or ADVOWSON, a sort of incor- poreal hereditament, consisting in the right of preten- tation to a church or ecclesiastical benefice. Advow- son, advocation, 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 a 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 only founders, and of course the only patrons, of churches, the right of patronage or pretentation, so long as it continues 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, with- out adding any other words. But where the property of the advowson has been once separated from the pro- perty 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 pretentative, collative, or donative. An advowson pretentative, is where the pa- tron hath a right of pretentation 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 pretentation and institution. An advowson donative, is when the king, or any sub- ject by his licence, doth found a church or chapel, and ordsains 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 pretentation, 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, feverly inveighs against the prava confectio, 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, re- corded by Matthew Paris, which speaks of pretentation 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 exa- mine 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 prefers to the bishop, and his clerk is admitted and in- stituted, the advowson is now become for every pretent- ative, 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. Sect. v. No. clx. 5—10.

Arms of PATRONAGE, in Heraldry, are those on the top of which are some marks of subjection and depen- dence: thus the city of Paris lately bore the fleurs-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.