Talk:Welsh Church Commissioners

Financial arrangements

There are some unexplained issues. For example:

• It would be useful to have a source for the figures of £77 and £136 as this would give a clue to what they represent. For instance what year/time does the £77 refer to?

• If the Act only provided for the current generation of clergy, what is the relevance of a perpetuity?

• If the Act was passed in 1914, why had the financial arrangements still not been sorted out in 1919?---Ehrenkater (talk) 11:09, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

@Ehrenkater: Thank you for the amendments: your grasp of the economic situation following WW1 is clearly greater than mine. I was trying to offer a sensible explanation, and quoting accurately from my sources, but I have not found it easy to grasp precisely what was going on around the time of the Welsh Church (Temporalities) Act 1919. Indeed, some of the confusion surrounding the Act may have been deliberate. It was generally accepted to be "sweetening the pill" of disendowment, for the political reasons that I have stated. As I note, some hardliners objected: indeed, some suggested that the CinW would end up better off. The source from which I am quoting (by Kenneth O Morgan: really it is only an extended pamphlet, but he is an expert on Welsh Disestablishment) simply says "The value of tithe (only £77 per £100 in 1914) had risen to £136, while interest on the capitalized value of tithe-rent-charge [sic] had inflated to over 5%. The main need was for government assistance to help the [Welsh] Church Commissioners to pay the Church for the redeemed tithe and other property. They had to find the huge total of £3,400,000. They had security to raise £2,150,000 by way of loans, while a further £250,000 would come from a remission of rates charged upon tithe vested in the Commissioners. That left a balance of £1,000,000 and this would be met by a direct grant from the Treasury."

Although a lot of the discussion of Welsh Disestablishment refers to "tithe", in fact since the Tithe Commutation Act 1836 tithes were no longer paid in kind. They took the form of tithe rentcharge, which varied with the price of corn. The Wikipedia article states that this was originally based on a seven-year average, so as to effect a "smoothing". (it does not state whether this subsequently changed). So perhaps when I said that the value of tithe rentcharge might vary, like Government stock, that gave entirely the wrong message? This may even have misled you into making an edit which is not accurate. I follow that, if interest rates go down, the value of fixed interest stock will go up. But I think it is more likely that the "change in the value of tithe [rentcharge]" meant just that: those who had to pay tithe rentcharge had to pay more, so incumbents who had been receiving £77 pre-WW1 would in 1919 be receiving £136. It wasn't like a fixed interest stock, that the incumbents could sell. So would that not put up the cost to the WCC of redeeming the tithe rentcharge? You are correct in assuming that the compensation was payable only to the current generation of beneficed clergy (ie clergy who were incumbents), on the basis that they had a vested interest in expecting to receive it: part of the "parson's freehold".

I think the answer to your third point is in the Article. The Welsh Church Act was passed in 1914. Its operation was suspended for the duration of WW1, because it was so controversial (it was one of two Acts which passed in 1914 without the consent of the HoL, under the terms of the Parliament Act 1911). The financial position of the WCC would have been different if they had gone through promptly with disendowment: they wouldn;t have had such a high bill to redeem the incumbents' tithe rentcharge, and they could have borrowed more cheaply (on the security of their other assets) to raise a capital sum to make the payments. The impression I have is that the WCC "lost out at both ends". What is curious - and perhaps to us unexpected - is that in spite of the operation of the WCA 1914 being suspended, the Welsh Commissioners set about their task of preparing for disestablishment and disendowment. The holding of the 1915-16 border polls was, as I have stated elsewhere, merely an incidental part of a much larger task. They needed to know what parishes would be in the Church in Wales, in order to know whether the disendowment provisions would apply to them.

I would really welcome your further thoughts on this.

I really like your thoughts on Clarity and Brevity. I used to work for an organisation which aimed to discuss complex legal issues in a way that lawyers would consider accurate, but could still be understood by the lay reader (in writing that I have turned around my initial passive contruction!) That is quite a tall order, but not impossible.Ntmr (talk) 15:43, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Hello, Ntmr.

In order to try to understand what was going on, I would now like to read the 1914 and 1919 Acts, as well as the Suspensory Act and the Morgan pamphlet. Would it be possible to send me links to these? But I accept that it may not be possible to reconstruct the situation fully, in which case the article should say so. The wording "incumbents who had been receiving £77 ..." implies that the £77 was an annual amount, rather than a capitalised lump sum.---Ehrenkater (talk) 16:13, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Hello, Ehrenkater,

Here is the url for the WCA 1914: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5/4-5/91/contents/enacted. It is important to keep with the "Original (as enacted)" for these purposes ("Latest available..." shows subsequent amendments to the Statute and omits sections that have been repealed: forgive me if I am teaching my grandmother how to suck the proverbial: I am not aware of your background). I am presuming that a bare URL is acceptable in Talk. The text of the 1919 Act is here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/en/ukpga/Geo5/9-10/65/enacted?timeline=true; I can't locate the text of the Suspensory Act 1914 on legislation.gov.uk. Presumably it is not included because it was intended to be of only temporary effect: to postpone the operation of the Government of Ireland Act 1914 and the Welsh Church Act 1914 for the duration of WW1. I understand that the initial postponement was until 18 September 1915, but it could then be extended for successive 12 month periods by Government Order-in-Council. These were made up until 1919, when the 1919 Act effected a further postponement, but set a final date for disestablishment of 31 March 1920. I can't really see how its text would affect your thinking. The WCA 1914 was clearly drafted on the basis that the disendowment provisions had to be put into effect under the conditions that were prevailing at the time, whenever that might be. My impression is that because the WCC were "stuck" with those provisions, the sums just didn't add up in the way that had been intended (see the quote from KO Morgan, above). Hence the need for a Government grant.

The Morgan pamphlet is a hard copy that I have, and I would not expect it to be available online. I can let you have a longer extract, if you wish. Another book which I have (the David Walker book that I have cited) does not go into any detail on this. I think I can remember seeing a fairly detailed explanation of disendowment in PMH Bell's book. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Disestablishment-Ireland-Church-Historical-Society/dp/0281023360. I consulted it a long time ago, and more recently, but I do not own a copy.

The difficulty in analysing the disendowment provisions is that it requires some familiarity with so many different fields: Church history, the politics of Wales in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, ecclesiastical law, property law, and economics. I can claim some expertise in the first four, but not in economics.Ntmr (talk) 17:10, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

@Ehrenkater: Hello, Ehrenkater. Are you still willing to try to resolve the issues over the payments by the WCC to the Rep Body of the CinW in respect of tithe rentcharge?

I have delved a bit more deeply into this, and I definitely think that my reference to the value of tithe rentcharge variable and so being similar to Govt stock has misled you into making an amendment which makes some incorrect assumptions (based on my faulty analogy with Government stock). It was not necessarily the case that tithe rentcharge would become less valuable as interest rates generally rose. Tithe rentcharge seems to have worked as follows:

(a) a designated nominal value of tithe was charged on agricultural land. The nominal value seems to have been based ultimately on the returns from tithes when the Tithe Commutation Act 1836 originally came into force, though there was amending legislation throughout the 19th Century.

(b) the value of this rentcharge was then varied from year to year by Government order, in accordance with the actual price of corn. It was £77 (ie per £100 nominal value) in August 1914 (presumably reflecting the agricultural decline in England and Wales in the late 19th Century), but it had gone up to £136 in August 1919, presumably because of wartime agricultural conditions.

(c) the value was still based on a septennial average, as it had been since 1836, but this was changed by the Tithe Act 1918: see s 2: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5/8-9/54/section/1/enacted. On my reading of this section, Tithe Rentcharge was frozen at its 1918 level until 1926, and thereafter was to be variable again, although based on a 15-year average, instead of the previous 7-year average.

(d) the delay in implementing disendowment meant that the CinW was losing the commuted value of the tithe rentcharge etc. enjoyed by incumbents who had died or retired in the period 1914 - 1919, and the Church was arguing that they should receive compensation for these (as it eventually did).

It seems to me from all this that whilst I correctly said that tithe rentcharge had a nominal value, which varied, my comparison with Government stock was liable to confuse. It did not vary like a fixed interest stock, where if interest rates rise, the value of the stock falls. The figure given for the value of tithe rentcharge represented its annual return, not a capital value on sale. If the prescribed value of tithe rentcharge went up, the amount payable by the landowner increased, and the amount received by the incumbent increased by the corresponding amount. If tithe rentcharge was payable for the remainder of an incumbent's life, then, if the figure quoted for the value of the tithe rentcharge went up, it would require a larger capital sum to commute it.

The Tithe Act 1918 also affected the workings of the Welsh Church Act 1919 in that the WCC had to pay £136 per £100 to commute the tithes, but could not then sell the tithes for more that £109. I am inferring that this reduction in value was the result of applying the formula in s 1(1) of the Tithe Act 1918. Because the Representative Body received the higher sum (£136), but itself had to compensate incumbents only at the lower rate of £109, the RB was left with the balance of the capital, representing a partial re-endowment. (These facts are derived from Owen, Eluned E. (1961). The Later Life of Bishop Owen. Llandyssul: Gomerian Press. p. 405, a biography of the Bishop of St David's by his daughter, which makes extensive use of his diaries and notes).

Any further comments would be welcomed.Ntmr (talk) 16:25, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll try and have a look at this. In the meantime I'm quite prepared to accept that I may have been misled and jumped to conclusions, and I have no objection if you amend any incorrect edits that I've made as a result.---Ehrenkater (talk) 17:22, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

I haven't been able to find a definitive text of the Suspensory Act 1914, but the RefDesks have turned up the Bill. DuncanHill (talk) 19:55, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

@Ehrenkater:Thanks for confirming that you have no objection to my proceedings to make some amendments to the explanation of how the change in the value of tithe rentcharge affected disendowment. I have made some changes to the section "The Work of the Welsh Church Commissioners" which I think reflect the discussion. I have put some of the background detail into footnotes, so as not to over-complicate the explanation. Have a look at what's there now, and let me know if you think anything needs amending, particularly from an economic perspective. I think my original analogy with Government stock caused the confusion. Although Tithe Rentcharge had a nominal value, how much was paid and received depended on the value promulgated from time to time (at least annually, I think) by the Government, and this value was intended to reflect the market price of corn. So tithe rentcharge operated in a completely different way from Government stock. The only common feature was that there was a nominal value, and the actual value would be different from this.Ntmr (talk) 16:35, 1 July 2021 (UTC)