Definition
An advowson presentative is the standard and most common form of advowson — the right to nominate a clergyman to a vacant ecclesiastical benefice — in which the patron holds the power of presentation to the bishop or ordinary. Upon the patron's nomination, the bishop is then bound to examine the candidate and, if found canonically qualified, to institute and induct him into the living. The patron's role is thus active and external: he presents his clerk to the ecclesiastical authority, who completes the admission. The right is a property right, historically classified as an incorporeal hereditament running with the land or held independently, and it was fully alienable, descendible, and subject to litigation in the common law courts.
The defining feature of advowson presentative is the two-step process: presentation by the patron, followed by institution by the bishop. The patron controls the nomination but does not himself confer the spiritual office. This distinguishes it from the other main form, advowson collative, where the bishop is himself the patron and collapses both steps into a single act of collation.
___
Common Confusion
ADVOWSON PRESENTATIVE vs. ADVOWSON COLLATIVE: These are the two principal species of advowson, and the distinction lies entirely in whether the patron and the bishop are the same person. In advowson presentative, they are different — the lay or ecclesiastical patron presents, the bishop institutes. In advowson collative, the bishop is the patron, making a separate act of presentation redundant; he collates the clerk directly. A third form, advowson donative, existed where a benefice was founded by a private patron outside the bishop's jurisdiction entirely, and the patron filled it by deed of gift without any episcopal involvement. Researchers encountering historical pleadings should take care to identify which form is at issue, as the available remedies and the applicable writs differed accordingly.
___
Why It Matters in Research
Advowson presentative is the baseline form against which all other advowson types are defined. In historical sources — treatises, plea rolls, and year books from the medieval period through the nineteenth century — when a source refers simply to "advowson" without qualification, it almost always means advowson presentative. Researchers should not assume that a qualified form (collative, donative) is intended unless the source says so explicitly.
The corpus of advowson litigation is substantial and runs deep into English legal history. The writ of right of advowson and the assize of darrein presentment were the primary common law actions for contesting presentative advowsons, and disputes over the right of presentation generated a rich body of case law through the ecclesiastical and common law courts simultaneously. Researchers working in ecclesiastical law, real property history, or the history of patron-client relations in the Church of England will find this term central.
Jurisdictional awareness matters here: advowson as a property concept is native to English law and has no operative equivalent in American law. United States researchers will encounter the term only in historical English sources, comparative ecclesiastical law scholarship, or occasionally in colonial-era property records where English ecclesiastical tenure arrangements were briefly transplanted. Do not treat advowson doctrine as having any continuing American legal significance.
One navigational trap: the word "presentative" in this term has no connection to constitutional presentment doctrine, legislative presentment requirements, or the right to present witnesses in criminal proceedings. The similarity is purely etymological. Cross-references to constitutional or criminal law encyclopedia entries on presentment and presentation are not relevant to this term.
___
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary follows Blackstone closely, defining advowson presentative as the form where the patron has the right of presentation to the bishop or ordinary, with the further right to demand institution of a canonically qualified clerk. The citation to 2 Blackstone's Commentaries 22 and Crabb's Real Property § 119 reflects the standard nineteenth-century authorities on the point, and both sources treat advowson presentative as the normal, unremarkable case — the definition-by-contrast against which collative and donative advowsons are explained.
Blackstone himself is the clearest synthesizer of the three-way typology. His treatment in the Commentaries remains the most frequently cited historical authority and is the source most likely to be found upstream of any American or English secondary source discussing advowsons. Crabb adds technical precision on the property law dimensions, particularly the hereditament classification.
Historical dictionaries uniformly agree on the core definition and show no significant divergence on the meaning of advowson presentative specifically. Where sources vary is in how much attention they give to the collative and donative forms, and how thoroughly they trace the decline of advowson as a practically significant property right following ecclesiastical reforms in the nineteenth century, particularly under the Benefices Act 1898. Sources predating that reform will treat advowson presentative as a live property interest with significant commercial value; sources after it begin to treat the category with increasing historical detachment.
___
Jurisdictional Note
Advowson presentative is an exclusively English legal concept rooted in the relationship between the Crown, the common law courts, and the Church of England. It has no equivalent in Scots law, civil law systems, or American law. Researchers in Commonwealth jurisdictions with inherited English ecclesiastical property law may encounter it in historical land records, but it carries no operative legal significance outside England and Wales.
___