22 



severity. The fuller treatment of this latter part of the subject 

 I reserve for my final letter. 



The present position of glebeowners is disastrous and often 

 ruinous. Attention has been frequently called to their con- 

 dition. Witnesses examined before the Duke of Richmond's 

 Agricultural Commission described it, even in the early years of 

 the present depression, as " deplorable ;" it was made the 

 subject of an inquiry by committees appointed at diocesan 

 confei'enccs in the dioceses of Ely, Norwich, Peterborough, 

 and possibly elsewhere ; upon petition of the Rural Deans 

 in the diocese of Peterborough, a committee of Convocation 

 was nominated in May, 1884, " to consider the present state of 

 the law as affecting incumbents dependent for their incomes on 

 land." Finally, a return is before rae which shows the deprecia- 

 tion which has taken place between 1880 and 1886 in the net 

 value of all the livings in Episcopal patronage in one of the 

 midland dioceses. 



The committee appointed by the Diocesan Conference of 

 Peterborough in 1881 received 336 returns from the clergy 

 within the diocese, representing 49,629 acres of glebe lands. 

 They reported that " 9,373 acres were in the hands of seventy- 

 nine clergy from inability to find tenants ;" and that " glebe 

 rents had generally undergone a reduction of about 25 percent." 

 The committee of Convocation nominated by the Prolocutor 

 in May, 1881, issued its report in March, 1885. They received 

 nearly 500 returns from benefices in the dioceses of Ely, 

 Peterborough, St. Albans, and Salisbury. The general result of 

 the inquiry showed that glebe lands had depreciated in value 

 " from 43 per cent, of the previously received income from this 

 source in the archdeaconry of Huntingdon to more than 25 per 

 cent, in the least affected districts." Finally, the above-men- 

 tioned return of the depreciation within the last six years of the 

 value of the livings in Episcopal patronage includes nearly 100 

 benefices. Some of these livings are town parishes ; others 

 have been augmented by Queen Anne's Bounty, the Ecclesiastical 

 Commissioners, or the Diocesan Society. The remaining thirty- 

 four parishes show a reduction of rather more than 25 per cent, 

 between the net valae in 1880 and in 1886. 



But the reduction in rent, heavy though it is, by no means 

 covers the whole of the loss which the clergy have sustained. 

 In 1881 197 clergymen in the diocese of Peterborough made 

 returns of having spent from 1870 to 18S0 (in round numbers) 

 75,000/. on the improvement of farms and buildings. Of this 

 total sum, 38,000Z. was raised by loans from Queen Anne's 

 Bounty or land improvement companies. The remaining 

 37,000?. was private capital, sunk in the land without a shadow 

 of security for the principal, and with but slight prospect of any 



