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  1. #1
    Wilkes_ml
    Guest

    Default Churchwardens v. Rector of Margate 1819

    I wasn't sure where to put this....I was searching for ancestors in Gloucestershire in the newspapers, and stumbled upon this in the Stamford Mercury, which I believe to cover Lincolnshire, but this article covered a nearby parish to me in Kent, which I found very interesting!

    Stamford Mercury 26th March 1819

    titled "Action against a Clergyman for appropriating to his own use Black Cloth hung in a Church"

    Kent Assizes- Cramp and another v Bayley, Clerk.

    This was a case of rather a singular nature.It was an action of trover by the plaintiffs as Churchwardens of the parish of St. John the Baptist, Margate against the defendant, a Rector of that parish, to recover the value of certain black cloth which had been put in the parish church in respect to the memory of the late Princess Charlotte of Wales, but which the defendant, the rector, had converted to his own use, by having it made up into coats, waistcoats and other articles of apparel. After hearing the evidence, which merely went to the alleged fact, Mr. Justice Bailey, in his address to the jury, laid it down as the rule of law, that no person has a right to hang up what are called ornaments in a church, without the leave of the rector, because the freehold of the church is in him, and he may make his own terms for that leave. In general, where private individuals hang black cloth in the parish church with the concurrence of the rector, there is a kind of understanding between them, that the cloth becomes the property of the rector. In the present case, however, there had been no bargain between the plaintiffs and the defendant, with respect to the terms uponwhich the cloth was to be hung in the church, and consequently the latter had no right to take any portion of the cloth because by law he was not entitled to take such a property unless my matter of arrangement or agreement between the parties to whom it belonged. Under these circumstances the plaintiffs were entitled to a verdict for the value of the cloth which the defendant had converted to his own use. The jury accordingly found for the plaintiffs - damages 15l.

  2. #2
    Davran
    Guest

    Default

    Crafty old rector!

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