Impropriation, a term from English Ecclesiastical Law, refers to taking the profits from the sale of church property and placing them in the care of a
laymanA "layman" is a person who is a non-expert in a given field of knowledge. The term originated from "laity", but over the centuries, shifted in definition....
or lay corporation for care and distribution. The institution was primarily used in the
Church of EnglandThe Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England, the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the oldest among the communion's thirty-eight independent national and regional churches...
before the
English Civil WarThe English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists. The first and second civil wars pitted the supporters of King Charles I against the supporters of the Long Parliament, while the third war saw fighting between supporters of...
and usually entailed buying the right to appoint the minister in a certain region.
Impropriations were deeply controversial because they were a form of
simonySimony is the ecclesiastical crime of paying for holy offices or positions in the hierarchy of a church, named after Simon Magus, who appears in the Acts of the Apostles 8:18-24. Simon Magus offers the disciples of Jesus, Peter and John payment so that anyone he would place his hands on would...
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Impropriation, a term from English Ecclesiastical Law, refers to taking the profits from the sale of church property and placing them in the care of a
laymanA "layman" is a person who is a non-expert in a given field of knowledge. The term originated from "laity", but over the centuries, shifted in definition....
or lay corporation for care and distribution. The institution was primarily used in the
Church of EnglandThe Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England, the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the oldest among the communion's thirty-eight independent national and regional churches...
before the
English Civil WarThe English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists. The first and second civil wars pitted the supporters of King Charles I against the supporters of the Long Parliament, while the third war saw fighting between supporters of...
and usually entailed buying the right to appoint the minister in a certain region.
Impropriations were deeply controversial because they were a form of
simonySimony is the ecclesiastical crime of paying for holy offices or positions in the hierarchy of a church, named after Simon Magus, who appears in the Acts of the Apostles 8:18-24. Simon Magus offers the disciples of Jesus, Peter and John payment so that anyone he would place his hands on would...
. Impropriations could be purchased to increase the influence of one's favored interpretation of the Protestant movement. This was problematic because churchgoers had little alternative to the official church and impropriations were used primarily during a religiously formative period in English history when power balance between Protestant (primarily between Established and Puritain) sects was of great moment. It was also criticized because, when used to increase a minister's power, the policy exacerbated the habit of "pluralism," where one minister would serve several churches, usually inadequately.
Impropriations came under attack from the Puritan at the
Hampton Court ConferenceThe Hampton Court Conference was a meeting in January 1604, convened at Hampton Court Palace, for discussion between King James I of England and representatives of the Church of England, including leading English Puritans.-Attendance:...
of 1604.
James I of EnglandJames VI & I was King of Scots as James VI from 1567 to 1625, and King of England and Ireland as James I from 1603 to 1625....
agreed to abolish them, but the reform was never acted on. An underground organization of radical Puritans known as the
Feoffees for the Purchase of Impropriations responded by raising funds collectively to appoint known Puritans as ministers in the Church of England. The Feoffees would be subject to suppression by the establishment High Church Party.
A particular manifestation of the controversy brought about through Impropriation concerned the collecting of Tithes in the seventeenth century,of which the refusal to pay was an article of faith tenaciously held by the Quakers, especially in the period from 1652 to 1700.