PATRONAGE, or ADVOWSON, a sort of incorporeal hereditament, consisting in the right of presentation to a church or ecclesiastical benefice. ADVOWSON, advocatio, signifies in clientelam recipere, the taking into protection; and therefore is synonymous with patronage, patronatus: and he who has the right of advowson is called the patron of the church. For, when lords of manors first built churches on their own demesnes, and appointed the tithes of those manors to be paid to the officiating ministers, which before were given to the clergy in common (from whence arose the division of parishes), the lord, who thus built a church, and endowed it with glebe or land, had of common right a power annexed of nominating such minister as he pleased, (provided he were canonically qualified), to officiate in that church, of which he was the founder, endower, maintainer, or, in one word, the patron.