Dating from the 14th century, the vestry was a parish parliament chaired by the parish priest or in his absence the churchwarden or, in the absence of both, an elected member of the meeting.
In England, until the 19th century, the parish vestry was in effect what today we would usually call a parochial church council. Vestries were responsible not only for the ecclesiastical affairs of the parish but all the other administrative requirements of lay business. Records of parish business would be stored in a parish chest kept in the church and provided for security with three locks, the keys to which would be held by the incumbent and the churchwardens.
Parish vestries were responsible for the maintenance of the church and its services, the keeping of the peace, the repression of vagrancy, the relief of destitution, the mending of roads, the suppression of nuisances, the destruction of vermin, the furnishing of soldiers and sailors, even to some extent the enforcement of religious and moral discipline.
Vestries were either open vestries or select vestries. Open vestries were rather like today's parish meetings. An open vestry was a general meeting of all inhabitant rate-paying householders in a parish.
A select vestry or "close" vestry was the governing body of a parish, the members generally having a property qualification and being recruited more or less by co-option. The open vestry elected the bulk of the select vestry members or, if dissatisfied, could exercise their power to do so.
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Parish of Stanford Rivers
The Inhabitants of this Parish are requested to meet in Public Vestry at the Church on Saturday the 25th day of March Instant at Eleven o’clock in the forenoon to examine and pafs the Surveyors Accounts for the current Year; for electing one or more persons to serve the office of Surveyor of Highways and appoint Churchwardens and to nominate Overseers and Afsefsors for the ensuing Year,
Dated March 18th 1865.
Thomas Stallibrass } Overseers
Charles Clark }
Select Vestry
Whereas in and by the Statute made and passed in the 59th Year of his late Majesty's Reign, intituled "An Act to amend the Laws for the Relief of the Poor, " it is enacted that it shall be lawful for the Inhabitants of any Parish, in the Vestry assembled, to establish a select Vestry for the concerns of the Poor of such Parish, and to that end to nominate and elect in any Vestry such and so many substantial Householders or Occupiers within such Parish, not exceeding the Number of Twenty, nor less than Five, as shall in any such Vestry be thought fit to be Members of the Select Vestry; and that the Rector, Vicar, or Minister of the Parish, and, in his absence, the Curate thereof (such Curate being resident in and charged to the Poor Rates of such Parish) and the Churchwardens and Overseers of the Poor for the time being, together with the Inhabitants who shall be nominated and elected as aforesaid (such Inhabitants being first thereto appointed by Writing under the Hand and Seal of one of His Majesty's Justices of the Peace, which appointment he is thereby authorized and required to make), shall be and constitute a Select Vestry, for the care and management of the concerns of the Poor of such Parish, And whereas information is made and given on this seventh Day of April in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Thirty two, unto Us, whose Hands and Seals are hereunto subscribed and set, being Two of His Majesty's Justices of the Peace in and for the County of Essex, that the Inhabitants of the Parish of Stanford Rivers in the said County, have nominated and elected, in manner aforesaid, substantial Householders and Occupiers within the said Parish: We, therefore, by virtue and in pursuance of the authority and requisition aforesaid, do herby appoint the following substantial Householders and Occupiers, that is to say,
Jonathan Stokes John Smitheman
William Phillips John Palmer
John Stallibrass Benjamin Lewis
John Gingells John Mumford
John Bailey Henry Mott
John Mott William Smith
to be Members of the Select Vestry for the Care and Management of the Concerns of the Poor of the said Parish of Stanford Rivers in the said County, to continue and be empowered to act therein from the time of this appointment until fourteen Days after the next annual appointment of Overseers of the Poor of the said Parish shall take place.
Given under our Hands and Seals, at the Town Hall in Chipping Ongar in the said County - the Day and Year above written.
H. J Earle Bridges Hawg (?)