PREFACE.
In my former[1] as also in my present work, I have taken Selden’s “History of Tithes,” ed. 1618, as my chief authority. I adopted his views on the interpretation of King Ethelwulf’s charter as having been the first legal title deeds of granting tithes to the clergy.
After carefully consulting the best authorities, especially Mr. Kemble, Mr. Haddan, and Bishop Stubbs, I have in my present work adopted their views, that Ethelwulf granted a tenth part of his lands and not the tithes of the lands of his kingdom.
I have also considered Archbishop Egbert’s alleged canon for the tripartite division of tithes as an anachronism.
In preparing my former work, I laboured under the great disadvantage of residing too far away from a good public library, where I could consult the best and most recent authorities on the subject.
Just as the sheets of my former work passed through the press, a third edition of Lord Selborne’s work, “A Defence of the Church of England against Disestablishment,” was published. And in the following year, 1888, appeared his “Ancient Facts and Fictions concerning Churches and Tithes.”
I could only then refer in the briefest manner in my former book to his first work. But his two works contain so many erroneous and fallacious statements, that I thought it a public duty to expose and refute them.
With this view and in order to prepare materials, I had taken steps to have access to the Library and to the manuscripts in the Manuscript Department of the British Museum.
I had not gone far with my work when I found it absolutely necessary to rewrite the whole of my “History of Tithes,” and to make the present work, as it really is, quite a new one.