Accordingly on 5th March, the clergy assembled in the vicarage, and walked in procession thence to the church in their surplices. The church was filled with the laity; the clergy were seated in the chancel. The altar was adorned with flowers and lighted candles. After service the laity withdrew, and the doors of the church were closed. The clergy then assembled in the nave, and the rural dean read them an elaborate and able statement of the case of rural chapters, after which they proceeded to business. His paper on Rural Synods was afterwards published by Edwards & Hughes, Ave Maria Lane, 1844. It is remarkable that synods, which are now everywhere revived throughout the Church of England, meeting sometimes in vestries, sometimes in dining-rooms, were first restored, after the desuetude of three centuries, in the church of Morwenstow, and with so much gravity and dignity, over fifty years ago. The importance of the weekly offertory is another thing now recognised. The Church seems to be preparing herself against possible disestablishment and disendowment, by reviving her organic life in synods, and by impressing on her people the necessity of giving towards the support of the services and the ministry. But the weekly offertory is quite a novelty in most places still. Almost the first incumbent in England to establish it was the vicar of Morwenstow, before 1843. He entered into controversy on the subject of the offertory with Mr. Walter of _The Times_. When the Poor Law Amendment Bill passed in 1834, and was amended in 1836 and 1838, it was thought by many that the need for an offertory in church was done away with, and that the giving of alms to the poor was an interference with the working of the Poor Law. Mr. Hawker published a statement of what he did in this matter in _The English Churchman_, for 1844. Mr. Walter made this statement the basis of an attack on the system, and especially on Mr. Hawker, in a letter to _The Times_. Mr. Hawker replied to this:— SIR,—I regret to discover that you have permitted yourself to invade the tranquillity of my parish, and to endeavour to interrupt the harmony between myself and my parishioners, in a letter which I have just read in a recent number of _The Times_. You have done so by a garbled copy of a statement which appeared in _The English Churchman_, of the reception and disposal of the offertory alms in the parish church of Morwenstow. I say “garbled” because, while you have adduced just so much of the document as suited your purpose, you have suppressed such parts of it as might have tended to alleviate the hostility which many persons entertain to this part of the service of the Church.