PATRONAGE

PATRONAGE, or ADVOWSON, a sort of incor-
poreal hereditament, consisting in the right of pre-
sentation to a church or ecclesiastical benefice. Advow-
son, advocatio, signifies in clientelam recipere, the taking
into protection; and therefore is synonymous with pa-
tronage, patronatus: and he who has the right of ad-
vowson is called the patron of the church. For when
lords of manors first built churches on their own de-
mesnes, 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 divi-
sion 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.

Advowsons are either advowsons appendant, or advow-
sons in gross. Lords of manors being originally the on-
ly founders, and of course the only patrons, of churches,
the right of patronage or presentation, so long as it con-
tinues annexed to the possession of the manor, as some
have done from the foundation of the church to this
day, is called an advowson appendant: and it will pass,
or be conveyed, together with the manor, as incident
and appendant thereto, by a grant of the manor only,
without adding any other words. But where the pro-
perty of the advowson has been once separated from the
property of the manor by legal conveyance, it is called
an advowson in gross, or at large, and never can be ap-
pendant any more; but it is for the future annexed to
the person of its owner, and not to his manor or lands.

Advowsons are also either presentative, collative, or
donative. An advowson presentative, is where the pa-
tron hath a right of presentation to the bishop or ordi-
nary, 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 colla-
tive, 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 sub-
ject 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 to have been an-
ciently the only way of conferring ecclesiastical bene-
fices in England; the method of institution by the bi-
shop not being established more early than the time of
Archbishop Becket in the reign of Henry II. and there-
fore, 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 how-
ever shows 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 ex-
amine 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 ecclesi-
astical 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 waves this privilege of donation, and
presents to the bishop, and his clerk is admitted and in-
stituted, 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 inter-
pret 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,
Secl. v. N^o clix. 5-10.

Arms of PATRONAGE, in Heraldry, are those on the
top of which are some marks of subjection and de-
pendence: thus the city of Paris lately bore the fleur-de-
lis in chief, to show her subjection to the king; and the
cardinals, on the top of their arms, bear those of the
pope, who gave them the hat, to show that they are his
creatures.