Scottish Court of Session Decisions

This was an action raised by the Reverend William Rainie, minister of the parish of Newton-on-Ayr, against the Magistrates, Councillors, and Freemen of the burgh of Newton-on Ayr, concluding for declarator that the defenders were bound to provide him with a competent and legal stipend, suited to the circumstances of the time and the position and duties of the benefice. There was further a petitory conclusion

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for payment to him of £400 a-year as a competent and legal stipend, or of such other sum as in the circumstances should appear to the Court to be a competent and legal stipend during the pursuer's lifetime and his serving the cure.

At the previous stage of the case the Court pronounced a finding in terms of the declaratory conclusion of the summons; and the case was subsequently enrolled before the Lord Ordinary to hear parties on the petitory conclusion.

The decree of disjunction and erection whereby in 1779 Newton-on-Ayr was erected into a separate parish, besides binding the magistrates to provide the minister with a competent and legal stipend, bound the community to furnish the minister with a house, a cow's grass, and an allowance for communion elements and expenses.

The pursuer lodged a minute in which he made the following statements:—(1) The whole emoluments of the benefice, including a small endowment of £9, 10s. per annum from the “Cowfaulds” bond, fell from £307 in 1882, the year after he became minister of the parish, to £283 in 1891, and from that to £197 in 1895. Up to 1892 the defenders had been in the habit of paying the minister the minimum stipend (£60) fixed by the decree of erection, and a gratuity of £90 or thereby per annum, the balance of the emoluments being made up principally by an Exchequer grant of £90. In 1892 the gratuity was withdrawn. (2) The population of the parish rose from 6511 in 1881 to 8564 in 1891. It was mostly a working-class population, with a considerable number of poor, and fluctuated to a considerable extent from time to time. The number on the communion roll was 919 in October 1895. Besides holding two services on Sunday, the pursuer had much work in the way of visiting the sick and attending to the necessities of the poor. The average annual number of baptisms, marriages, and funerals at which he officiated amounted respectively to 12, 20, and 10 per cent. of the births, marriages, and deaths registered in the burgh and parish of Ayr. (3) The average stipend throughout the Presbytery was £294, while the number on the Newton communion roll was double the average number in the Presbytery, and the population of the parish more than three times the average in the Presbytery. The average annual emoluments of the parish ministers of Ayr were £382. Of the other parishes in the Presbytery which most closely resembled Newton none had a stipend of less than £335. The ministers of the Free and United Presbyterian Churches in Newton-on-Ayr received respectively £300 a-year and a manse, with all taxes paid, and £360 a-year and a manse. (4) The cost of living had greatly increased; the pursuer was married and had a family; and the calls upon his purse for the poor of the parish were heavy. (5) The value of the manse, £36 a-year, should not be taken into account in fixing the stipend.

The defenders lodged answers to the pursuer's minute, in which they stated:—(1) The gratuity was only withdrawn temporarily to meet the expense of repairing the manse (£600). All sums received by the minister from other sources (e.g. the Exchequer grant of £90 per annum, the value of the glebe, the cow's grass, the communion allowance, the Cowfaulds bond, and the value of the manse) should be computed pro tanto towards any stipend that might be decerned for. (2) The parish was amply provided with places of worship. A large proportion of the communicants paid no seat rents, and the seat rents actually raised only amounted to about £160 per annum.

The defenders further compared certain parishes in the Presbytery with Newton-on-Ayr, to show that the amount of stipend sought by the pursuer was excessive. They also maintained that the value of the manse, it being an unusual part of the emoluments in a burghal parish, and Kilmarnock being the only burgh in the county where the minister had one, should be taken into account in fixing the stipend.

On 6th November 1896 the Lord Ordinary ( Stormonth Darling) found the pursuer entitled to receive from the defenders stipend at the rate of £300 a-year, as a competent and legal stipend, from and after the term of Whitsunday 1894, so long as he should serve the cure of Newton-on-Ayr, and that in addition to the communion allowance, allowance for cow's grass, and interest payable under Cowfaulds bond, and granted decree accordingly, reserving to the pursuers and his successors in the cure right to apply for an increase of the said stipend, and the right of the defenders and their successors in office to apply for a reduction of the said stipend.

Opinion.—“I have carefully considered the circumstances of this benefice as set out in the minute and answers on which the arguments of counsel proceeded. In particular, I have had regard to the allowances made down to 1892, by a committee representing the defenders, in supplement of the regular stipend. These allowances were made in the knowledge that owing to the fixed stipend being only £60, the minister received a grant of £90 from Exchequer, which will now of course, be discontinued, and that his average receipts from all sources for ten years prior to 1892 were thus brought up to close on £300 a year. I have accordingly taken that sum as a fair estimate of what his regular stipend ought to be, but he will also be entitled to receive from the defenders the communion allowance and the allowance for cow's grass, which form separate obligations in the decree of erection, and likewise a sum of £9, 10s., arising from a sale of part of the glebe. The return from the glebe itself is small, and would hardly affect the result, even if, contrary to the practice of the Teind Court, it were taken into account in fixing the amount of a competent stipend. The income of the Wood bequest cannot, of course, be taken into account as a means of diminishing the burden resting on the defenders (late Lord President in Kilmalcolm case, 3 R. 32).”

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The defenders reclaimed.

The arguments of the parties are sufficiently indicated in the foregoing abstract of the pursuer's minute and the defenders' answers thereto. On the point whether the value of the manse should be taken into account, the defenders cited Stewart v. Glenlyon, May, 20, 1835, 13 S. 787.