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times as may be required by the death, resignation, or removal of any
of such officers.
The Islington Parish Acts Amendment Act, 1857 (20 and 21 Vic., cap.
118), provides, in section 21, that the Churchwardens' Rate and the rate
for repairing, etc., the Parish Church and the Chapel-of-Ease, shall be
levied and paid by the Vestry as constituted under the Metropolis
Management Act (1855) to the senior Churchwarden of the Parish for the
time being. This proviso seems never to have been literally carried out—
the practice having been to pay to the senior Churchwarden the sum or
sums which he requisitioned, and to keep any balance remaining over
in the hands of the Vestry to the credit of the Churchwarden's Rate
Account for the following year. A Churchwardens' Rate continued to
be made until 1874.
In 1808 the Compulsory Church Rate Abolition Act was passed.
The gist of this Act was that no proceedings could in future be taken
to compel the payment of any Church Rate; a Church Rate is defined
as any Rate made for Ecclesiastical purposes, and Ecclesiastical purposes
are defined as "the building, re-building, enlargement and repair of
any Church or Chapel, and any purpose to which by common or
Ecclesiastical law a Church Rate is applicable."
Little heed seems to have been taken of this Act at first, the
Churchwardens' accounts for several years continuing to show expenditure
out of the Churchwardens' Rate for purposes which were eventually
declared to be Ecclesiastical. At length in 1874 the assertions of
Vestrymen and others that illegal and improper items were being
charged to the Churchwardens' Rate reached such a head that the
Vestry on June 19tli referred it to the General Purposes Committee
to enquire and report whether such was the case—subsequently giving
the Committee power to take counsel's opinion. A case was accordingly
laid before Mr. Barrow, and this, together with Mr. Barrow's opinion
thereon, is printed herewith.
Before the Committee reported, however, Mr. Pickford and some
other ratepayers, acting apparently upon a suggestion made by an
anonymous correspondent in the Islington Gazette, refused to pay the
Churchwardens' Rate, and were summoned on August 24th before the
local Justices, who, notwithstanding the strong advocacy of the then
Vestry Clerk, Mr. Layton, in favour of the legality of the rate, declined