This degree of independence did not at all satisfy the now losing party. That the parishioners should begin to be awake to their own power, was a thing not to be endured, and a local Act was devised for them, into which trap they fell. In this Act, four rambling clauses are inserted as to what may, and what may not, be done with the manor-house. And it may, if a special meeting of the vestry shall think fit, “be thenceforth for ever held and used as and for the parsonage-house and glebe-lands of the said parish, or as a residence for the perpetual curate of the said parish and his successors.” So impressed, however, were those vestrymen who had been so recently elected under the detestable principles of Sturges Bourne’s Act, with their duty to their fellow-parishioners; and with the necessity there was not to outrage the general feeling thus publicly expressed, that no sanction to part with their purchase could be obtained even from them. But the old manor-house, which had been let by the parish to a lady, who for some time kept a boarding-school there, was doomed to destruction. Occupation did not lay the spectres who had claimed this dwelling for their own. It was pulled down; the materials were sold, and the ground on which it stood, with that portion of its pleasure-ground which remained, was consecrated on the tenth of August, 1825, for the purpose of further increasing the size of the church-yard. As all, rich and poor, young and old, were now crying shame on the spiritual governors of the parish, for not finding their deputy with a suitable residence, the bishops’ building Act of 1825,—acknowledging the scandal, in these words, “and as the present curate of Paddington has not any house attached to his curacy”—finds out “that it would be proper that the said Lord Bishop of London, &c., should be at liberty to set apart, appropriate, and to settle in free alms, part of the demised property, as the site for a residence, &c.;” and by the seventeenth clause of the sixth George IV., cap. 45, it is enacted, that the said William, Bishop of London, &c., within five years from the passing of this Act, by indenture, “enrolled in the High Court of Chancery,” should grant to Charles Theomartyr Crane, or his successors, any quantity of the Paddington estate, “not exceeding one acre,” to hold for himself and his successors for ever in free alms, and that he, the said curate, shall be “a body corporate for the purpose;” and that he may “receive, take and hold such ground with any messuages and buildings thereon, notwithstanding any of the laws against Mortmain, &c.” Soon after this an acre of ground, _a small portion of_ “THE PARSONS FIELD,” {142} was granted and settled on the curate for the purpose named.