DIOCESAN REGISTRATION BILL [H.L.] (Hansard, 2 July 1900)

*THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

My Lords, this is a Bill of only four clauses, to enable the Diocesan Documents to be preserved and kept intact over the country. At present some Acts of Parliament require deeds, etc., to be registered, but others omit the direction. The record of a great variety of ecclesiastical documents is very imperfect, and every now and then some such record which is very much wanted cannot be found. I will give your Lordships an instance of what I mean. In 1881 the then vicar of St. George's, Bickley, in Kent, was appointed Dean of Wells, and the question arose in whose patronage Bickley was vested. It was known that an agreement as to patronage had been signed by all parties concerned, but no agreement could anywhere be found. After five months of search and inquiry, and before the lapse, the signed agreement was ultimately discovered amongst some old bankruptcy papers in a disused solicitor's office. It is obvious that that is not a proper state of things. In the spring of 1898 application was made to the Canterbury Diocesan Registry for a patronage agreement relating to Christ Church, Beckenham, which it was stated had been signed by all parties in 1876, but no trace of it could then be found in the registry or elsewhere. It had never been registered. This Bill proposes that documents of this kind should in all cases be registered. I do not think it is likely to meet with opposition from any quarter, and I hope your Lordships will give it a Second Reading.