Ministers' money was a tax payable by householders in certain towns in Ireland to fund the local

Church of Ireland The Church of Ireland ( ga, Eaglais na hÉireann, ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Kirk o Airlann, ) is a Christian church in Ireland and an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. It is organised on an all-Ireland basis and is the second ...

minister. It was introduced in 1665, modified in 1827, and abolished in 1857. The towns affected were

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

Cork Cork or CORK may refer to: Materials * Cork (material), an impermeable buoyant plant product ** Cork (plug), a cylindrical or conical object used to seal a container ***Wine cork Places Ireland * Cork (city) ** Metropolitan Cork, also known as G ...

Limerick Limerick ( ; ga, Luimneach ) is a western city in Ireland situated within County Limerick. It is in the province of Munster and is located in the Mid-West which comprises part of the Southern Region. With a population of 94,192 at the 2016 ...

Waterford "Waterford remains the untaken city" , mapsize = 220px , pushpin_map = Ireland#Europe , pushpin_map_caption = Location within Ireland##Location within Europe , pushpin_relief = 1 , coordinates ...

Drogheda Drogheda ( , ; , meaning "bridge at the ford") is an industrial and port town in County Louth on the east coast of Ireland, north of Dublin. It is located on the Dublin–Belfast corridor on the east coast of Ireland, mostly in County Louth ...

Kilkenny Kilkenny (). is a city in County Kilkenny, Ireland. It is located in the South-East Region and in the province of Leinster. It is built on both banks of the River Nore. The 2016 census gave the total population of Kilkenny as 26,512. Kilken ...

Clonmel Clonmel () is the county town and largest settlement of County Tipperary, Republic of Ireland, Ireland. The town is noted in Irish history for its resistance to the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, Cromwellian army which sacked the towns of Dro ...

, and

Kinsale Kinsale ( ; ) is a historic port and fishing town in County Cork, Ireland. Located approximately south of Cork City on the southeast coast near the Old Head of Kinsale, it sits at the mouth of the River Bandon, and has a population of 5,281 (a ...

. It was levied as a rate of up to one shilling in the pound (i.e. 5%) on the property's rateable value. The valuation, to a maximum of £60, was done by commissioners appointed by the

Lord Lieutenant A lord-lieutenant ( ) is the British monarch's personal representative in each lieutenancy area of the United Kingdom. Historically, each lieutenant was responsible for organising the county's militia. In 1871, the lieutenant's responsibility ...

Churchwarden A churchwarden is a lay official in a parish or congregation of the Anglican Communion or Catholic Church, usually working as a part-time volunteer. In the Anglican tradition, holders of these positions are ''ex officio'' members of the parish b ...

s appointed by the local minister collected ministers' money on the

quarter days In British and Irish tradition, the quarter days were the four dates in each year on which servants were hired, school terms started, and rents were due. They fell on four religious festivals roughly three months apart and close to the two solstic ...

Christmas Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by country, around t ...

Lady Day In the Western liturgical year, Lady Day is the traditional name in some English-speaking countries of the Feast of the Annunciation, which is celebrated on 25 March, and commemorates the visit of the archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, durin ...

, St John's Day, and

Michaelmas Michaelmas ( ; also known as the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, the Feast of the Archangels, or the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels) is a Christian festival observed in some Western liturgical calendars on 29 September, a ...

. A 1723 act provided that, in Dublin, the same valuation could be used both for ministers' money and for calculating

cess Cess is a tax that is generally levied for promoting services like health and education. Governments often charge cess for the purpose of development in social sectors. The word is a shortened form of "assess". The spelling is due to a mistaken ...

, a separate local rate used for public works and poor relief. Thereafter, cess rates were often expressed in terms of pence per shilling of minister's money. Ministers' money was resented because it was a

regressive tax A regressive tax is a tax imposed in such a manner that the tax rate decreases as the amount subject to taxation increases. "Regressive" describes a distribution effect on income or expenditure, referring to the way the rate progresses from high ...

and applied only in towns with a Catholic majority. In rural areas,

tithe A tithe (; from Old English: ''teogoþa'' "tenth") is a one-tenth part of something, paid as a contribution to a religious organization or compulsory tax to government. Today, tithes are normally voluntary and paid in cash or cheques or more r ...

s were a similar grievance, and the 1830s

Tithe War The Tithe War ( ga, Cogadh na nDeachúna) was a campaign of mainly nonviolent civil disobedience, punctuated by sporadic violent episodes, in Ireland between 1830 and 1836 in reaction to the enforcement of tithes on the Roman Catholic majority ...

ended when the

Tithe Commutation Act 1838 The Tithe War ( ga, Cogadh na nDeachúna) was a campaign of mainly nonviolent civil disobedience, punctuated by sporadic violent episodes, in Ireland between 1830 and 1836 in reaction to the enforcement of tithes on the Roman Catholic majority f ...

replaced tithes with "tithe-rentcharges"; but this did not apply to ministers' money. Another grievance was that the valuations for ministers' money were done infrequently and might not reflect recent improvements or decline in the property or its neighbourhood. An 1838 proposal by

Daniel O'Connell Daniel O'Connell (I) ( ga, Dónall Ó Conaill; 6 August 1775 – 15 May 1847), hailed in his time as The Liberator, was the acknowledged political leader of Ireland's Roman Catholic majority in the first half of the 19th century. His mobilizat ...

to bring ministers' money into the terms of the

Irish Poor Law The Irish Poor Laws were a series of Acts of Parliament intended to address social instability due to widespread and persistent poverty in Ireland. While some legislation had been introduced by the pre-Union Parliament of Ireland prior to the ...

was withdrawn. An 1848 committee of the Commons recommended its abolition, and motions to that effect were proposed by MPs Francis Murphy (1842 and 1844) and

William Trant Fagan William Trant Fagan (31 January 1801 – 16 May 1859) was an Irish writer and Member of Parliament (MP) from Cork. Family Fagan was the son of James Fagan and his wife Ellen Trust. On 21 June 1827, he married Mary Addis, the daughter of Charle ...

(six times 1847–54). A

petition A petition is a request to do something, most commonly addressed to a government official or public entity. Petitions to a deity are a form of prayer called supplication. In the colloquial sense, a petition is a document addressed to some offici ...

of Cork residents was laid on the table of the Lords in 1846. In 1854, Sir

John Young John Young may refer to: Academics * John Young (professor of Greek) (died 1820), Scottish professor of Greek at the University of Glasgow * John C. Young (college president) (1803–1857), American educator, pastor, and president of Centre Col ...

, the

Chief Secretary for Ireland The Chief Secretary for Ireland was a key political office in the British administration in Ireland. Nominally subordinate to the Lord Lieutenant, and officially the "Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant", from the early 19th century un ...

, introduced an Act which reduced the rated charge by one quarter and charged the municipal authority ( borough corporation or

town commissioners Town commissioners were elected local government bodies that existed in urban areas in Ireland from the 19th century until 2002. Larger towns with commissioners were converted to urban districts by the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898, with ...

) rather than the minister with collecting it. The

Ecclesiastical Commissioners of Ireland The Board of Ecclesiastical Commissioners was an agency of the Dublin Castle administration which oversaw the funding, building and repairs to churches and glebe houses of the Church of Ireland.Brooks, Chris & Saint, Andrew (1995). "The Victorian c ...

forwarded the money from the municipality to the minister, making up the reduction from its own funds. In 1857, Fagan and

Francis Beamish Francis Bernard Beamish (5 April 1802 – 1 February 1868) was an Irish Whig and Liberal politician. Beamish was the son of William Beamish and Anne Jane Margaret (née Delacour) and, in 1837, married Catherine Savery de Lisle de Courcy, daug ...

introduced a

private member's bill A private member's bill is a bill (proposed law) introduced into a legislature by a legislator who is not acting on behalf of the executive branch. The designation "private member's bill" is used in most Westminster system jurisdictions, in whi ...

, which was successfully enacted, to replace ministers' money with a direct subvention of ministers by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. Some members of the Church of Ireland objected to the act as confiscation of church property, and saw it as a prelude to

disestablishment The separation of church and state is a philosophical and jurisprudential concept for defining political distance in the relationship between religious organizations and the state. Conceptually, the term refers to the creation of a secular stat ...

, which eventually came under the

Irish Church Act 1869 The Irish Church Act 1869 (32 & 33 Vict. c. 42) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which separated the Church of Ireland from the Church of England and disestablished the former, a body that commanded the adherence of a small min ...

Sources

References

{{reflist Church of Ireland Taxation in Ireland Land value taxation Abolished taxes History of taxation in the United Kingdom 1665 establishments in Ireland 1857 disestablishments in the United Kingdom Church and state law