Lands set aside for the Church of England in Canada.
Established by the Constitutional Act of 1791 "for the support and maintenance of a Protestant clergy," they amounted to one-seventh of all land grants. They became controversial after 1815, as some denominations demanded equal reserves and others argued that the lands should serve general public purposes independent of religion. An imperial act of 1827 allowed for the sale of one-fourth of the reserved land; in 1840 another imperial act forbade the creation of any new reserves. The reserves were finally secularized in 1854.