VICAR, in ecclesiastical law, is, in the words of Blackstone, “a curate, deputy, or vicegerent of the appropriator, and therefore called vicarius or vicar.” When a benefice had become appropriated before the dissolution of the religious houses to a spiritual corporation, usually with the authority of a licence from the Chancery, the vicar was the person appointed by the appropriators for the cure of souls in the parish. He was at first generally a member of the corporation. After the dissolution in the reign of Henry VIII. these appropriated benefices became —as indeed they had been in the church in general up to the Lateran council of 1179—vested in lay impropriators, but the legal position of the vicar remained the same. He was not a parson in the proper sense of the word (in fact parson and vicar are often distinguished in old statutes), and his stipend was at the discretion of the impropriator. Where he had the enjoyment of tithes, they were in most cases, apart from prescription, the small as distinguished from the great tithes, that is, such as the impropriator found it most difficult to collect. There was, however, no consistent rule in the matter: what were rectorial tithes in some parishes might be vicarial in others. The position of the vicar, at first so insecure and uncertain, was gradually ameliorated by legislation. 15 Ric. II. c. 6 provided for the sufficient endowment of the vicarage. 4 Hen. IV. c. 12 repeated this provision, and in addition enacted that the vicar should be a secular priest, not removable at the caprice of the appropriators, and canonically instituted and inducted. Among numerous other Acts may be noticed 29 Car. II. c. 8, making perpetual temporary augmentations of vicarages, and 3 Geo. IV. c. 72, enabling them to be in certain ...