Page 201 - Reading Mercury

churchwardens, £200, to meet a similar benefaction from the Governors of Queen
Anne’s Bounty, to augment the perpetual curacy. This is the only fine which I have
received; and when I add that the three existing lives in the lease are many years
younger than myself, I need scarcely say, that the probability is strongly against my
again renewing it. So much, Sir, for the truth of your assertion as to the enormous
income derived by the Dean of Salisbury from the parish of Wokingham; which,
instead of £1,700, turns out to be, upon an average up to this time, about £100 per
annum.
The next point upon which I have to animadvert is the absurd and unfounded charge
of yourself and the churchwardens, with regard to the alleged neglect of the dean as to
the visitation of the parishes under his peculiar jurisdiction. The ancient place of
visitation is the mother church at Sonning, as the centre of the district visited. To that
place the minister and churchwardens of Wokingham have for ages been regularly
summoned. Articles of inquiry respecting, among other points, the state of the parish
church, have duly issued every year; and to those articles the churchwardens, up to the
year 1843, invariably replied, “All well,” neither they nor the minister having ever
reported that the church was out of repair. In that year, however, the attention of the
churchwardens was directed to the dilapidated state of the walls and nave of the
church, by the Rv. Hugh Pearson, Vicar of Sonning, as my rural dean; and on his
representation they very properly assembled a vestry of the inhabitants, who, much to
their honour, consented to a rate for the rebuilding of it. But in writing to the dean to
inform him of these facts they asserted that the chancel was in as dilapidated a state as
the body of the church, This his lessee denied; and though the churchwardens have
repeated the assertion in their petition, I have to state that Mr. Money, an eminent
surveyor of Donnington, near Newbury, having carefully examined the chancel,
reports that it is substantially in repair, and that an outlay of about £40 would render it
perfectly so.
I have thought it due to myself thus to correct some of the gross misrepresentations
contained in your own article of Wednesday, and in the petition of the churchwardens
of Wokingham; but I do not consider it to be my duty to enter into any further details
upon this subject in the columns of a newspaper, or to offer any justification of my
conduct as rector and ordinary of that parish.
Not doubting that your sense of justice will induce you to insert this letter in your
journal,
I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant,
H. PEARSON, Dean of Salisbury.
7, Saville Row, May 16.

WOKINGHAM CHURCH
Petition presented by the Churchwardens to both Houses of Parliament, containing the
Correspondence of the Dean of Salisbury, his Less, and Agent, with the
Churchwardens, and the Opinion of Dr. Addams as to the Law of the Case. Sold by
Longman and Co., Paternoster Row, London; Wm. Gotelee, Wokingham and Richard
Watch, Berkshire Chronicle Office, Reading—pp. 50. Price 6d.

st
Sat 31 May (BC)
STATE OF WOKINGHAM CHURCH.—PUBLIC MEETING OF THE
INHABITANTS
On Monday last, a public meeting of the inhabitants of the town and parish of
Wokingham was held for the purpose of taking into consideration of the proposal

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