The term benefice, according to the canon law, implies always an ecclesiastical office, propter quod beneficium datur, but it does not always imply a cure of souls. It has been defined to be the right which a clerk has to enjoy certain ecclesiastical revenues on condition of discharging certain services prescribed by the canons, or by usage, or by the conditions under which his office has been founded. These services might be those of a secular priest with cure of souls, or they might be those of a regular priest, a member of a religious order, without cure of souls; but in every case a benefice implied three things: 1. An obligation to discharge the duties of an office, which is altogether spiritual; 2. The right to enjoy the fruits attached to that office, which is the benefice itself; 3. The fruits themselves, which are the temporalities. By keeping these distinctions in view, the right of patronage in the case of secular benefices becomes intelligible, being in fact the right, which was originally vested in the donor of the temporalities, to present to the bishop a clerk to be admitted, if found fit by the bishop, to the office to which those temporalities are annexed. Nomination or presentation on the part of the patron of the benefice is thus the first requisite in order that a clerk should become legally entitled to a benefice. The next requisite is that he should be admitted by the bishop as a fit person for the spiritual office to which the benefice is annexed, and the bishop is the judge of the sufficiency of the clerk to be so admitted. By the early constitutions of the Church of England a bishop was allowed a space of two months to inquire and inform himself of the sufficiency of every presentee, but by the ninety-fifth of the canons of 1604 that interval has been abridged to twenty-eight days, within which the bishop must admit or reject the clerk. If the bishop rejects the clerk within that time he is liable to a duplex querela in the ecclesiastical courts, or to a quare impedit in the common law courts, and the bishop must then certify the reasons of his refusal. In cases where the patron is himself a clerk in orders, and wishes to be admitted to the benefice, he must proceed by way of petition, instead of by deed of presentation, reciting that the benefice is in his own patronage, and petitioning the bishop to examine him and admit him. Upon the bishop having satisfied himself of the sufficiency of the clerk, he proceeds to institute him to the spiritual office to which the benefice is annexed, but before such institution can take place, the clerk is required to make a declaration of assent to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion and to the Book of Common Prayer according to a form prescribed in the Clerical Subscription Act, 28 and 29 Vict. c. 122, to make a declaration against simony in accordance with that Act, and to take and subscribe the oath of allegiance according to the form in 31 and 32 Vict. c. 72. The bishop, by the act of institution, commits to the clerk the cure of souls attached to the office to which the benefice is annexed. In cases where the bishop himself is patron of the benefice, no presentation or petition is required to be tendered by the clerk, but the bishop having satisfied himself of the sufficiency of the clerk, collates him to the benefice and office. It is not necessary that the bishop himself should personally institute or collate a clerk, he may issue a fiat to his vicar-general, or to a special commissary for that purpose. After the bishop or his commissary has instituted the presentee, he issues a mandate under seal, addressed to the archdeacon or some other neighbouring clergyman, authorizing him to induct the clerk into his benefice,—in other words, to put him into legal possession of the temporalities, which is done by some outward form, and for the most part by delivery of the bell-rope to the clerk, who thereupon tolls the bell. This form of induction is required to give the clerk a legal title to his “beneficium, although his admission to the office by institution is sufficient to vacate any other benefice which he may already possess.

By the Lateran Council of 1215, which was received by the Church of England, no clerk can hold two benefices with cure of souls, and if a beneficed clerk shall take a second benefice with cure of souls, he vacates ipso facto his first benefice. Dispensations, however, could be easily obtained from Rome, before the reformation of the Church of England, to enable a clerk to hold several ecclesiastical dignities or benefices at the same time, and by 25 Henry VIII. c. 21, the power to grant such dispensations, which had been exercised previously by the court of Rome, was transferred to the archbishop of Canterbury, certain ecclesiastical persons having been declared by a previous statute (21 Henry VIII. c. 13) to be entitled to such dispensations. The system of pluralities carried with it, as a necessary consequence, systematic non-residence on the part of many incumbents, and delegation of their spiritual duties in respect of their cures of souls to assistant curates. The evils attendant on this system were found to be so great that in 1838 an Act of Parliament, 1 and 2 Vict. c. 106, was passed to abridge the holding of benefices in plurality, and it was enacted that no person should hold under any circumstances more than two benefices, and this privilege was made subject to the restriction that his benefices were within ten statute miles of each other. By a subsequent Act, 13 and 14 Vict. c. 98, the restriction has been further narrowed, and no spiritual person may now hold two benefices except the churches of such benefices are within three miles of each other by the nearest road, and the annual value of one of such benefices does not exceed one hundred pounds. By this statute the term benefice is defined to mean benefice with cure of souls and no other, and therein to comprehend all parishes, perpetual curacies, donatives, endowed public chapels, parochial chapelries, and chapelries or districts belonging or reputed to belong, or annexed or reputed to be annexed, to any church or chapel.

A benefice is avoided or vacated—1, by death; 2, by resignation, if the bishop is willing to accept the resignation; 3, by cession, upon the clerk being instituted to another benefice or some other preferment incompatible with it; 4, by deprivation and sentence of an ecclesiastical court; 5, by act of law in consequence of simony; 6, by default of the clerk in neglecting to read publicly in the church the Book of Common Prayer, and to declare his assent thereto within two months after his induction, pursuant to 13 and 14 Car. II. c. 4, § vi.

The number of benefices with or without cure of souls in the Church of England, before the first statute to abridge pluralities was passed in 1838 (1 and 2 Vict. c. 106), was about 11,000. These benefices were served by some 10,000 clergy, of whom rather more than 5000 were incumbents holding one or more livings, and some of them altogether non-resident; the remainder were assistant curates, for the most part residing in one parish and having full charge of another. The effect of the Pluralities Act in the course of about 30 years has been to produce a remarkable and most salutary change. It was computed in 1867 that the parochial benefices were 12,888 in number, and the parochial clergy 17,869, of whom 4931 only were assistant-curates. The patronage of 6403 of these benefices was in private hands, whilst the patronage of 6485 was at the disposal of the Crown, or of public bodies or public functionaries. An approximate statement of the yearly value of all the benefices in England and Wales, the number of which has undergone a considerable increase since 1867, was drawn up in 1874 by Mr J. K. Aston for a select committee of the House of Lords on Church Patronage. From this statement it appears that the yearly value of all the benefices in public patronage is about £1,825,805, whilst the value of those in private patronage is about £1,893,226; but in Mr Aston’s opinion these estimates are below the actual value. (τ. T.)