AVOIDANCE

Avoidance is where there is a want of a lawful incumbent on a benefice, during which vacancy the Church is quasi riduata , and the po e ions belonging to it are in abeyance. There are many ways by which avoidance may happen; by death; by ce ion, or acceptance of a benefice incompatible; by resignation; by consecration; for when a clerk is promoted to a bishopric, all his other preferments are void the instant he is consecrated, and the right of presentation belongs to the Crown, unle he has a dispensation from the Crown to hold them in commendam : by deprivation, either first by sentence declaratory in the ecclesiastical court for fit and sufficient causes allowed by the common law, such as attainder of treason or felony, or conviction of other infamous crimes in the king’s courts; for heresy, infidelity, gro immorality, and the like; or secondly, in pursuance of divers penal statutes, which declare the benefice void, for some nonfeasance or neglect, or else some malfeasance or crime; as for simony; for maintaining any doctrine in derogation of the king’s supremacy, or of the Thirty-nine Articles, or of the Book of Common Prayer : for neglecting after institution to read the liturgy and articles in the church, or make the declarations against Popery, or take the abjuration oath; for using any other form of prayer than the liturgy of the Church of England : or for absenting himself sixty days in one year from a benefice belonging to a Popish patron, to which the clerk was presented by either of the universities; in all which, and similar cases, the benefice is ipso facto void, without any formal sentence of deprivation. No person can take any dignity or benefice in Ireland until he has resigned all his preferments in England; and by such resignation the king is deprived of the presentation.— Stephens on the Laws relating to the Clergy , p. 91.