Minutes of Parish Vestries (MV)

Eight well-dressed men sit or stand around a dining table.  A fine white table cloth is evident, and everyone is either eating heartily or checking the quality of the wine.  A further man, pipe in hand, has just come through the door, and a servant can be seen in the foreground carrying a heavily-laden dish A Good Thing, or Select Vestry Repast, 1795, lwlpr08597 ©Lewis Walpole Library.

Introduction

The vestry formed the fundamental unit of decision making for each parish, and acted as a miniature legislature for parochial government. Vestries took a number of different forms, including open vestries in which all inhabitants had at least a theoretical right to participate, and a wide variety of closed vestries, in which membership was restricted by wealth, local standing or local tradition. Many closed vestries recruited new members to a specific number (frequently twenty-four) on their own authority, creating a kind of self-perpetuating oligarchy.

Legal Responsibilities

The vestry had a number of legal obligations, which are reflected in their minutes. The vestry was responsible for appointing parish officers, including churchwardens, overseers of the poor, sextons and scavengers. Depending on local arrangements the vestry could also be responsible for constables and nightwatchmen (in the City of London these officers were appointed at ward level).1 It was the vestry that approved the annual church and poor rates, and to which accounts were submitted at Easter each year (though in the case of poor law accounts, these needed the additional approval of a Justice of the Peace).2

A page of vestry minutes, dated 22 June 1786.  The minutes themselves are preceded by a heading and a list of attending vestrymen London Metropolitan Archives, St Botolph Aldgate, Vestry Minutes, 1766-1804, Ms 2642/3, LL ref: GLBAMV114020363.

Layout and Content

Vestry Minutes form the catch-all top of an administrative hierarchy of record keeping, and as a result some trace of most forms of parish activity can be found in their pages.

A typical entry in a set of vestry minutes will start at the top of a new page with a clear statement of the name of the parish, followed by a date and frequently a location. This in turn is followed by a list of people attending the meeting in a formal capacity (in the case of open vestries, it is unclear how this list relates to the number of people actually attending the meeting). There is no standard order for this information, but a typical example might read, Saint Botolph Aldgate London. At a Vestry held in the said Parish Church on Thursday the 22d. day of June 1786. Present, Mr Wm. Baker, Mr John Chamberlain} Churchwardens... and so on, including the other parish officers and vestrymen.

Minutes

Eighteenth-century vestry minutes rarely record the flow and ebb of the discussion in the meeting. Instead, they note explicit decisions, perhaps on individual poor relief cases, or issues concerning the repair of the church. They can also include more substantial reports from individual officers and sub-committees. Much of the text is taken up with recording and abstracting the accounts of individual parish officers. Meetings occurred weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, with an annual all-important meeting to approve parochial accounts, normally held at Easter.

Introductory Reading

  • Eastwood, David. Local Government and Local Society. In Dickinson, Harry, ed., A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Britain. Oxford, 2002.
  • Snell, Keith D. M. Parish and Belonging: Community, Identity, and Welfare in England and Wales, 1700-1950. Cambridge, 2006.
  • Webb, Sidney and Beatrice. English Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations Act. Vol. 1: The Parish and the County. 1906, 1963.

Online Resources

For further reading on this subject see the London Lives Bibliography.

Documents Included on this Website

  • St Botolph Aldgate, Vestry Minutes, 1690-1712, London Metropolitan Archives, Ms. 2644/1, LL ref: GLBAMV11300 Tagging Level: A
  • St Botolph Aldgate, Vestry Minutes, 1724-37, London Metropolitan Archives, Ms. 2642/1, LL ref: GLBAMV11400, Tagging Level: C
  • St Botolph Aldgate, Vestry Minutes, 1739-62, London Metropolitan Archives, Ms. 2642/2, LL ref: GLBAMV11401, Tagging Level: C
  • St Botolph Aldgate, Vestry Minutes, 1761-70, London Metropolitan Archives, Ms. 2644A/1, LL ref: GLBAMV11301 Tagging Level: A
  • St Botolph Aldgate, Vestry Minutes, 1766-1804, London Metropolitan Archives, Ms. 2642/3, LL ref: GLBAMV11402, Tagging Level: C
  • St Dionis Backchurch, Vestry Minutes, 1690-1712, London Metropolitan Archives, Ms. 4216/2, LL ref: GLDBMV30500, Tagging Level: D
  • St Dionis Backchurch, Vestry Minutes, 1712-59, London Metropolitan Archives, Ms. 4216/3, LL ref: GLDBMV30501, Tagging Level: D
  • St Dionis Backchurch, Vestry Minutes, 1759-1800, London Metropolitan Archives, Ms. 4216/4, LL ref: GLDBMV30502, Tagging Level: D
  • St Clement Danes, Vestry Minutes, 1703-07, Westminster Archives Centre, Ms. B1061, LL ref: WCCDMV36211, Tagging Level: C
  • St Clement Danes, Vestry Minutes, 1686-99, Westminster Archives Centre, Ms. B1060, LL ref: WCCDMV36216, Tagging Level: D
  • St Clement Danes, Vestry Minutes, 1700-09, Westminster Archives Centre, Ms. B1061, LL ref: WCCDMV36217, Tagging Level: C
  • St Clement Danes, Vestry Minutes, 1709-16, Westminster Archives Centre, Ms. B1062, LL ref: WCCDMV36212, Tagging Level: C
  • St Clement Danes, Vestry Minutes, 1716-25, Westminster Archives Centre, Ms. B1063, LL ref: WCCDMV36213, Tagging Level: C
  • St Clement Danes, Vestry Minutes, 1725-33, Westminster Archives Centre, Ms. B1064, LL ref: WCCDMV36214, Tagging Level: C
  • St Clement Danes, Vestry Minutes, 1733-40, Westminster Archives Centre, Ms. B1065, LL ref: WCCDMV36215, Tagging Level: C
  • St Clement Danes, Vestry Minutes, 1732-40, Westminster Archives Centre, Ms. B1065, LL ref: WCCDMV36206, Tagging Level: C
  • St Clement Danes, Vestry Minutes, 1740-45, Westminster Archives Centre, Ms. B1066, LL ref: WCCDMV36207, Tagging Level: C
  • St Clement Danes, Vestry Minutes, 1745-49, Westminster Archives Centre, Ms. B1067, LL ref: WCCDMV36208, Tagging Level: C
  • St Clement Danes, Vestry Minutes, 1749-54, Westminster Archives Centre, Ms. B1068, LL ref: WCCDMV36209, Tagging Level: C
  • St Clement Danes, Vestry Minutes, 1754-60, Westminster Archives Centre, Ms. B1069, LL ref: WCCDMV36210, Tagging Level: C
  • St Clement Danes, Vestry Minutes, 1760-67, Westminster Archives Centre, Ms. B1070, LL ref: WCCDMV36202, Tagging Level: C
  • St Clement Danes, Vestry Minutes, 1767-76, Westminster Archives Centre, Ms. B1071, LL ref: WCCDMV36203, Tagging Level: C
  • St Clement Danes, Vestry Minutes, 1776-87, Westminster Archives Centre, Ms. B1072, LL ref: WCCDMV36204, Tagging Level: C
  • St Clement Danes, Vestry Minutes, 1787-95, Westminster Archives Centre, Ms. B1073, LL ref: WCCDMV36205, Tagging Level: C
  • St Clement Danes, Vestry Minutes, 1795-96, Westminster Archives Centre, Ms. B1073, LL ref: WCCDMV36200, Tagging Level: C
  • St Clement Danes, Vestry Minutes, 1796-1800, Westminster Archives Centre, Ms. B1074, LL ref: WCCDMV36201, Tagging Level: C

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Footnotes

1 The history of the evolution of the night watch in London is substantially addressed in Elaine A. Reynolds, Before the Bobbies: The Night Watch and Police Reform in Metropolitan London, 1720-1830 (Stanford California, 1998).

2 The best overview of parish governance in the eighteenth century remains Sidney and Beatrice Webb, English Local Government: Vol. 1, The Parish and the County (1906).