The Mayoral and Corporation Seats in Faversham Parish Church

THE MAYORAL AND CORPORATION SEATS IN FA VERSHAM PARISH CHURCH NIGEL YATES, M.A., F.R.Hist.S. On 2 July, 1988, a consistory court took place in the Church of St. Mary of Charity at Faversham the purpose of which was to settle a dispute between the parish and town council over the arrangement and position in the church of the seats used on formal occasions by the mayor and members of the town council. The case was a significant one. For the past century seats in churches have generally been available to any who wished to sit in them. That, however, was a result of strenuous efforts by reforming clergy and othets in the nineteenth century to rid churches of private seating. Before this had taken place both Anglican parish churches and dissenting chapels had been largely full of private sittings. Some had a few seats which were not allocated, but they were usually confined to upper galleries or loose benches down the middle of a wide central aisle. 1 According to the general view of Anglican canon lawyers the right of allocating seats in church belonged to the diocesan bishop, but in practice it was accepted that allocation should be determined by the incumbent and churchwardens. Any parishioner to whom a seat had been allocated had a duty in law to keep the seat in repair, but providing this duty was undertaken the seat could not be allocated otherwise even by the diocesan bishop.2 It was to uphold its historic rights in the mayoral and corporation seats in the parish church of Faversham that the town council disputed under the provisions of the Faculty Jurisdiction Measure a petition by the parishioners, which would have overridden 1 On seating in Anglican churches and the campaign against private pews generally, see G.W .0. Addleshaw and F. Etchells, The Architectural Setting of Anglican Worship, London 1948, 86-98, and W.O. Chadwick, The Victorian Church, London 1966-70, i, 329-31, 520-2. 2 R. Burn, Ecclesiastical Law, London 1731, i, 329-37. 37 NIGEL YATES these rights. A similar dispute took place at Banbury (Oxon.) in 1983-84 when a number of parishioners, who were able to claim rights to particular seats in the church, opposed a liturgical reordering of the interior to protect their pew rights. Both at Banbury in 1985 and at Faversham in 1988 those who argued against the validity of pew rights lost the argument. Faculty petitions, which sought to override them, were dismissed, and in the case of Banbury the consistory court judgement was upheld on appeal to the Court of Arches. Private pews in the Church of England may be limited, but their future existence may have been preserved as a result of the Banbury and Faversham judgements, which have set important legal precedents.3 When private seating was created in the Church of England, since at least the last sixteenth century, it was usually by one of three methods. The first, and probably the most common, was approp1 .tion by custom with ratification from time to time by the in,:umbent and churchwardens. Where seats were appropriated in this way, they were wholly allocated to particular properties in the parish, a fact still recorded by the inscriptions on the pews at two West Sussex churches, Shermansbury and West Grinstead. Appropriations of this sort were not usually subject to any type of fee or payment. The second arrangement was for seats to be provided in return for a fixed annual rent. This was a particularly common practice in many new urban churches built between 1700 and 1850 where no endowment was provided for the minister. In such cases the income from the pew rent was used to pay the minister and, if there was no income from church rates, to maintain the fabric. Finally, seats might be appropriated in consideration of contributions made to a rebuilding or reseating scheme, the extent or location of the seats normally being related to the size of the contribution. Seats allocated in this way, frequently provided for by a local Act of Parliament permitting the scheme to take place, generally carried a right of conveyance and were just as much the property of the owner as his house or a parcel of land. On the whole the attempts to abolish private seating, which formed part of the general reform of the Church of England after 1820, were wholly successful and private seats have rarely survived. The most common survivals have been the pews of major landed families, such 3 The remainder of this article is based on the proof of evidence prepared by the present writer as an expert witness on behalf of the Faversham Town Council in the consistory court hearing held at Faversham on 2 July, 1988. 38 THE SEATS IN FAVERSHAM PARISH CHURCH as (in Kent) the Gybbon-Monypenny pew at Rolvenden or the Bartholomew pew at West Peckham, and the special seats assigned to mayors and corporations which survive in many town churches. Most of these are now arranged as a series of pews in the eastern part of the nave, with seats for the mayor and former aldermen in the front and those for councillors behind. However, in St. George's, Deal, the pew is situated in the north gallery facing the position on the south wall in which the former three-decker pulpit used to stand.4 At Blandford Forum (Dorset) the corporation pew is a large box at the eastern end of the nave opposite the pulpit, with the mayor's seat at its southern end facing towards the pulpit and with the remainder of the council members facing each other east and west. What is particularly interesting about the corporation seats at Faversham is the detailed surviving evidence which provides an unusually full record of their arrangement and status since the middle of the eighteenth century. It would appear that the mayor and corporation of Faversham have had special seats in the parish church of St. Mary of Charity since at least the early eighteenth century, and possibly from a little earlier than that date. The earliest known location of the mayoral and corporation seats was in a gallery, which was almost certainly placed under one of the arcades of the former central tower, possibly in the position of the pre-Reformation rood loft. Galleries in precisely this position existed at High Wycombe and still exist at St. Mary's, Whitby. The latter, known as the Cholmley pew, dates from the late seventeenth century, a period during which several other raised or gallery pews were also erected, and it is likely that the mayoral pew at Faversham was erected at about the same time. On 23 April, 1753, the corporation of Faversham resolved to take down seats in the mayor's gallery as part of a proposed repewing scheme for the north and south transepts, and ordered the Chamberlain to pay £200 'out of Mr Hatch's gift' for this purpose. On 31 July, the corporation ordered the preparation of plans for the construction of a new gallery at the north end of the existing mayor's gallery. On 13 September, the corporation further resolved to expend not more than £320 on the building of a new organ and appointed the mayor and other named members of the Common Council to contract for the same. 5 4 Plans in K[enl] A[rchives) O[ffice}, De/PI0-12. 5 KAO, Fa/ACS (Faversham Wardmote Book 1741-1821). 39 NIGEL YATES At that stage, the corporation's resolutions were to some extent made irrelevant by the decision to demolish the central tower which the architect, the elder George Dance, had found to be on the point of collapse, and to largely rebuild the nave. 6 As the rebuilding scheme proceeded, the corporation again considered the question of its own seats in the church. The parish vestry had resolved on 17 April, 1754,7 that, in consideration of its generous contribution of £500 to the rebuilding scheme, the corporation should 'have the liberty and choice of placing themselves and their gallery and pews in such convenient place in the said church as they shall think fit'. On 7 September, 1754, the parish petitioned for a faculty to demolish the central tower and rebuild the nave, noting that 'in order to make the charge of such alteration easy to the parishioners' the corporation had agreed to contribute the sum of £500 'toward the charge thereof'.8 Initially, the corporation had been minded to re-order its seating much as had been planned in 1753. On 28 August, 1755, it resolved that the new seats were to be placed in two galleries in the north and south transepts according to plans submitted by the architect. However, on 28 December, that resolution was rescinded and the corporation resolved that the seats 'be built at the expense of this Corporation against the two great westermost piers in the nave or body of the said church, three pews on each side and each pew to be fourteen feet in length or as near as conveniently may be and to extend east and west in length and the two piers to be in the centre of the said pews.' On 12 May, 1756, the corporation resolved to stand bound in the sum of £1000 to carry the reseating scheme into effect, and to borrow £200 on the bond. On 13 January, 1757, the corporation also resolved to purchase two chandeliers to hang as their gift in the north and south transepts.9 Among the records of the diocese of Canterbury is a citation dated 28 May, 1791,10 which recites the events of 1754-56 as noted above, adding that the corporation had paid £420 'towards defraying the expense of erecting an organ in the said church', and then petitions that the corporation might be allowed to appropriate its seats 'to the use of themselves and their successors in office for the time being for ever to 6 E. Jacob, History of the Town and Port of Faversham, London 1774, 43-6. 7 C{anterbury] C(athedral] L(ibraryJ, Diocesan Records E/F Faversham 145/4. 8 CCL, Diocesan Records E/F Faversham 145/36. 9 KAO, Fa/ACS. 10 CCL, Diocesan Records E/F Faversham 145/8. 40 THE SEATS IN FAVERSHAM PARISH CHURCH sit, stand, kneel and hear Divine Service and Sermons therein exclusive of all other persons whatsoever'. Although the original document does not appear to have survived, the granting of a faculty for this last purpose dated 6 July, 1791, is recorded in the corporation minutes for 5 August, 1791.11 The effect of this faculty was to give legal recognition to an appropriation previously established only by custom. On 6 April, 1848, the corporation appointed a committee to consider proposals for the alteration of the corporation seats submitted by the churchwardens. The report of this committee was considered on 14 April. It recommended 'that permission be given to the churchwardens to convert into slip pews . . . the faculty seats belonging to the Town Council on the north side of the Centre Aisle the Council reserving to themselves such rights over the said pews as may by them be deemed expedient ...t he alteration to be under the general supervision of a committee of the Town Council.' The report recommended in respect of the seats in the south side that they be not given up for parochial use as had been requested, but that they 'be altered by extending the seats below the Mayor's chair throughout the length of such sittings and for this purpose making use of the present passage to the Mayor's chair'. It is clear from this description that no alteration had previously been made to the corporation seats from the date of their erection in 1755-56. The council resolved that only that part of the report relating to 'the faculty pews on the north side ... be carried into effect ... at the expense of the corporation' and 'that the altered pews be appropriated by the Town Council and that each person appointed to such pews shall defray a proportionate part of the expense of the alterations'. The council appointed a 'Committee to superintend the carrying out of the proposed alterations'. On 11 May, 1848, the council resolved 'that the upper seats on the side of the Mayor's seat be appropriated to the use of the ex-Mayor for the time being and the four Aldermen, that the sitting at the eastern extremity of the middle pew be appropriated to the use of the Town Clerk for the time being and that the remainder of the sittings be appropriated to the use of the Councillors according to seniority'. The council further resolved that members requiring sittings in the seats on the north side should apply 'to the Town Clerk stating the number of sittings required'. On 19 May, the council agreed the allocation of those seats to members for the use of their families and guests. 12 11 KAO, Fa/ACS. 12 KAO, Fa/Aml/1 (Faversham Council Minute Book 1835-60). 41 NIGEL YATES A further modification of the corporation seats took place as part of a general restoration of the church in 1874. On 24 April, 1873, the vestry unanimously resolved to petition for a faculty 'to reseat and rearrange the parish church under the direction of Sir Gilbert Scott'. At a meeting of the corporation held on 24 July, 1873, a letter from the vestry clerk was read seeking its consent to certain alterations in the corporation seats as part of this reseating scheme, and the vestry clerk and churchwardens attended the meeting by invitation. The council resolved to support such alterations provided that the rights granted by the 1791 faculty were in no way affected and the area covered by the new seats was the same as that covered by the old ones. The council appointed a special committee to confer with the churchwardens regarding the details of the proposed alterations.13 However, on the basis of this approval in principle a faculty for reseating was granted on 29 October,1873. The faculty specifically recorded that the council had 'consented to the said proposed reseating and rearranging the said church upon condition that the said Council and their successors have a space of ground of as great extent and the like number of seats as they now occupy ... appropriated to their use . . . Provided nevertheless that the said Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses acting by the Council of the said Borough . . . shall from time to time as often as need shall require at their own costs well and sufficiently maintain and keep the said new and altered seats so to be appropriated as aforesaid in good and decent repair'. The continuation of this appropriation is important bearing in mind that the corporation had permitted their former seats on the north side of the nave to be made part of the general seating in 1848, a position made clear in the preamble to the 1873 faculty, and also that this same faculty permitted, by consent of the parties concerned, another pew formerly 'appropriated to the use of John Rigden and his family' to be incorporated into the general seating of the church, so that after this date the mayoral and corporation pews on the south side of the nave were to be the only appropriated seats in the church.14 The committee appointed by the council to confer with the churchwardens presented its report dated 25 March, 1874, to a meeting of the council on 30 March, 1874. In August 1873, the members had considered a ground plan of the proposed reseating as it affected the corporation pews and suggested some amendments. 13 KAO, Fa/Aml/2 (Faversham Council Minute Book 1860-77). 14 Canterbury Diocesan Registry, Faculty Registration Book 1873-7. 42 THE SEATS IN FAVERSHAM PARISH CHURCH Afterwards, the mayor 'attended at the architect's office in London and conferred respecting the proposed alterations', and on 7 January, 1874, 'the Committee had a conference with the churchwardens and Church Restoration Committee'. Following this, the architect sent an amended plan of his proposals and the council members suggested further alterations to make provision for receptacles 'for the maces in front of the Mayor's seat'. Suggestions were also made concerning the armorial bearings, but with those amendments the final plans were approved and commended to the council.15 At its meeting on 30 March, 1874, the council considered the committee's report and ordered it to be adopted.16 The new corporation seats in the parish church of Faversham, designed by Scott and installed in 1874, constituted the last official alteration to the arrangements for seating the mayor and other members of the council. In the early 1970s the seats were altered without a faculty as part of a temporary liturgical re-ordering designed to accommodate the introduction of a nave altar. Unfortunately, as so often happens, the temporary nature of the arrangement survived for more than a decade, and it was only when the parish petitioned for a faculty to regularise the situation, and at the same time make further modifications to the corporation seats, that the town council began to question the legality of what had taken place and for which authority was then being sought. The petition was dismissed as a result of the court hearing. The parish has been ordered to reinstate the corporation pews to the 1874 arrangement, but with liberty for them to be placed further westwards to provide sufficient room for a nave altar. Part of the pre-reform character of the Church of England, with its strong emphasis on the link between the sacred and the secular, has been allowed to Jive on in the modern church, but in such a way that it is not inconsistent with the liturgical requirements of contemporary worship. 15 KAO, Fa/ACcS (Faversham Committee Minute Book 1864-77). 16 KAO, Fa/Aml/2. 43