Vestries

A vestry was the committee for the secular and ecclesiastical government for a parish in England and Wales, which, until this was forbidden in 1850, met in the vestry or sacristy of the parish church, and consequently became known colloquially as the "vestry".

The vestry was a meeting of the parish ratepayers chaired by the incumbent of the parish, originally held in the parish church or its vestry, from which it got its name.

The vestry committees were not established by any law, but they evolved independently in each parish according to local needs from their roots in medieval parochial governance. By the late 17th century they had become, along with the county magistrates, the rulers of rural England.

In England, until the 19th century, the parish vestry committee was in effect what would today usually be called a parochial church council, but was also responsible for secular parish business, which is now the responsibility of a parish council, and other activities, such as administering locally the poor law.

The original unit of settlement among the Anglo-Saxons in England was the tun or town. The inhabitants met to carry out this business in the town moot or meeting, at which they appointed the various officials and the common law would be promulgated. Later with the rise of the shire, the township would send its reeve and four best men to represent it in the courts of the hundred and shire. However, this local independence of the Saxon system was lost to the township by the introduction of the feudal manorial Court Leet which replaced the town meeting.

The division into ancient parishes was linked to the manorial system, with parishes and manors often sharing the same boundaries. Initially, the manor was the principal unit of local administration and justice in the rural economy, but over time the Church replaced the manorial court as the centre of rural administration, and levied a local tax on produce known as a tithe. The decline of the feudal system and, following the Reformation in the 16th century, the power of the Church, led to a new form of township or parish meeting, which dealt with both civil and ecclesiastical affairs. This new meeting was supervised by the parish priest, probably the best educated of the inhabitants, and it evolved to become the vestry meeting.

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