Page 200 - Reading Mercury

attached to the deanery, subject to certain obligations, both express and implied. By
virtue of his deanery he is the rector of this parish, and I maintain that he is not
warranted in receiving the emoluments which accrue to him as rector, and yet leaving
the cure of the parish most inadequately provided for. An occasional windfall of
£1,500 is not to be despised, even by a Dean of Salisbury, and a lessee of the tithes
would willingly subscribe to any moderate conditions rather than incur the hazard of
forfeiting his lessee.
The alleged report of Mr. Money with regard to the state of the church and chancel
is directly in the teeth of the reports made to the churchwardens by their surveyors and
the parties they have consulted. If the dean or his lessee had accepted the offer of the
churchwardens, that a joint survey and report should be made by a surveyor appointed
on each side, there would have been no room for “assertions” and “counter-
assertions,” reports and counter-reports, on that point.
The representations made by the Dean in his letter are unfair and uncandid. I will
not follow his example by saying they are “not true.” It is not fair for him to allege
that he only receives “£100 per annum from the parish, when the interest of the fine
and the rent of the lessee would provide an annuity of that amount for the Dean’s life,
and leave him £2,000 to dispose of at his decease, and it is not candid on the part of
the Dean to have omitted to state the fact, that the assertions of the churchwardens
with respect to the chancel have been verified by reports obtained from Mr. Jacob’s
own tradesmen, copies of which have been sent to the Dean; but the churchwardens
have not been favoured with Mr. Money’s alleged report.
I have the honour to be, Sir
Your most obedient servant,
FRANCIS SOAMES
Wokingham, May 17

WOKINGHAM CHURCH
To the Editor of the Times
Sir,,--My attention has been drawn to one of the leading articles in your journal of
Wednesday last containing remarks upon a petition from the churchwardens of
Wokingham, Berks which are so unjust and injurious to me as Dean of Salisbury, that
I must request your early insertion of the following reply to your own misstatements
and those of the churchwardens of Wokingham.
Notwithstanding the contradiction happily furnished both by yourself and your
correspondent, you first broadly assert, in your leading article to which I refer, that
“the Dean of Salisbury, enjoys the great tithes of that parish amounting to somewhat
about £1,700 per annum.” Within a few lines of this false assertion you speak of the
Dean’s lessee, and in the abstract of the churchwardens’ petition in the next page, to
which you refer your readers, it is correctly stated, that “the tithes of the parish have
been leased for very many years,” in fact, for centuries past, “upon leases/or lives,
renewable upon payment of a fine, at an annual rent of £26 13s. 4d.” What then, Sir,
becomes of your charge, that “the Dean of Salisbury enjoys the tithes of the parish, to
the amount of £1,700 per annum?” It is obvious that the Dean and his lessee cannot
both enjoy them; and it is clear from the churchwardens’ statement, that the annual
reserved rent paid to the dean amounts only to £26 13s. 4d.
The churchwardens go on to assert, that the last fine received for the renewal of the
lease was £3,000. This is not true. I have had the honour of holding the Deanery of
Salisbury 22 years; and, in the course of that period, I have received, not £3,900, for
adding a life to the lease, giving out of that sum, as correctly stated by the

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