Welsh Journals

and 1919 Acts and the various Disestablishment Bills prior to 1914, the Irish Church Act, 1869, various finance and planning Acts which may have had some bearing on the workings of the Commission, and printed parliamentary questions on matters such as tithes, glebe lands, and burial grounds. Legal aspects of the processes of disestablishment and disendowment are well documented here, and include Opinions of Counsel on certain topics which led to a degree of confusion and legal debate, for example, burial grounds, derelict churches, chancel repairs, tithe rent- charge, charities, and sales and leases of land and property, and there are the notes of proceedings in the High Court and the Court of Appeal regarding tithes and chancels. Three classes relate to specific provisions of the 1914 Act. The so-called 'border parishes', i.e., those parishes situated only partly in Wales and Monmouthshire, were polled in order to establish whether parishioners wished to become part of the newly established Church in Wales or whether they wished to remain in the Church of England. Of the nineteen parishes polled, seventeen voted for exclusion from Wales, and voting in the other two was so close that a second poll was taken here, with the result that Llansilin voted narrowly for inclusion, while Rhydycroesau voted for exclusion. The files here comprise documents relating to the processes of voting in these parishes. A second class concerns lay patrons. The right of laymen to appoint clergymen to particular parishes was very prestigious; it could be inherited or even sold, and lay patrons often included MPs and peers. This system was seen as one of the great barriers to disestablishment in the nineteenth century, but the practice was abolished by the 1914 Act, with existing patrons being compensated for this loss of right. The files in this class show the whole process, from the initiation of a claim through proof of patronage (often an abstract of a title deed) to the final payment of compensation. A similar process is illustrated in the third class, that relating to compensation payable to holders of freehold offices who were deprived of their positions under the terms of the Act. Property Possibly the first point of entry for a researcher looking at a particular parish will be the individual parish files created by the Commissioners after 1914. These are based around the 'Particulars of Endowments' forms filled in by each incumbent in 1915, where details are given of: