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II.—From the Reformation to 1855, when many of
the principal duties of the Vestry were transferred
by the Metropolis Management Act to the
Westminster District Board of Works.
III.—From 1856 to 1888, the period during which the
parish was under the regime of the Westminster
District Board of Works.
IV.— From Lady-day, 1888, to Lady-day, 1889, the
first year of the Vestry as reconstituted.
In case the possession of such ample means of reference
may engender great expectations of the completeness of
the review here attempted, it may be well, at the outset, to
dispel any such anticipation, and to explain that neither
the accounts nor the registers (the latter being preserved
in the Vestry Room of the Church) have once been
consulted. The minute books of the Vestry have almost
exclusively been relied upon for the introduction to their
predecessors which the Vestry are about to make. Nor is
this sketch given with feelings of unmingled pride or selfsufficiency.
On the contrary, the extracts hereafter given
will show the present system to have come forth from dark
ages dyed with superstitions, if not also disgraced with
crimes even in the parochial administration. Nevertheless,
in these records will be traced the gradual formation of a
system of self-government which, however it may be
designated, and however its imperfections in minor details
may be magnified, may fearlessly claim to be without a
parallel in any other method which continental or colonial
ingenuity has been able to devise.
Extent of A brief reference to the extent and boundaries
the Parish. of Westminster may here be admissible. Three
hundred years before the Domesday Book (1086) the
extent of "the rural manor of Westminster," was mentioned
in a Charter of Offa, King of Mercia, dated 785*.
This Charter was confirmed by Edgar in 985, from whose
* Walcott's Memorials of Westminster.
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