The act of parliament which enabled this amalgamation received the royal assent on the 26th of July 1907, and authorized the union "to deal with real and personal property belonging to the said three churches or denominations, to provide for the vesting of the said property in trust for the United Church so formed and for the assimilation of the trusts thereof, and for other purposes."
Nobility thus implies the vesting of some hereditary privilege or advantage in certain families, without deciding in what such privilege or advantage consists.
It is proper to all clerics, even to those who have only received the tonsure, the bishop himself vesting with it those who have been newly tonsured by him.
Of course, they always and everywhere had the power of admitting their own monks and vesting them with the religious habit.
Even then the efforts of the Republican mayor were at first thwarted by the council, which passed an ordinance over his veto, taking from him the power of appointment and vesting it in themselves; the Maryland court of appeals, however, soon decided that the council had exceeded its powers, and an important outcome of the reform movement was the new charter of 1898.
