The following passages in the Saxon laws also show that for some time, at all events, the tithes were actually taken, not in the shape of every tenth sheaf, but exactly in accordance with the plan suggested by the spurious grant of Ethelwulf, by every tenth strip being set aside for the Church in the ploughing.
In the laws of King Ethelred[141] (A.D. 978–1016) [p116] there is a command that every Christian man shall 'pay his tithe justly, always as the plough traverses the tenth "æcer."'
VII. And pite cristenra manna gehpilc.
he his Drihtene his teoðunge. á spa seo sulh þone teoðan æcer gegá. rihtlice gelǽste. be Godes miltse.[142]
And be it known to every Christian man that he pay to his lord his tithe rightly always as the plough traverses the tenth acre, on peril of God's mercy.
Further, in a Latin law of King Ethelred there is the following direction:-
Et præcipimus, ut omnis homo . . . det cyricsceattum, et rectam decimam suam, . . . hoc est, sicut aratrum peragrabit decimam acram.[143]
And we command, that every man . . . give his churchshot, and just tithe, . . . that is, as the plough traverses the tenth acre.
And that this applied to land in villenage as well as to land in demesne is clear from a still earlier law of King Edgar (A.D. 959, 975): 'That every tithe be rendered to the old minster to which the district belongs, and that it be then so paid both from a thane's in-land and from geneat-land, so as the plough traverses it.'