in the canon law, a feverish of a benefice ecclesiastical to the proper and perpetual use of some religious house. See the article PARSON.

The contrivance of appropriations seems to have sprung from the policy of the monastic orders, who have never been deficient in subtle inventions for the increase of their own power and emoluments. At the first establishment of parochial clergy, the tithes of Appropriations of the parish were distributed in a fourfold division; one for the use of the bishop, another for maintaining the fabric of the church, a third for the poor, and the fourth to provide for the incumbent. When the fees of the bishops became otherwise employed elsewhere, they were prohibited from demanding their usual share of these tithes, and the division was into three parts only. And hence it was inferred by the monasteries, that a small part was sufficient for the officiating priest; and that the remainder might well be applied to the use of their own fraternities (the endowment of which was construed to be a work of the most exalted piety), subject to the burden of repairing the church and providing for its constant supply. And therefore they begged and bought, for masses and obits, and sometimes even for money, all the advowsons within their reach, and then appropriated the benefices to the use of their own corporation. But, in order to complete such appropriation effectually, the king's licence, and consent of the bishop, must first be obtained; because both the king and the bishop may sometime or other have an interest, by rape, in the presentation to the benefice; which can never happen if it be appropriated to the use of a corporation, which never dies: and also because the law reposea confidence in them, that they will not consent to anything that shall be to the prejudice of the church. The consent of the patron also is necessarily implied, because the appropriation can be originally made to none but to such spiritual corporation as is also the patron of the church; the whole being indeed nothing else but an allowance for the patrons to retain the tithes and glebe in their own hands, without presenting any clerk, they themselves undertaking to provide for the service of the church. When the appropriation is thus made, the appropriators and their successors are perpetual patrons of the church; and must sue and be sued, in all matters concerning the rights of the church by the name of persons.

This appropriation may be severed, and the church become disappropriate, two ways; as, first, If the patron or appropriator presents a clerk, who is instituted and inducted to the parsonage; for the incumbent so instituted and inducted is to all intents and purposes complete parson; and the appropriation being once severed, can never be reunited again, unless by a repetition of the same solemnities. And, when the clerk so presented is distinct from the vicar, the rectory thus vested in him becomes what is called a sinecure; because he hath no cure of souls, having a vicar under him to whom that cure is committed. Also, if the corporation which has the appropriation is dissolved, the parsonage becomes disappropriate at common law; because the perpetuity of person is gone, which is necessary to support the appropriation.

In this manner, and subject to these conditions, may appropriations be made at this day; and thus were most, if not all of the appropriations at present existing originally made; being annexed to bishoprics, prebends, religious houses, nay, even to nunneries, and certain military orders, all of which were spiritual corporations. At the dissolution of monasteries, by statutes 27 Hen. VIII. c. 28. and 31 Hen. VIII. c. 13. the appropriation of several parsonages, which belonged to those respective religious houses (amounting to more than one third of all the parishes in England), would Approver have been by the rules of the common law disappropriated; had not a clause in those statutes intervened, to give them to the king in as ample a manner as the abbot, &c. formerly held the same at the time of their dissolution. This, though perhaps scarcely defensible, was not without example; for the same was done in former reigns, when the alien priories (that is, such as were filled by foreigners only) were dissolved and given to the crown. And from these two roots have sprung all the lay appropriations or secular parsonages which we now see in the kingdom; they having been afterwards granted out from time to time by the crown. See the article Parson and Vicar.