Church-warden

CHURCH-WARDEN. An officer whose duties are, as the name implies, to take care of, or guard the church.
2. These officers are created in some ecclesiastical corporations by the charter, and their rights and duties are definitely explained.In England, it is said, their principal duties are to take care of, 1. the church or building; 2. the utensils and furniture; 3. the church-yard; 4. matters of good order concerning the church and church-yard; 5. the endowments of the church. Bac. Ab. h.t. By the common law, the capacity of church-wardens to hold property for the church, is limited to personal property. 9 Cranch, 43.

Mentioned in ?

warden

References in classic literature ?

Sandy was so grateful and so comforted that she charged a couple of church-wardens with willow-bark and sumach-tobacco for us, and told us to smoke as much as we pleased, it couldn't get under the canopy, and she was used to smoke, being the first lady in the land who had ever seen a cloud blown.

View in context

If he could have known that he was an orphan, left to the tender mercies of church-wardens and overseers, perhaps he would have cried the louder.

View in context

I was then in a sad condition indeed, for as there is no great bustle in putting an end to a poor body's family when once they are carried to the grave, so the poor good woman being buried, the parish children she kept were immediately removed by the church-wardens; the school was at an end, and the children of it had no more to do but just stay at home till they were sent somewhere else; and as for what she left, her daughter, a married woman with six or seven children, came and swept it all away at once, and removing the goods, they had no more to say to me than to jest with me, and tell me that the little gentlewoman might set up for herself if she pleased.

View in context

The gran-of-five, who uses her Fiat Panda daily to do church-warden work, said: "I couldn't believe it when workmen started painting the bay.