King Henry VII has his hand in my pocket!

The fat bastard  king whose religious over-reaching just made me reach into my pocket, 500 years later! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not literally, of course. He died a few hundred years before I was born. But now that I live in England, and am buying a house in England, I have had to insure myself against his depredations.

Well, not his exactly, but the Church of England’s. When Old Hank dissolved the monasteries in 1534, making himself rather than the Pope the head of the church in England and calling it the Church of England (a bit better, admittedly, than the Church of Fat Syphilitic Henry). Before Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, each one employed a rector to see to the good repair of the church building. When the church had been disemboweled by the old head-lopper, no such position remained. Churches began to fall into disrepair.

What to do? Simple. Each county’s church administration was given the power to require local residents to kick in for the repairs. Not only that, but the requirement was attached to the deeds so that anyone buying a house or farm with chancel repair liability in the deed would get the opportunity for the touch as well.

Well, you might think, each household would be apportioned a part of the cost so that the unfair burden was equally unfair to all. Right?

Wrong. There was no demand that the plot size dictate the size of the theft…I mean donation. The Parochial Parish Council, if it thinks your pockets are deep, can arrive with an articulated lorry if they want to, the better to carry away your worldly goods to make repairs to their otherworldly amusement park. I mean church.

These days, it’s even more  unfair and that’s before I get into the real unfairness of it. These days, local residents whose land is subject to assessment of this enforced tithe might practice any religion or none at all, whereas in Hank’s time they were at least all Christians…although there would be a distinct problem with that a generation later when Queen Mary the Guppy Gobbler (offspring of Henry) declared the C of E to be anathema, and her successor, half-sister Queen Elizabeth I (offspring of Henry) declared all R.C.s to be anathema. But I digress into the vagaries of a convoluted and somewhat incestuous interplay between church and state in England. The situation is bad enough without bringing Henry’s half-sibling children into it.

Bad news if your land had a chancel repair liability for this church. On the other hand, it's in Scotland and there are seven distilleries nearby to drown your pain or help with becoming a homeless drunk. (Wiki Commons)

The whole thing came to a head when the church in Aston Cantlow needed almost 100,000 pounds worth of repair. The church billed Andrew and Gail Wallbank for the amount, and the Wallbanks fought it. And lost. Now they owe well in excess of 300,000 pounds, including legal and court costs for themselves and holy mother church. They couldn’t pay the 100,000 without selling the house the right of repair liability was attached to…because of the liability being part of the deed. Who would be dopey enough to buy a house one knew would make one susceptible to rape and pillage by holy mother church?

However, like Mighty Mouse saving the day, into the fray leaped the insurance industry. They created Chancel Repair Insurance. For a nominal amount, like a one-time fee of about 50 pounds, they’ll insure homeowners against attacks by mouldering churches and the Rev. Dimwit. It behooves one to buy the insurance even if one gets a clear deed with no chancel repair liability written into it. Why? Because this stuff is medieval, literally. As our solicitor told us, the church can afford to have someone spending all their time poring over old―really, really old―deeds and writings to see if maybe local properties had been transferred and the chancel repair liability had inadvertently been left off the documentation at some time between 1543 and the present.

Our solicitor says we are probably safe, since our new house is being built on land that was either agricultural or mining property for a very, very long time and thus would not have borne the householder’s burden of chancel repair liability, since it probably was never land owned and sold off by the church. But, she also said, one never knows. There are lots of old documents lying around, and the Church of England, with a current backlog of 925 million pounds worth of chancel repairs awaiting some fresh peasants to be plucked, has only until Oct. 13, 2013, to find ALL the properties with chancel repair liability and get them on the books. Who knows what danger may lurk in old church basements?

Our solicitor recently had to advise one of her clients not to buy a field he badly wanted because the legal search had turned up a chancel repair liability attached to it…and since he was a wealthy farmer…..and the local C of E priest probably knew that… “Just buy a different field,” she told him.

As for the Wallbanks, I can find nothing about what has happened to them recently. They had until Feb. 2009 to pay up, or else. They would have had to sell the farm to pay up―thereby impoverishing themselves in their old age as they were already in their late 60s―but they couldn’t do that. Who would buy it, knowing they’d have to clear 300 pounds worth of debt to the church….and that the church could still AT WILL demand more? In any case, the legal proceedings the Wallbanks lost also resulted in the deed being encumbered with a phrase noting that any sale would need the approval of the Parochial Parish Council.

 It is interesting to note that the Appeals Court, back in 2002, found in favor of the Wallbanks. It is even more interesting to note that the House of Lords overturned that decision in 2003.

And they said serfdom had been abolished.