A history of tithes

by Henry William Clarke

CHAPTER XIV.
INFEUDATIONS—EXEMPTIONS FROM PAYMENT OF TITHES.

Infeudations are the conveyances of the perpetual right of tithes to laymen.

The Third Council of Lateran, held in A.D. 1180, was the first to forbid infeudations. Such conveyances, although frequent on the Continent, were not so in England until the general dissolution of monasteries. Very little of the lands, tenements, and tithes in possession of the alien priories was given away or sold to laymen when Parliament had at various times alienated the same. The properties were bestowed on other monasteries and on colleges for religious and educational purposes. In the latter case, the owners were clergymen. This was not so with the enormous properties of the dissolved monasteries and chantries which Parliament had given to Henry VIII. and Edward VI. The amount of confiscated property was about £250,000 per annum. If this vast property had been placed under the management of Commissioners, it would realize an annual income at the present time, of eight and a half millions, quite sufficient to defray all the expenses which are now paid by the ratepayers for the maintenance of the poor in England and Wales.

I shall deal here only with the tithes, which form but a small part of the immense properties which were then confiscated, and which Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth lavishly bestowed on the numerous poor hungry court favourites and court flunkeys, who were the ancestors of many who are now high in the peerage. The War of the Roses had swept away the ancient nobility of England, and in their places sprang up a crowd of poor hungry men who surrounded Henry VIII. and his children. Nothing could possibly turn out more opportune for them than the confiscation of the vast monastic properties which Parliament handed over to Henry VIII. and Edward VI. to do with them as they thought proper. What could possibly be better for these poor court sycophants? We have only to open out the county histories of the country, and there we shall find very sad accounts of the manner in which the vast monastic estates had been given away to the ancestors of some of the aristocracy. Archbishops, bishops, and chapters had to surrender to the Crown numerous manors which had been given by Anglo-Saxon kings to their predecessors out of folcland which was the national property of the Anglo-Saxons. These manors were afterwards given away by the Crown to these poor hungry court favourites, and thus formed the title-deeds of many aristocratic families who now carry high heads in the country.

The 32 Henry VIII. c. viii. gave the king power (1) to grant the properties to whom he wished; (2) that such persons should be free from the payment of tithes if such lands had been exempted previous to the dissolution; and (3) that the lay-owners of monastic lands could claim tithes from them. So, then, laymen who claimed tithes were called impropriators, because they were improper persons to receive them. But the same may have been said of the lay-monks, nuns, military orders, etc., who had at one time been in the receipt of tithes.

The total tithe-rent charge gross is £4,053,985; of this, lay impropriators receive £962,290, or a little less than one-fourth. Therefore we may take it as a general statement that laymen receive about one-fourth of the tithes. To this must be added the large estates which are tithe-free, and from which enhanced rents are received.

Exemption from Paying Tithes by Religious Houses.

All abbots, priors, and other heads of monasteries had originally paid tithes. But Pope Paschal II. exempted generally all the religiosi from tithes on lands which were under their own management. About A.D. 1160, Pope Adrian IV. limited this exemption to the Templars, Hospitallers, and Cistercians, who alone were exempted from paying tithes for lands which were then, but not afterwards, acquired under their own immediate management. The privilege did not extend to lands let to farmers, but only to those which they occupied before the Council of Lateran A.D. 1215, which confirmed the above exemptions. A fourth order—the Premonstratensian—was added by Pope Innocent III. These were called the four privileged orders. After the passing of the Mortmain Act, which gave a terrible blow to the monastic bodies, the privileged order of Cistercians purchased bulls of exemption from paying tithes for their lands, tenements, and possessions let to farmers, and also for the lands which they acquired since 1215. These bulls had the force of law in the English canon law, and were allowed in actions for tithes. This objectionable mode of purchasing bulls of exemption was put a stop to in 1400 by 2 Henry IV. c. iv. which subjected the purchaser to premunire.[266] The Statute of Premunire was passed in 1393 (16 Richard II. c. v.) against “Procuring at Rome or elsewhere, any translations, processes, excommunications, bulls, instruments, or other things which touch the king, against him, his crown and realm, and all persons aiding or assisting therein shall be put out of the king’s protection, their lands and goods forfeited to the king’s use, and they shall be attached by their bodies to answer to the king and his council, or process præmunire facias shall be made out against them, as in any other cases of provisors.”

The lands of the four privileged orders which were thus exempted from paying tithes, are exempted up to the present day, because at the dissolution of the monasteries, the 31 Henry VIII. c. xiii., provided that all lands held by the monasteries, and exempted from tithes, should also be exempted when vested in the Crown, and the same Act extended the exemption to all those who should become possessors of such Crown property. There is also 2 Edward VI. c. xiii. This explains the fact that some of the present holders of monastic property pay no tithes; some do; and others are tithe-owners.