On the Doctrine of Successive Lives

Extract

The chief, perhaps the sole, applications of the Theory delivered in Part I., are to Church Livings and Copyhold Estates. Of these applications we shall treat in order.

The principle on which the valuation of the rights of presentation to Church livings is subjected to treatment by this theory is, that the worth of the living is greater than that of the services to be performed by the holder of it. It is conceived, therefore, that the patron, in presenting a clerk to a benefice, is entitled to consider that, in addition to affording the clerk an opportunity for the exercise of his vocation, he is conferring upon him also an annuity due for his life, whose amount is the excess of the value of the benefice over that of the clerk's services. The law sanctions the arrangements that arise from this mode of viewing the subject, and permits the open purchase and sale of the right of presentation, whether for ever or for any number of times; save and except during the "mortal sickness" of an incumbent, or during the period between his death and the appointment of his successor; the purchase of a right of presentation in these circumstances being held to be simony, and the guilty party consequently being amenable to law.