An Act to provide for the free Use of Seats in certain Churches.
[6th August 1872]
Whereas as it is expedient that church seats which are intended by the founders or promoters of the churches to which they shall belong to be free from pew or seat rent shall so continue:
Be it therefore enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:
This Act may be cited for all purposes as " The Church Seats " Act, 1872.
It shall be lawful for the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, in the exercise and fulfilment of the powers and duties conferred or imposed upon them by the Acts administered by them or any or either of the same Acts, to accept a church site under a grant or conveyance in which it is declared that the pews or seats in the church erected or to be erected on the same site, or some specified portion of the same pews or seats, shall not be let for any payment of money, and thereupon it shall be unlawful to let the same pews or seats or portion of the same for payment of money.
In every case in which it is so declared that no portion of the pews or seats shall be let for any payment of money, a sufficient endowment or stipend of not less than one hundred pounds per annum shall be secured to the incumbent by or to the satisfaction of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and in every case in which a portion only of the pews or seats may not be so let, an endowment or stipend of such amount as the said Commissioners may determine, regard being had to the proportion of pews or seats which may not be so let, shall be in like manner secured.