ADVOWSONS are also either presentative, collative, or donative. And advowson presentative is where the patron hath a right of presentation to the bishop or ordinary, and moreover to demand of him to institute his clerk if he finds him canonically qualified: and this is the most usual advowson. An advowson collative is where the bishop and patron are one and the same person: in which case the bishop cannot present to himself; but he does, by the one act of collation, or conferring the benefice, the whole that is done in common cases, by both presentation and institution. An advowson donative is when the king, or any subject by his licence, doth found a church or chapel, and ordains that it shall be merely in the gift or disposal of the patron; subject to his visitation only, and not to that of the ordinary; and vested absolutely in the clerk by the patron's deed of donation, without presentation, institution, or induction. This is said
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to have been anciently the only way of conferring ecclesiastical benefices in England; the method of institution by the bishop not being established more early than the time of archbishop Becket in the reign of Henry II. and therefore, though pope Alexander III. in a letter to Becket, severely inveighs against the prava consuetudo, as he calls it, of investiture conferred by the patron only, this however shews what was then the common usage. Others contend, that the claim of the bishops to institution is as old as the first planting of Christianity in this island; and in proof of it they allege a letter from the English nobility to the pope in the reign of Henry the third, recorded by Matthew Paris, which speaks of presentation to the bishop as a thing immemorial. The truth seems to be, that, where the benefice was to be conferred on a mere layman, he was first presented to the bishop in order to receive ordination, who was at liberty to examine and refuse him: but where the clerk was already in orders, the living was usually vested in him by the sole donation of the patron; till about the middle of the 12th century, when the pope and his bishops endeavoured to introduce a kind of feudal dominion over ecclesiastical benefices, and, in consequence of that, began to claim and exercise the right of institution universally, as a species of spiritual investiture.
However this may be, if, as the law now stands, the true patron once waives this privilege of donation, and presents to the bishop, and his clerk is admitted and instituted, the advowson is now become for ever presentative, and shall never be donative any more. For these exceptions to general rules and common right, are ever looked upon by the law in an unfavourable view, and construed as strictly as possible. If therefore the patron, in whom such peculiar right resides, does once give up that right, the law, which loves uniformity, will interpret it to be done with an intention of giving it up for ever; and will therefore reduce it to the standard of other ecclesiastical livings. See further, LAW, Part III. No clix. 5, 9.