On Tuesday, the Bishop of Peterborough made both a very
eloquent and a very amusing speech in favour of free sittings in the National Churches, and against the appropriation of pews which is so common. The Bill, however, of which he had charge,—the Parish Churches Bill,—was not very carefully drawn, and Lord Grimthorpe,—Sir Edmund Beckett was his more familiar name,—had no difficulty in showing that the preamble to the Bill was quite incorrect, and that the enacting clause would give a legal sanction to many of the very mischiefs which the Bishop wished to abolish. None the less, the Bishop's speech was much the more effective of the two. He related a very amusing instance of the vulgar jealousy with which pew- holders regard intruders. Early in life, he was curate in a parish church where there were large, old-fashioned pews. After service one Sunday, one of the pewholders came to him in great indignation, to complain of the intrusion of a single stranger. "I would not dare," he said, "to disturb Divine service to pull him out of my pew, but I took the slight liberty of sitting on his hat." The hassock and the Prayer-book were, said the Bishop, the idols of British pewdom. In railway-carriages, the Earl and the Bishop occupied• without compunction cushions which had recently been pressed by ordinary men, and the Bishop did not see why it should not be so in the Church. Lord Grim- thorpe showed that the real law is that the parish church is free for such use as the churchwardens, in common with the parishioners, agree upon ; that faculties appropriating pews have not been granted for many years, but that prescription often gives a legal title to individuals, especially where the prescription originates in some service rendered to the Church by these indi- viduals. The Bill was read a second time, and referred to a Select Committee for consideration.
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