sentences:  In simple terms, every incumbent was either a rector, vicar or perpetual curate; but while this was a fully accurate summary of the relevant law within the Church of England,
  The creation of perpetual curacies had been an ad-hoc expedient at the dissolution of the monasteries, to provide ministers for existing worshipping congregations with the minimum of disturbance to long-standing spiritual and temporal property rights, other than the transfer of those rights out of the hands of the monks and into those of lay tenants and grantees.Where these congregations were in unbeneficed parishes, it is likely that few would otherwise have been able to provide a competent living for a vicar had they instead been restored as beneficed vicarages; where the congregations were in former priory churches or chapels, they could not otherwise have been endowed as parochial chapelries except at a financial cost to the rector of the parish.The expedient remained for three centuries a relatively rare exception to the general rule of parochial provision; not least because (unlike rectories or vicarages) perpetual curacies had no corporate personality, and hence endowments could not be settled on the office rather than the individual.