104 History of Local Rates 
when Mr. Justice Yelverton remarked that a man 
was chargeable for reparations by reason of his land, 
and for ornaments by reason of his coming to church, 
Chief Justice Fleming and Mr. Justice Williams said, 
“If the party have land there, he is chargeable for 
both, whether he come to church or not, for that he 
may come to church if he please”! The distinction 
was soon almost entirely forgotten. 
The Long Parliament, which was often far in 
advance of its time, passed an ordinance in 1647 
practically consolidating the church-rate with the 
poor-rate. It provides that the churchwardens, or 
the collectors of monies for church duties, where any 
such have been formerly used to be chosen, together 
with the overseers of the poor, shall, after public notice 
has been given in the church, “ from time to time make 
rates or assessments by taxation of every inhabitant 
dwelling or residing ” within the parish, “and of every 
occupier of lands, houses, tithes impropriate or im- 
propriations of tithes, coal-mines, or saleable under- 
woods, or other hereditaments within the said parish 
or chapelry, in such competent sums of money as they 
shall think fit, for and towards the reparation and main- 
tenance of every such parish church or chapel respec- 
tively, and providing of books, . . . bread and wine, 
. + . repairing the walls and enclosures of the church- 
yards.” 2 But the action of the Long Parliament in 
1 Bulstrode, Reports, Pt. i. p. 20. Brownlowe (Reports, Pt. ii. p. 10) 
gives a different account. In the case of Woodward , Makepeace 
in 1688 the court held that a non-resident occupier was chargeable 
for bells, because bells are not ornaments, being as necessary as the 
steeple (Salkeld, Reports, vol. 4. p. 164). See Degge, Parson's Coun- 
sellor, Pt. i. ch. 12 (later editions). 
"2 In Scobell, Acts and Ordinances, Pt. i. p. 140.