Parish life in mediæval England

by Francis Aidan Gasquet

Tithes are commonly defined as “the tenth part of all fruits and profits justly acquired, owed to God in recognition of His supreme dominion over man, and to be paid to the ministers of the Church.” In the Old Dispensation this recognition was made by Abraham, promised under vow by Jacob, and legally regulated by Moses. In early Christian times, if there is no evidence of the existence of the practice, it is only because the voluntary offerings of the faithful were ample to supply the needs of the Church and its ministers, whilst the community of goods practised by the first Christians hardly allowed the existence of real poverty among them. As the Church grew, its needs, and in particular the less obvious needs of the faithful poor, required some more regular and certain resources than the irregular and voluntary alms of its richer members. So in the Council of Macon in A.D. 585 is found the first express declaration of the Christian obligation of paying tithes, not indeed as a new law, but as the assertion of an admitted Christian principle. In the eighth century these payments began to be regularly made throughout the Western Church, and in England, according to the Saxon Chronicle, in A.D. 855 the father of King Alfred, Ethelwulf of Wessex, is said to have “assigned to the Church the tenth part of his land all over his kingdom for the love of God and his own everlasting weal.” In this it is almost certain that the Chronicle is wrong in the form of expression, and that what Ethelwulf did was to decree the payment of a tithe of the produce, and not hand over a tenth of the land as an endowment of the Church. And here it may be well to remark that there was obviously nothing sacro-sanct about the tenth portion payable for Church purposes. It is merely a portion that is taken to represent what is generally a fair offering to God, and one not too burdensome on those who had to pay. In some cases it might be and indeed, according to custom, was greater or less in different places.

Tithes were usually divided into two kinds—predial and personal; “some coming of the earth,” says the author of Dives and Pauper, “as corn, wine, bestayle, that is brought forth by the land, and such thyngs be clepyd predyales in latyn. Some thyngs comyth oonly of the person, as be merchandy and werkmanschyp, and such bene clepyd personales in latyn.” In these a man is to account his expenses, and then see whether he has gained, and so pay a tithe of his profit; but this may not be done in the case of the predial tithes. In these “he is not to count his expenses, but pay his tithe of all, neither the worst nor the best, but as it comes.”

The Council of Merton, in 1305, set forth a schedule of the things upon which tithes had to be paid by law; this included the cutting and felling of trees and woods, the pasturage of the forests, and the sale of the timber; the profits of vineyards, fisheries, rivers, dovecots, and fish-stews; the fruits of trees, the offspring of animals, the grass harvest, and that of all things sown; of fruits, of warrens of wild animals, of hawking, of gardens and manses, of wool, flax, and wine; of grain and of turf, where it was dug and dried; of pea-fowl, swans, and capons; of geese and ducks; of lambs, calves, and colts, of hedge cuttings, of eggs, of rabbits, of bees with their honey and wax; together with the profits from mills, hunting, handicrafts of all sorts, and every manner of business. As to these, Dives and Pauper, on the authority of canonists, teaches that people should be reminded that tithe is, in the first place, an acknowledgment to God for what He has Himself first given to men. Consequently, all should willingly pay this tribute to Him, and thus continue to deserve His blessings: also, that they should remember that nothing was exempt from this tribute—wind-mills and water-mills, tanneries and fulling-mills, all mines of silver and other metals, all quarries of stone, and all profits of the merchant and the craftsman.

Predial tithe, in a word, was payable on the annual crops of corn, wine, oil, and fruits, etc., and on the natural increase of cattle, including milk and cheese. These predial tithes were distinguished, again, into the Greater tithe—that is, on corn, wine, and wool; and the Lesser tithe on vegetables and fruits, etc. The tithes personal were to be paid on profits of trade and business. All this was acknowledged as sanctioned or ordered by “Divine law or custom.”

All tithes on the land-predial were to be paid to the rector of the parish in which the land was situated or the animals usually fed; all tithes on business occupation, to the parish where the tithe-payer was bound by law to receive the Sacraments. “Tithes personal,” says the author above quoted, “as of merchandise and of crafte, man shall payen to his parish church where he dwelleth and taketh his Sacraments and heareth his service, but tithes predial shall been payed to the church to which the manor and the land belongeth, unless custom be in the contrary.” Difficulties sometimes necessarily arose as to cases where flocks of sheep, etc., were at different times in different parishes, but by episcopal constitutions this was settled on the common-sense principle of dividing the tithe receivable, according to the proportion of the time spent in each parish. It was otherwise in the case of cattle feeding on land in several parishes—“horn with horn,” as the natives called such a practice; in this case the tithe was to be paid to the parish in which the permanent sheds of the cattle at the farmstead were situated. With difficulties of this nature it is not necessary to deal, and the foregoing examples are given merely to show how universal the practice was and how carefully the obligation was fulfilled.

Bishop Peter Quevil, in the Synod of Exeter, held in 1287, lays down several principles which are to guide the authorities in the levying of tithes. It will be remembered that it is from these Constitutions that so much as to the practical working of the Church of England in the thirteenth century is known. From what he says as to tithes, it seems that there was growing up a practice of seeking to deduct the cost of production before counting the tithe. This might seem not unreasonable, but the bishop condemns it, and says that “expenses are by no means to be deducted first.” In the same way he refused to recognise as right any claim to set aside a tenth part of a field and to count as tithe of the whole whatever was grown upon that portion. So, too, in the west country a practice had grown up in certain places for farmers to refuse to pay their dues until the parson had given a harvest feast and a pair of gloves to the workmen. This is forbidden as contrary to law. In the same way, as the bishop says, “many and well-nigh unanswerable questions” arose in the levying of the tithe; but from time to time these were made the subject of synodal directions, as may be seen in Wilkins’ great collection, and in practice these difficulties would appear generally to have answered themselves by the application of a little common sense, assisted by a measure of good-will, which most certainly existed in those days.

It is usually difficult to obtain information about the amounts of the tithe derived from the various sources titheable. Generally the accounts do not set out the items, and give merely the totals. For the diocese of Rochester, however, in 1536, the Valor Ecclesiasticus gives the details in many instances. From these we learn that the tithe generally had a twofold division; for instance, the Rector of Huntingdon, besides £9 a year derived from the rectory house and the rent of 21 acres of pasture, accounted for the tithe of grain and hay, which produced, according to the then money value, 26s. 8d., and the tithe of wool and of lambs, bringing in £4 8s. 9d. He received also an annual average of £17 2s. 5d. from oblations and private donations. In the same way the Vicar of Dartford received £16 13s. 4d. for the tithe of wool and lambs, £2 for the hay tithe, and £25 13s. 4d. for all other tithes and oblations.

A word must now be said about the impropriation of parochial tithes to cathedrals, monasteries, and collegiate establishments. It is very generally stated that this was one of the great abuses of the mediæval Church redressed at the time of the Reformation. Without in any way wishing to defend the practice of assigning tithes to purposes other than the work of the parish in which they were receivable, it should in justice be borne in mind that this was never done without the sanction of the bishop, and upon the condition that the vicar should receive amply sufficient for his support and for the purpose of his parochial work. The notion of “the great robbery” of parishes to endow monasteries, and of the “miserable stipends” on which those who occupied the post of vicars existed or starved, is in view of records not borne out by facts. The “miserable stipends” formed only part of the emoluments of those who served impropriated churches; they had also the lesser tithes and all oblations made to them, and the bishops were bound by law to see, and in fact did see, that their income was sufficient. Moreover, though not very numerous, there are in the episcopal registers a sufficient number of examples to show that the arrangements, made between the impropriators and the vicar, and sanctioned by the bishop, were open to readjustment if necessary. At East Anthony, in the diocese of Exeter, for example, this is exemplified, and the settlement made by Bishop Grandisson is confirmed by Bishop Stapeldon, and the principle is laid down that “the Bishop and his successors have power, should they see fit, to encrease, diminish, or change the amount to be paid to the holder of the vicarage and the conditions upon which it is held.”

It will be useful to take one or two examples of the division of tithes between the impropriator and vicar in an impropriated living. The rectory of Preston, in the county of Kent, for instance, was impropriated to St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, which derived £16 a year from it. Out of this sum 53s. 5d. in money was paid by way of pension to the vicar, and 6s. 8d. in lieu of a certain quantity of corn—in all £3. This, however, was not by any means the whole income enjoyed by the vicar, for he also received from the lesser tithes and personal oblations another £6 15s., bringing his stipend up to the sum of £9 15s. a year, or ample, according to the value of money in the sixteenth century, to live upon. Again, the church of Monketon and that of Birchington, in the same county of Kent, were impropriated to the monastery of Christ Church, Canterbury. From them the monks derived £66 13s. 10d. for their house, and out of this £1 12s. 4d. had to be spent upon the poor of the place, and £12 1s. 8d. was paid to the vicar as his stipend. He received also £11 annually from tithes and oblations, and paid two curates, to serve Birchington and another annexed chapel, £9 13s. 4d. This left him still £13 8s. 4d. as his own annual stipend, which was about three times what he considered sufficient for each of his curates. To take one more example: from the church of Chistlett the monks of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury—who, by the way, were lords of the manor—received from the rectorial tithes £40 a year; the vicar’s tithes, together with the glebe lands, bringing him £30 a year.

It would appear from these instances, which could be multiplied indefinitely, that, except for the fact that tithe was taken from the district where it was raised, the grievance of which so much has been made, is an academic rather than a real one, and one of modern invention rather than one existing in the Middle Ages. That there were complaints occasionally may be allowed. Still, not only were they rare, but in the episcopal registers it may be seen that, in the few instances where they came before the bishop, they were declared to be groundless. They generally arose out of the Visitations when the vicar had been ordered to repair the chancel of his church, or procure some choir-books, or to do some other work for which by law the incumbent was held responsible. The vicar pleaded as his excuse for the dilapidation, or for his inability to do the work required, that the impropriator should be made to do all this, as he took so much of the tithe away from the place. It is rarely indeed that such a claim was considered reasonable, and for the most part the reply was that this had been considered at the time of the original impropriation, and that sufficient had been allowed to the vicar to carry out these legal obligations, and that all things had been made fitting and all repairs seen to before the vicarage had been established.