While Lord Selborne traduced the character of Degge, “as a not particularly distinguished lawyer,” he has not a word to say against Henry Wharton’s legion of blunders. I shall prove that Sir Simon Degge does not deserve the above character.
Sir Simon Degge was a judge of West Wales in 1660; recorder of Derby in 1661; Knighted in 1669; a bencher of the Inner Temple; in 1673 was high sheriff of Derbyshire. His “Parson’s Counsellor and Law of Tithes” was a leading text book for many years. He dedicated it to a bishop, and in his sixth and last edition in his lifetime, he writes: “To the parsons, vicars, and the rest of the reverend clergy of the Church of England. Your kind acceptance of the former impressions of the book has encouraged me this sixth time to appear in public.” He died in 1704.
In this edition he says, “Nor is there any doubt but that by the Canon Law the poor ought to have a share in the revenues of the church, which was all I endeavoured to prove.”[242]
Lord Selborne quotes his closing admonition from the seventh revised edition of 1820, i.e. 116 years after Degge’s death: “By all which it appears that originally the poor had a share of the tithe.”[243] Degge never wrote these words, and it is not fair nor just to a dead author to publish a garbled edition of his work, and to quote against him from this garbled edition. I have given above his own words from his last edition published in 1703.
The 13 Eliz. c. xx. enacts that the lessor absent above eighty days in a year should lose one year’s profits of the benefice, to be distributed by the Ordinary among the poor of the parish.
A subsequent statute (18 Eliz. c. xi. s. 7) confirms the above; and provides that the Ordinary shall grant sequestration of the profits, and in default that every parishioner may retain his tithes; and the churchwarden will take the other profits of the benefice to distribute among the poor.
The rights of the Poor to a portion of the tithes were given by (1) The Act of 1014; (2) 15 Rich. II. c. vi.; (3) 13 Eliz. c. xx.; (4) 18 Eliz. c. xi. s. 7.
When we come to the Act for the relief of the Poor, (43 Eliz. c. ii.) it provides for the taxation of every occupier of lands, houses, tithes impropriate, propriation of tithes, coal mines and underwoods. But it does not take any portion of the tithes for the support of the poor; hence it is argued that the poor had no claim to any portion of the tithes. The fact is, that previously there was no machinery by which their claims could have been carried out. The parochial incumbents were trustees of their property, and as such had many claims on their incomes, the poor had to put up with whatever the trustees wished to give them. And finally the trustees closed upon all the tithes as their own.
There is a remarkable instance on record, in which certain parochial rectors closed upon all the tithes of their parishes.
Henry de Blois, Bishop of Winchester, founded the Hospital of St. Cross, near Winchester, by his charter dated A.D. 1137, in which he named sixteen churches, with their appurtenances and appendages, with which he endowed the Hospital. The commuted value of the tithes of these sixteen parish churches is £12,006 per annum. Now, the Hospital has only the tithe-rent charges, amounting to £3,462 per annum, of four out of the sixteen. The Hospital lost all the tithes of twelve parishes, and the twelve rectors are now in possession of them, giving in lieu the insignificant sum of £44 per annum, in the aggregate, as pensions.