4. THE IMPROPRIATED CHURCHES
In regard to the external relations of the monastic houses, a word must be said about their dealings with the parochial churches appropriated to their use. Either by the gift of the king or that of some lay patron, many churches to which they had the right of presentation became united with monasteries, and a considerable portion of the parish revenues was applied to the support of the religious, to keeping up adequate charity, or “hospitality” as it was called in the neighbourhood, or other such objects. The practice of impropriation has been regarded by most writers as a manifest abuse, and there is no call to attempt to defend it. The practice was not confined, however, to the monks, or to the action of lay people who found therein an easy way to become benefactors of some religious house. Bishops and other ecclesiastics, as founders of colleges and hospitals, were quite as ready to increase the revenues of these establishments in the same way.
In order that a church might be legally appropriated to a religious establishment the approval of the bishop had to be obtained, and the special reasons for the donation by the lay patron set forth. If these were considered satisfactory, the formal permission of the Holy See was, at any rate after the twelfth century, necessary for the completion of the transaction. The monastery became the patron of the benefice thus attached to it, and had to secure that the spiritual needs of the parish were properly attended to by the vicars whom they presented to the cure. These vicars were paid an adequate stipend, usually settled by episcopal authority.
Roughly speaking, the present distinction between a vicarage and a rectory shows where churches had been appropriated to a religious house or other public body, and where they remained merely parochial. The vicar was the priest appointed at a fixed stipend by the corporation which took the rectorial tithes. It has been calculated that at least a third part of the tithes of the richest benefices in England were appropriated either in part or wholly to religious and secular bodies, such as colleges, military orders, lay hospitals, guilds, convents; even deans, cantors, treasurers, and chancellors of cathedral bodies were also largely endowed with rectorial tithes. In this way, at the dissolution of the religious houses under Henry VIII., the greater tithes of an immense number of parish churches, now known as vicarages, passed into the hands of the noblemen and others who obtained grants of the property of the suppressed monasteries.
Whilst the impropriation of churches to monastic establishments undoubtedly took money out of the locality for the benefit of the religious, it is but fair to recognise that in many ways the benefit thus obtained was returned with interest. Not only did the monks furnish the ranks of the secular priesthood with youths who had received their early education in the cloister school or at the almonry; but the churches and vicarages of places impropriated were the special care of the religious. An examination of these churches frequently reveals the fact that the religious bodies did not hesitate to spend large sums of money upon the rebuilding and adornment of structures which belonged to them in this way.
HENRY VII GIVING CHARTER TO MONKS AT WESTMINSTER HALL