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THE VESTRY
OF
The United Parish of St. Margaret and St. John
the Evangelist, Westminster,
REPORT.
AMONG the seventy-eight civil parishes
ing the City, and forming the area* to which
the Metropolis Local Management Acts apply,
none can lay claim to the antiquity and traditions inseparably
associated with Westminster. Whether viewed
in relation to the ecclesiastical prominence, to the intimate
connection with national and political history, to the
distinction as the residential parish of the Royal Houses
of Plantagenet, Tudor, Stuart, and Hanover, or to the
peculiar autonomy, the position of Westminster has been
for centuries, as it is to-day, undisputably unique.
The parishioners might therefore be disposed to allow, if
not to expect, the representative body by whom their
temporal affairs have been administered for three hundred
years, to present a brief historical sketch of the parish. A
momentary pause will, however, suggest exceptions which
might be taken to such a course. Not only has the
ground already been more or less covered by able writers,
but the disentanglement and collection of information,
the sketching of the intensely interesting biographies,
indispensable to such a work, and the noting of the topographical
changes wrought by Time, even in the limited
area of eight hundred and fifteen acres, would be outside
the province of a body incorporated for the performance
of duties carefully defined by statute. But no
such objection can be made to the review of the alterations
*This area corresponds with the newly constituted "Administrative County
of London."
B