The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-10-19 00:00:00

CLERICAL INTELLIGENCE.

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The Rev. Dr. Symons has been elected Vice-Chancellor
of Oxford. University for the fourth time.
It is a fact that in one of the principal dioceses, where
confirmations are now administered annually, the numbers
are greater on each occasion than they used to be when
they were.only triennial.
On Wednesday, the parishioners of Battersea presented
their late vicar (now the Bishop of Sodor and Man) with
a magnificent dinner service, numbering twenty-seven
pieces, the cost of which was 550 guineas.
The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign
Parts has, through its secretary, the Rev. Ernest Hawkin's,
8.D., intimated its desire to receive applications from can-
didates for missionary employment in the North American
dioceses.

The •Church Extension Fund Committee, of which
Lord Ashley is chairman, have made a special appeal for
£9,000, in order to erect three new churches in St. Mary's
parish, in Nottingham, of which the Rev. J. W. Brooks
is the vicar. The population of the parish is 45,000, of
which 27,006 is still left to the mother church.
A meeting of the inhabitants in the diocese of Wor-
cester was held a few days since to establish a training
school. The bishop took the chair, and among the other
speakers were Lord Lyttleton, Lord Lifford, Archdeacon
Spooner, &c. Upwards of £l,lOO have been subscribed
and Mr. Adderley, M.P., has given two acres of land for
the site.

AN ECONOMIST.—The late Rev. Joseph Higgins, rector
of Eastnor for 52 years, and also 39 years rector of Pix-
ley, the joint value of these livings, by the last returns,
not exceeding £l4O, has died possessed of personal pro-
perty alone amounting to £30,000, besides real estates,
from which he has provided for his widow £2OO a-year,
and divided his estates, including the Unicorn Inn, in
Ledbury, among his children, having directed £5 to be
distributed among the poor of Pixley on the Sunday fol-
lowing his funeral, and has left a legacy of £lOO for the
school at Berrow, in Worcestershire, in connexion with
the established church, and liberal legacies to his servants.
FREE SEATS AND PEWS.—The Bishop of Chester gives
it as the result of his experience in a diocese mainly com-
posed of manufacturers and colliers, that sittings let at
small rents are liked better than " free seats." Well and
good. Free seats were made for man, not man for free
seats. Let the lesser yield to the greater—the wooden
bench to the heir of immortality. One thing, however,
we may reasonably ask, and that is, that when an existing
arrangement is found to suit the case of the working
classes, it is better not to disturb it. When, as invariably
is the case in rural parishes, a good supply of open seats
within easy hearing of the pulpit proves an infallible re-
ceipt for a good congregation of labourers and their wives,
unless the other circumstances of the case happen to be
exceedingly favourable, leave well alone, and don't break
the charm.—Times.

DIOCESAN COURTS.—By an Act of Parliament passed
in July (10th and 11th Viet., cap. 98), the several Dio-
cesan Courts in England will be opened for the transac-
tion of business from and after the first day of next month.
Much inconvenience, it is declared by the preamble, en-
sues from the continued suspension of the jurisdiction of
the several Diocesan Courts in England, and it is then
enacted, " That the Bishop of every Diocese in England
shall, by himself or his officers, exercise throughout the
whole of his Diocese, as it now is or hereafter may be
limited or constituted, save only in causes and matters
testamentary, or relating to the administration of the per-
sonal estates of intestates, the same jurisdiction and au-
thority which, before the passing of this Act, he or any
Bishop lawfully could or might exercise, by himself or his
officers, within any part of such Diocese.' The officers
of the Court are to pay over the net amount of fees to the
treasurer of the governors of the bounty of Queen Anne,
to be carried to a separate account, " and retained until
Parliament shall provide for the appropriation thereof."