swarb.co.uk - law index
These cases are from the lawindexpro database. They are now being transferred to the swarb.co.uk website in a better form. As a case is published there, an entry here will link to it. The swarb.co.uk site includes many later cases.
Ecclesiastical - From: 1900 To: 1929
This page lists 9 cases, and was prepared on 02 April 2018.
Bannatyne v Overtoun (1902) 4F 1083
1902
IHCS
Lord Low
Scotland, Ecclesiastical
The House rejected the suggestion of an apportionment of the assets of the Free Church of Scotland between competing claimants.
1 Citers
General Assembly of Free Church of Scotland v Overtoun; HL 1904 - [1904] AC 515
Marshall v Graham [1907] 2 KB 112
1907
Phillimore J
Ecclesiastical, Education
Parents were prosecuted for failing to send their children to school on Ascension Day. They argued that Ascension Day was a day "exclusively set aside for religious observance" by the Church of England. Held: A Church which is established is not thereby made a department of the State. The process of establishment means that the State has accepted the Church as the religious body in its opinion truly teaching the Christian faith, and given to it a certain legal position, and to its decrees, if rendered under certain legal conditions, certain civil sanctions. The Church seeks to serve the purposes of God, not those of the government carried on by the modern equivalents of Caesar and his proconsuls. This is true even though the Church of England has certain important links with the state. Those links, which do not include any funding of the Church by the government, give the Church a unique position but not that of a department of state.
1 Citers
Re National Insurance Act 1911: Re Employment of Church of England Curates; 1912 - [1912] 2 Ch 563
Scottish Insurance Commissioners v Church of Scotland [1913] ScotCS CSIH_3; (1914) SC 16
18 Oct 1913
SCS
Lord Kinnear
Scotland, Employment, Ecclesiastical
An assistant minister in the United Free Church said that he was an employee of the church. Held: He was not. Lord Kinnear said that the status of an assistant minister "is not that of a person who undertakes work defined by contract but of a person who holds an ecclesiastical office, and who performs the duties of that office subject to the laws of the Church to which he belongs and not subject to the control and direction of any particular master."
1 Citers
[ Bailii ]
Scottish Insurance Commissioners v Church of Scotland; CS 1914 - 1914 SC 16
Bowman v Secular Society Limited [1917] AC 406; [1916-17] All ER 1
1917
HL
Lord Sumner, Lord Finlay LC, Lord Dunedin, Lord Parker of Waddington
Ecclesiastical, Crime, Company
The plantiff argued that the the objects of the Secular Society Ltd, which had been registered under the Companies Acts, were unlawful. Held: The House referred to "the last persons to go to the stake in this country pro salute animae" in 1612 or thereabouts.
A certificate of incorporation given by the Registrar in respect of any association should be conclusive evidence that all the requirements of the Act in respect of registration and of matters precedent and incidental thereto had been complied with, and that the association was a company authorised to be registered and duly registered under the Act.
Lord Finlay LC said that the certificate was conclusive as to the existence of the society as a duly incorporated company: "What the Legislature was dealing with was the validity of the incorporation and it is for the purpose of incorporation, and for this purpose only, that the certificate is made conclusive"
Lord Dunedin said: "The certificate of incorporation in terms of the section quoted of the Companies Act, 1900, prevents any one alleging that the company does not exist" "
Lord Parker of Waddington said: "The section does, however, preclude all His Majesty's lieges from going behind the certificate or from alleging that the society is not a corporate body with the status and capacity conferred by the Acts" . . And "[I]f the directors of the society applied its funds for an illegal object, they would be guilty of misfeasance and liable to replace the money, even if the object for which the money had been applied were expressly authorised by the memorandum."
Lord Sumner said of the offence of blasphemous libel: "Our courts of law, in the exercise of their own jurisdiction, do not and never did that I can find, punish irreligious words as offences against God. As to them they held that deorum injuriae dis curae. They dealt with such words for their manner, their violence or ribaldry or, more fully stated for their tendency to endanger the public peace then and there, to deprave public morality generally, to shake the fabric of society and to be a cause of civil strife. The words, as well as the acts, which tend to endanger society differ from time to time in proportion as society is stable or insecure in fact, or is believed by its reasonable members to be open to assault."
Lord Parker said: "In my opinion to constitute blasphemy at common law there must be such an element of vilification, ridicule, or irreverence as would be likely to exasperate the feelings of others and so lead to a breach of the peace"
Companies Act 1900 1
1 Citers
The Reverend John Wakeford v The Bishop of Lincoln [1921] UKPC 50
20 Apr 1921
PC
Ecclesiastical
The Consistory Court of The Diocese of Lincoln
[ Bailii ]
Public Trustee v Duchy of Lancaster [1927] 1 KB 516
1927
CA
Bankes LJ, Scrutton LJ
Land, Ecclesiastical
The court was asked whether the conveyance of a farm out of which a tithe rentcharge issued carried with it, by reason of Section 63, the rentcharge itself. Held: The farm and the tithe rentcharge were two separate hereditaments and express words would be necessary to pass the rentcharge. The intention of the 1836 Act was to keep the tithe rentcharge hereditament separate from the land out of which it issued.
Bankes LJ referred to Chapman v Gatcombe and said: " general words such as those used in that case, "together with all the estate, right, title, interest . . of him W. Gatcombe therein or thereto or to any part or parcel thereof", are insufficient to pass tithe rentcharge. And as the object of Section 63 of the Conveyancing Act 1881 was merely to do away with a necessity of using those general words and to treat every conveyance as if it contained them, that section does not carry the matter any further. It only enacts that the conveyance shall pass every interest etc. which the conveying party may have in "the property conveyed" and for the reasons above given tithe rentcharge is not such an interest."
Scrutton LJ said that a tithe was not regarded as an interest in the land in respect of which it was payable, ans: ". . It was called in the language of lawyers of that day [1836] a "collateral hereditament" which was held by a different title from that of the land itself." He referred to Chapman v Gatcombe and said: "That being so Section 63 of the Conveyancing Act 1881 does not assist the Appellant. It merely renders it unnecessary any longer to include in a conveyance the long string of general words, "all the estate, right, title, interest," etc., that used to be known by the name of the "all estate clause", and, in the absence of a contrary intention appearing, treats the conveyance as containing them. The result is that the conveyance of the lands of Chapel House Farm to the Duchy of Lancaster did not carry with it the rectorial tithe rentcharge, as that rentcharge was not an "interest in" the land out of which it issued but something collateral to and independent of it." He noted that the relevant conveyance had there begun with a conveyance of physical land and continued:- "So far it is plain that the conveyance would not include tithe rentcharge. But it is said this tithe rentcharge is an "interest in the land", and that by virtue of Section 63 of the Conveyancing Act 1881, the conveyance is to be read as if these words were written in it. Now it is quite clear that before 1836 a conveyance of physical land with any number of general words added, such as "all the estate, right, property, interest, claim and demand" in the land conveyed would not pass tithe, for the reason that tithe was a hereditament independent of and separate from the land on which it was charged and was not an interest in it or appertaining to it."
Law of Property Act 1925 63 - Tithe Commutation Act 1836 - Conveancing Act 1881 63
1 Cites
1 Citers
