DIVINE SERVICE. (Hansard, 9 August 1839)

Lord Ellenborough
said, he should take this opportunity of alluding to a provision in the law in reference to churches. He alluded to that enactment which subjected a person to a penalty for having divine service performed in his house before more than twenty persons. He was quite certain there were many persons who would have divine service performed in their houses if it were not from fear of that provision. He had himself incurred the risk of the penalty for four years, but did not choose to run it any longer. This was not all; a person was not at liberty to build a church, and put a clergyman into it, unless he endowed that church as a place of divine worship for ever. This he regarded as a great hardship. If the right rev. Prelate would alter that law, he would set about building a church to-morrow, which he would maintain as long as he lived, but would not pledge himself to provide for it beyond his own life; but if that law were not altered, he never would build one.

The Archbishop of Canterbury
said, the proposition of the noble Lord was one that required a great deal of consideration; but any proposition that might come regularly from the noble Lord on the subject should have his best attention. There might be great inconveniences attending such an alteration of the law. One would be, that there would be a great number of conventicles established throughout the country, and many of the richer persons would not go to parish churches, which, in example, would have an injurious effect. Endowments for churches were required to ensure their perpetual use as churches. If the law were to be altered in this respect, piousminded and liberal persons like the noble Lord opposite, might build and maintain churches during their life-time, which afterwards might become deserted, and be converted into storehouses for goods, or other purposes wholly unconnected with religion. That which at first was thought to be a very easy change, was often found 134 to be, when set about, attended with insurmountable difficulties.

Lord Ellenborough
observed, that the right rev. Prelate might easily conceive that he felt a good deal of difficulty on this subject, as he was extremely desirous of the change, and yet he did not happen to differ from the Church of England in one single point.

Lord Roden
hoped the right rev. Prelate would take this subject into his most serious consideration. It was a most severe and improper state of the law, that persons, for having more than twenty persons in their houses, for the purpose of divine worship, should be subject to the penalty of 50l., when they might have persons in any number in their houses, to act plays, or to amuse themselves in any other way whatever. If there was such an alteration made in the law as would allow persons to assemble in private houses for religious purposes, instead of injuring churches, he believed it would be greatly to their advantage, because, if persons were to be made religious at their houses, they would be sure to go to Church.

§ Lord Hatherton
anxiously added his entreaty to his noble Friend's opposite, that the right rev. Prelate would take this matter into his grave consideration. He himself had experienced much difficulty from the present state of the law, and if that state were altered, he would himself immediately build three chapels in neighbourhoods with which he was connected, where there were very extensive populations, and where those populations suffered greatly from not having chapels.

The Archbishop of Canterbury
observed, that two very different things were now brought under consideration; one was that of being at liberty to build chapels, and to open them without endowing them, and the other was that of gentlemen, or other persons, being at liberty to open their own houses for the performance of divine service therein. He did not at the moment feel himself at liberty to express any opinion upon subjects that involved so many important considerations. As to a gentleman being at liberty to open his house for divine service, it would be liable to this abuse—that if he quarrelled with the clergyman of the parish he would immediately open a conventicle, and if he were a man of influence, he could draw a great many of the parishioners away from the parish church to his conventicle, and which 135 latter would be open just so long as that gentleman's difference continued with the clergyman. He only begged to be excused from giving any opinion at present on either subject, and more particularly from being considered to give a favourable opinion to gentlemen being at liberty to open their houses for divine worship; but he, and he was sure the rest of the rev. Bench, would be quite ready to treat any question of this kind that might be brought forward, and considered for the benefit of the Church, according to its merits.

Lord Ellenborongh
said, that his house was two miles from the parish church; the road between the two was almost impassable in the winter time, and of the seventy or eighty persons in his house, he believed that hardly one of them went to the parish church in that season of the year.

§ Lord Hatherton
said, many parish churches were deserted from the incapacity of the clergyman; and many persons had become Dissenters from that same cause.