In 960, King Edgar passed his tithe laws with and by the advice of his Witan, who included the Archbishop of Canterbury, and bishops. The population then was about 800,000.
Let us now take a glance at the number of bishops in England and Wales up to the time of the Norman Conquest.
Kent had Canterbury and Rochester.
East Saxons: London. East Angles: Dunwich and Elmham.
West Saxons: Dorchester (transferred to Winchester), Sherborne, Mercia (including eight counties), Lichfield, Leicester, Sidnacester (or Lindsey), Worcester, Hereford.
South Saxons: Selsey.
Northumberland: York, Lindisfarne, Hexham.
Sixteen bishops in England and 4 in Wales in A.D. 705, when the population was only 160,000, i.e. a bishop for every 8,000. By absorption only 14 bishops in England, 4 in Wales, and 1 in the Isle of Man in 1066, or one bishop for every 66,000 of the population.
Lord Selborne, Bishop Stubbs, and Mr. Haddan[172] say the manorial churches, to which Edgar’s laws granted one-third of the tithes, were the type of our own modern parish churches. This I grant. It is the first Act of Parliament by which they received tithes. By custom the mother churches originally received tithes. But it was not by custom, but by an Act of Parliament passed at Andover in A.D. 960, that the type of our modern parishes received one-third of the tithes of the parochial limits.