I M PROPRIATION. The act of employing the revenues of a church living to one's own use : it is also a parsonage or ecclesiastical living in the hands of a layman, or which descends by inheritance. Techn. Diet.
The transfer to a layman of a benefice to which the cure of souls is annexed with an obligation to provide with a performance of the spiritual duties attached to the benefice is said to be nearly the same as an appropriation. Holth. Before the Ref ormation the terms were used without a yery clear distinction, and appropriations by spiritual persons and incorporation were termed impropriation. Lat er the use of the latter word was restricted by Spelman and others to appropriation by laymen. Moz. & W.
The distinction is thus clearly stated: The prac tice of impropriation differs from the somewhat similar but mbre ancient usage of appropriation, inasmuch as the latter supposes the revenues of the appropriated benefice to be transferred to ecclesi astical or quasi-ecclesiastical persons or bodies, as to a certain dignitary in a convent, a college, a hos pital ; while impropriation applies that the tempo ralities of the benefice are enjoyed by a layman; the name, according to Spelman, being given in consequence of their thus being improperly applied, diverted from their legitimate use. The practice of impropriation, and still more that of appropriation, as in the case of monasteries, etc., and other re
ligious houses, prevailed extensively in England be fore the Reformation; and on the suppression of the monasteries, all such rights were (by 27 Henry VIII. c. 28, and 31 Henry. VIII. c. 13) vested in the crown, and were by the crown freely transferred to laymen, to whose heirs have thus descended, not only the right to the tithes, but also in many cases the entire property of rectories. The spiritual du ties of such rectories are discharged by a clergy man, who is called a vicar, and who receives a certain portion of the emoluments of the living, generally consisting of a part of the glebe-land of the parsonage, together with what are called the ."small tithes" of the parish. Int. CST.
The word impropriation is said to be derived from in proprietatem, because the living is held as a lay property. Phil'. Ecc. L. 275.
An impropriate rector was the term applied to a lay rector as opposed to a spiritual rector; and tithes in the hands of a lay owner were called 'im propriate tithes, as those in the hands of a spiritual owner were termed appropriate tithes.
See 1 Bla. Com. 384; 2 Steph. Com. 678; Brown, Diet.; APPROPRIATION.