected by the 3 & 4 Will. IV. c. 37, amended by 4 & 5 Will. IV. c. 90. By this act certain eccle siastical commissioners are established as a corporation for the augmenting of small livings out of the funds which come into their hands by virtue of the act, and for other ecclesiastical purposes. The funds in question are to arise partly from the revenues of certain bishoprics which are abolished, and the surplus revenues of the rest above certain limits fixed by the act ; partly from the money paid by the tenants of lands held under bishops' leases renewable for ever, for a conversion of such leasehold interest into a perpetuity ; and partly from a tax levied op all eccle siastical dignities and benefices, according to a scale of taxation specified in a sche dule to the act; in consideration of which tax all first-fruits are abolished. The commissioners are invested with extra ordinary powers by the act. Thus, they have authority to disappropriate benefices to dignities, and to unite them to vicarages in lieu thereof. They have also the power of suspending the appoint ment to benefices which are in the gift zither of the crown, of archbishops, dishops, or other dignitaries, or of ecclesi +sties,' corporations, where it appears that divine service has not beep performed within such benefices for three years be fore the passing the act. [Eccksstasn