Impropriation,

Impropriation, the transfer to a layman of the revenues of a benefice to which the cure of souls is annexed, with an obligation to provide for the performance of the spiritual duties attached to the benefice. The practice of impropriation differs from the somewhat similar but more ancient usage of appropriation, inasmuch as the latter supposes the revenues of the appropriated benefice to be transferred to ecclesiastical or quasi-ecclesiastical persons or bodies, as to a certain dignitary in a convent, a college, a hospital; while impropriation implies that the temporalities of the benefice are enjoyed by a layman. The practice of impropriation, and still more that of appropriation, as in the case of monasteries, &c., and other religious houses, prevailed extensively in England before the Reformation; and on the suppression of the monasteries all such rights were vested in the crown, and were by the crown freely transferred to laymen, to whose successors in title they have passed by descent and purchase. The spiritual duties of such rectories are discharged by a clergyman, who is called a vicar, and who receives a certain portion of the emoluments of the living, generally consisting of a part of the glebe-land of the parsonage, together with what are called the 'small tithes' of the parish. A lay impropriator is rector of the parish; as such he has rights over the chancel of the church, and is bound to keep it in repair.