A history of tithes

by Henry William Clarke

“The undoubted legislation Acts,” he further adds, “of King Ethelred’s reign (viz., the Ordinances of Woodstock and Wantage), and also that to which the Latin date A.D. 1008 is prefixed, have general titles in the Anglo-Saxon text, signifying that they were passed by the king in the national Witenagemót. But the title of the document numbered IX.[203] by Mr. Thorpe, is very different.”[204] This is not correct, for the law numbered IX. in Thorpe’s, has this title, “This is one of the Ordinances which the King of the English composed with the counsel of his Witan.”[205] Now, let us compare this title with those of (1) Woodstock, (2) Wantage, and (3) the Law of A.D. 1008, which Lord Selborne admits to be genuine. (1) “This is the Ordinance which King Ethelred and his Witan ordained.”[206] (2) “These are the laws which King Ethelred and his Witan have decreed at Wantage.”[207] (3) “This is the Ordinance that the King of the English and both the ecclesiastical and lay Witan have chosen and advised.”[208] These facts completely refute Lord Selborne’s statements. The general title to the Church Grith law, with the name of the King and Witan, is as strong as that of any of the admitted legal Acts stated by Lord Selborne. Again, if we compare the title of the Church Grith with that of Athelstan’s law, it is even stronger and in much better legal form. Here it is: “I, Athelstan, King, with the counsel of Wulfhelm, archbishop, and of my other bishops, make known to the reeves,” etc.[209] Selden, Kemble, and Bishop Stubbs admit, but Lord Selborne denies, the above to be a genuine law of King Athelstan. Lord Selborne criticises the titles of Anglo-Saxon laws made nearly 1,000 years ago in the same critical and technical manner as he would one passed at the present time. Here is an example. The Church Grith law begins thus: “This is one of the ordinances which the King of the English composed with the counsel of his Witan.” Here is Lord Selborne’s note: “This form of expression is singular. I do not think that anything exactly like it is to be found elsewhere.”[210] The usual style is, “This is the ordinance,” etc., or, “These are the ordinances,” etc. But there is really no practical difference.

VI. The next witness is John Bromton, abbot of Jervaulx in Yorkshire, who lived towards the end of the fourteenth century. His history comprises the period from A.D. 588 to A.D. 1198. Brompton copied his collection of Anglo-Saxon laws[211] from the Latin version. But he alone has the text of the Ordinances passed at Habam. He has four of the nine laws of Ethelred.

Lord Selborne says: “Bromton knew no laws of the reign of King Ethelred, except those of Woodstock and Wantage, the Treaty with the Norwegian kings—Anlaf, Justin, and Guthmund (all purely secular), and the Ordinances of Habam, which he only preserved.”[212]

The Ordinances of Habam are found only in Bromton’s history, and they contain one important provision as to tithes and other Church dues. Art. 4: “And we charge that every man, for the love of God and all His saints, give church-scot, and his rightful tithe as it stood in the days of our ancestors, when it stood best; that is, as the plough shall pass through the tenth acre, and let every customary due be paid for the love of God to our mother-church to which it is near. And let no one take away from God what belongs to God, and our ancestors have granted.”[213]

This Ordinance would indicate a spirit of revolt against the payment of tithes, and that the provisions made by previous kings for their payment were set at defiance. I do not agree with Lord Selborne that this Ordinance grants all the tithes and dues to the nearest mother-church, and thereby cancels or disregards Edgar’s law as to the payment of one-third of the tithes to the manorial church with burial ground.[214] The revolt about paying the customary dues or tithes was against payment to the mother-churches and not to the manorial churches. This is a vital distinction as indicating an early revolt against the spiritual parochial endowments having been given to churches which did no spiritual duties in the manorial parishes for them.

Owing to the same spirit of setting the tithe-law at defiance, we find a re-enactment of Edgar’s stern law to enforce the payment of tithes in the 6th article of the Church Grith, and a second re-enactment by Cnute. It would be most unreasonable, and indeed absurd, to assume that the Habam Ordinances ignored the claims of the manorial churches to a third of the parochial tithes. The manorial churches in the beginning of the 11th century were too numerous to be deprived of their portions of the tithes, especially in 1014, when Ethelred, after returning from exile, tried to conciliate the clergy.

Dr. Lingard’s opinion is valuable upon this point. “It was probably thought,” he says, “that a law so precise (as Edgar’s), and so severe—a forfeiture of eight-tenths of the crop—would insure for the future the exact payment of the tithe; but its subsequent re-enactment in the reign of Ethelred,[215] and again in the reign of Canute, will justify a suspicion that in many places its provisions were set at defiance, and in many but imperfectly enforced.”[216]

Mr. Fuller, in “Our Title-Deeds,” regards Dr. Lingard’s silence about the Church Grith law as “inexplicable in every way.” The above quotation, as regards this law, clearly proves the charge to be groundless.

As Bromton had copied his Anglo-Saxon laws from the old Latin version, he has not fourteen of the fifteen laws which were omitted in that version.[217]

“It may be asserted,” says Lord Selborne, “without risk of error, that no part of the Worcester volume, Nero, A. 1 of the Cottonian collection was written before the end of Cnute’s reign, who died in 1035, for the volume begins with Cnute’s laws, which are followed by those of Edgar, Alfred, Athelstan, Edmund, Ethelred; and after them Grith and Mund, and Church Grith:—all in Anglo-Saxon, without break, and in that order.”[218]