File MC2/150. - Observations by the bishop of Bangor [Christopher Bethell] on a petition suggested by Mr Johnes,

He cannot recommend the clergy of the diocese of Bangor to be parties to the petition. Its very length is a sufficient objection to it. The comparison between the state of the English and North Welsh dioceses is irrelevant. The whole document, too, seems to take up the question as a national one. The Order in Council directs that when the sees are united the bishop shall pay a certain annual sum to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and that, after the next avoidance, the Commissioners shall pay a certain sum to the bishop of St Davids. But this sum is to be paid not out of the surplus revenues of the North Wales diocese but out of the general fund arising from the payments made by the wealthier bishoprics. What is said in the petition of the annexation of tithes to the see of Bangor leaves an impression that these tithes were taken away from the parochial clergy in order to be given to the bishopric. This was not the case. He objects to the remarks on the property of the sees of Lichfield and Chester and of the collegiate bodies. The fourth clause contains a very wrong impression. The chapter of Durham, for instance, will contribute more to the proposed fund than will all the Welsh dioceses put together. It is not proposed by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners that the revenues of the archdeaconries of St Asaph, Bangor, and Anglesey shall be united to the deaneries but that after the next avoidance the deans shall be charged with the duties of the archdeaconries without any additional revenues. The provisions of the Established Church Act and of any Act founded on the Reports of the Commissioners will not produce any progressive diminution in the means of religious instruction but will put a stop to those increased means of instruction to which their first Report had led them to look forward. He disapproves of the prayer of the petition in so far as it relates to matters foreign from the Reports of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. Copy.