Ecclesiastical Commission (Church of England)

Ecclesiastical Commissioners were, in England and Wales, a body corporate, whose full title was Ecclesiastical and Church Estates Commissioners for England. The commissioners were authorized to determine the distribution of revenues of the Church of England, and they made extensive changes in how revenues were distributed. The modern successor body thereof are the Church Commissioners.

Their appointment was one of the results of the vigorous movements for the reform of public institutions which followed the Reform Act of 1832. In 1835 two commissions were appointed to consider the state of the several dioceses of England and Wales, with reference to the amount of their revenues and the more equal distribution of episcopal duties, and the prevention of the necessity of attaching by commendam to bishoprics certain benefices with cure of souls; and to consider also the state of the several cathedral and collegiate churches in England and Wales, with a view to the suggestion of such measures as might render them conducive to the efficiency of the established church, and to provide for the best mode of providing for the cure of souls, with special reference to the residence of the clergy on their respective benefices. And it was enacted by an act of 1835 that during the existence of the commission the profits of dignities and benefices without cure of souls becoming vacant should be paid over to the treasurer of Queen Anne's Bounty. In consequence of the recommendation of these commissioners, a permanent commission was appointed by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners Act 1836 for the purpose of preparing and laying before the king in council such schemes as should appear to them to be best adapted for carrying into effect the alterations suggested in the report of the original commission and recited in the act. The new commission was constituted a corporation with power to purchase and hold lands for the purposes of the act, notwithstanding the statutes of mortmain. The first members of the commission were the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York, and three bishops, the Lord Chancellor and the principal officers of state, and three laymen named in the act.

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