Definition
In English ecclesiastical law, a vicarage is the living or benefice held by a vicar — that is, the income, revenues, and rights attached to the office of a vicar in the Church of England. As a parsonage is the benefice of a parson (rector), a vicarage is the equivalent for a vicar. The distinction carries legal weight: a vicarage typically consisted of the small tithes assigned to the vicar, while the great tithes were appropriated by a rector, lay impropriator, or religious house. The term also refers colloquially to the physical residence of a vicar, though in strict legal usage the benefice — not the house — is the primary referent.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The residence of a vicar; or the benefice, duties, or office of a vicar.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The benefice of a vicar; the house or residence of a vicar.
In ordinary English, vicarage has drifted toward meaning the vicar's house — the physical building — often to the exclusion of its legal sense. In legal and ecclesiastical usage, a vicarage is primarily a form of property right and church office, not a structure. A researcher encountering the term in legal sources should not assume it refers to real property in the conventional sense; it refers instead to a bundle of revenues and ecclesiastical entitlements.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Perpetual Vicarage: A vicarage endowed in perpetuity, where a vicar holds the living independently and permanently, as opposed to serving at the pleasure of an appropriator or patron. Perpetual vicarages had distinct legal characteristics regarding tenure security and entitlement to tithes.
Donative Vicarage: A vicarage conferred by the patron's act alone, without episcopal institution or induction — a form that existed in English ecclesiastical law before its effective abolition in the nineteenth century.
Why It Matters in Research
Vicarage appears in legal sources almost exclusively in the context of English ecclesiastical law and the historic system of tithes, church endowments, and ecclesiastical benefices. Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century English law, colonial American church property disputes, or comparative ecclesiastical law will encounter the term in connection with appropriation, impropriations, and tithe allocation.
The critical navigational point: vicarage cannot be understood without the rector/vicar distinction and the system of great and small tithes. In appropriated parishes — where a monastery, college, or lay person held the rectorial tithes — the vicar was endowed with the small tithes as his vicarage. This division produced centuries of litigation over which tithes belonged to the vicar and which to the appropriator. Sources discussing a vicarage's composition are almost always discussing tithe rights, not merely a clerical appointment.
Researchers should also note that nineteenth-century English legislation — including the Ecclesiastical Commissioners Acts and tithe commutation statutes — significantly restructured vicarages, converting tithe entitlements into rent charges and eventually into fixed payments. Legal sources from different periods reflect fundamentally different economic and legal realities for the same term.
American researchers will rarely encounter vicarage as a live legal issue, but colonial-era church property disputes in Anglican-affiliated colonies occasionally turned on the English ecclesiastical framework. The term appears more often in historical and comparative contexts than in active American doctrine.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are substantially in agreement. Black's (both editions) and Burrill offer nearly identical formulations drawn directly from Blackstone's Commentaries (1 Bl. Comm. 387–388), defining vicarage as the living or benefice of a vicar, parallel to the parsonage of a parson. All three treat the term as a straightforward technical term of English ecclesiastical law requiring no elaboration beyond the Blackstone citation.
Bouvier adds the most substantively useful gloss: vicarage "usually consisting of the small tithes," citing Burn's Ecclesiastical Law. This is the essential economic and legal content that Black's and Burrill omit — without understanding that a vicarage was funded primarily through small tithes while great tithes went elsewhere, a researcher cannot make sense of the property disputes the term generates. Bouvier also includes the Latin entry VICARIUS immediately following, distinguishing the deputy-or-substitute meaning from the benefice meaning, which is a useful disambiguation that the other dictionaries do not provide.
None of the historical dictionaries address the donative/presentative distinction, the effect of appropriation on vicarage composition, or nineteenth-century legislative reform. For those dimensions, Burn's Ecclesiastical Law and the tithe commutation statutes are the necessary supplements.
Jurisdictional Note
Vicarage as a legal category is almost entirely a creature of English ecclesiastical law. It has no formal equivalent in American law. In jurisdictions that inherited English ecclesiastical structures — parts of the British Commonwealth — the term retains legal meaning in church property and endowment contexts, though statutory reform has substantially altered the underlying framework.