Now, it appears to me that this so-called “mythical story” was not unreasonable, (1) because King Offa enacted the payment of tithes in his own kingdom in 787; and (2) because it was a tenth of his own property which was granted. It certainly was not a general enactment for the payment of tithes throughout his kingdom.
Kemble says on this point, “I think that in this case he [Bromton] has probability on his side, if we restrict the grant to Offa’s demesne lands, or to a release of a tenth of the dues payable to the King on folcland.”[88] This is exactly my opinion also.
Dean Prideaux is not correct when he states, “This law of Offa was that which first gave the Church a civil right in tithes in this land, by way of property and inheritance, and enabled the clergy to gather and recover them as their legal due by the coercion of the civil power.”[89] This dignitary of the Church, so often quoted, polluted the tithe question with so much fiction and ill-digested conclusions that he has made the true history of tithes very embarrassing. But there is one comfort that the light which the latest researches have thrown upon the whole tithe question has completely dissipated the numerous fictions which surround it.
It is erroneously stated that when tithes originated in England there were no poor, although our Lord says we should always have the poor among us; and that the owner of the soil was bound to support all that were born on his soil; that they worked and lived for him, and therefore there was no necessity for making provision for the poor out of the tithes. Now on this special point we have overwhelming genuine documentary evidence that provision was distinctly made for the poor in the first mention of tithes being paid in England. “It is not lawful,” says Archbishop Theodore, “to pay tithes except to the poor and strangers.” This is the first instance in which tithes are mentioned in English writings. It is therefore wrong to say that there were no poor in this country when the custom of paying tithes commenced in England. Theodore’s statement was written not later than A.D. 686. The second reference to tithes is in Bede’s “Eccl. Hist.,” where he states that Bishop Eadbert gave (A.D. 686) one-tenth of his own goods to the poor.[90] “Not tithes in particular,” says Lord Selborne, “but all church property of every kind was from early times, and down even to the fourteenth century, described as the patrimony of the poor. The poor were always, and almost must be in an especial degree, objects of the Christian ministry.”[91]
In Anglo-Saxon times the State did not provide for the poor. It demanded that every man should be answerable for himself in a mutual bond of association with his neighbour, or should place himself under the protection of some lord. The man without means or protection was treated as an outlaw. This was heathenism and not Christianity. The grand humanitarian, philanthropic principles of the Christian religion were taught the Saxon heathen from the very first by the Christian missionaries. Unquestionably these missionaries found poor, outcast Anglo-Saxons to whom they preached the Gospel, and assisted them with their charity and protection. This was the special function of the bishops and their clergy in their dioceses, and monks in their monasteries. When they appealed to the people for their voluntary offerings of tithes, the strongest point in that appeal was for means to help the poor and strangers, and so tithes went partly towards poor rates, partly towards a church rate to repair the edifice, and partly towards the clerical sustentation fund. These were originally the three distinct functions of tithes in England. There is sufficient evidence for a reasonable conviction on this much-disputed point of the division of tithes.
CHAPTER VII.
KING ETHELWULF’S ALLEGED GRANT OF TITHES.
“But this establishment,” says Prideaux, “reached no further than the kingdom of Mercia, over which Offa reigned, till Ethelwulf, about sixty years after, enlarged it for the whole realm of England. And because hereon the civil right of tithes in this land had its main foundation, and this matter hath been much perplexed by those who have wrote of it, both pro and con, I shall for the clearing of it from all objections and difficulties raised about it, here give a thorough and full account of the whole matter,” etc.[92] This erroneous view has been long exploded.
It is amusing to read what Prideaux calls Selden’s able and learned history of tithes: “Mr. Selden’s wild chimera,” and again, “his wild conceit”; but nothing could be wilder than his own conceit on the Divine origin of tithes in the Church of England. Another Dean—Comber—also wrote strongly against Mr. Selden’s “Tithes.”[93]
Mr. Selden had taken Ethelwulf’s charter passed in a Witenagemót, A.D. 844, as the first legal title-deed of granting tithes to the clergy. In this view he was followed by Prideaux, Hume, Collier, Rapin, Milman, Echard, and others.