Owing to the pomp and luxuries of the hierarchy and monastic bodies, a religious revolutionary wave passed over this country in the thirteenth century. The main indications were, (1) the Lateran Council in 1215; (2) the appearance in England in 1217 of the Dominican, and in 1224 of the Franciscan preaching friars; (3) the Mortmain Act of 1279. The religious mania for building and richly endowing monasteries commenced to decline in Edward I.’s reign. The Franciscan order was founded in A.D. 1208, and the Dominican in 1215. Pope Innocent III. approved of both orders in 1215. The ruling idea of these mendicant friars was the elevation of poverty to a virtue; but, strange to say, that before they were in existence many years they became the richest orders in Christendom. Wherever they were located they became the strongest supporters of the papacy, and for two hundred years members of these orders occupied the papal throne.
The friars in England, by their powerful and zealous preaching, had become very popular, to the great loss of the parochial clergy, who were steeped in ignorance and indolence. In their sermons and pamphlets, the friars strongly advised the people to pay no tithes to the parsons; that tithes were but alms, and may be given to any charitable use, and that the parsons had no parochial rights to them. The result was that the people gave the tithes to the friars, both personal and predial, as alms. The parish priests seriously felt the diminution of their revenues. Convocation, of course, moved vigorously in the matter.[267]
The begging friars knew how to draw water to their own fountains, and succeeded well. But “Holy Church” proved too powerful for them. They were pronounced heretics for preaching against the payment of tithes to the parsons, and for receiving the parsons’ tithes themselves. But those cunning, crafty friars were only changing the course of the “alms” into their own channel. Apostolic poverty was written high on their banners, and yet they soon surpassed the parsons in luxury and indolence.
A truly sincere and honest Englishman then appeared on the scene. John Wickliffe, rector of Lutterworth, who died A.D. 1384, preached the same views about tithes as the friars did. He strongly asserted that tithes were only alms, and may be given for any religious use, or retained, according to the will of the donor. The Church, of course, considered his statement rank heresy, and a council of ecclesiastics condemned his opinions as heretical. The cry, “the Church in danger,” was then heard as loudly as in our own times whenever any salutary changes for her improvement have been suggested, or when scandals and abuses are attempted to be removed. The most important and latest example occurred in 1840, when the so-called Cathedral Act was passed.[268] Oxford and Cambridge Universities petitioned Parliament against this Act. Oxford took the lead and strongly protested against all church reforms and improvements originating within the Church (which our leading statesmen then advocated) by means of a better and an equal distribution of church revenues. Oxford urged in 1840 that a large State grant should be made to the Church in order to supply the existing deficiencies of religious instruction. This was simply an impertinent application for State aid when the revenues of the Church were wasted in a disgraceful manner by her own officers. The twenty-six archbishops and bishops appointed before 1836, had received five and a half millions of money from their episcopal revenues alone. Counsel were actually engaged, who appeared at the bar of the House of Lords to oppose the Cathedral Act of 1840, which has turned out one of the most beneficial acts for the amelioration of the Church which our leading statesmen could then devise. Sir R. Inglis, M.P. for Oxford, called the Bishops Act of 1836 and the Cathedral Act of 1840, “Confiscations which were leading to the utter destruction of the Church of England.” Let us compare this statement with that made in Parliament in 1882 by Sir John Mowbray, who now represents the same constituency. “The Ecclesiastical Commissioners,” said Sir John, “augmented the value of livings in upwards of 4,700 out of 15,000 parishes into which England and Wales are divided. From 1836 to 1882 they added £19,000,000 to the property of the Church, besides eliciting £4,000,000 from private sources in the shape of contributions, making a total of £23,000,000, which represents an annual income of £690,000.”[269]
In the 43rd Report (1891) of the Commissioners, the following statement appears: “During a period of fifty years, from 1840 (when the Common Fund was first created) to 31st October, 1890, the Commissioners have augmented and endowed upwards of 5,700 benefices with annual payments charged on the fund, or by the annexations of lands, tithes, etc., or by the grant of capital sums for the erection of parsonage houses, etc., to the value of about £781,400 per annum, in perpetuity, equivalent to a capital sum of about £23,469,000. The value of benefactions from private sources, of lands, tithes, stock, cash, etc., secured to various benefices, and met for the most part by grants from the Commissioners, exceeds £164,340 per annum in perpetuity, equivalent to a permanent increase of endowment of say £4,930,000, apart from a sum of about £26,000 per annum, contributed by benefactors to meet the Commissioners’ grants for curates in mining districts. Thus the total increase in the incomes of benefices made by the Commissioners or resulting from the benefactions accepted, and met by them, exceeds £971,700 per annum, and may be taken to represent a capital sum of about £29,179,000.”[270]
The foregoing statement is the best proof as to the absurd and short-sighted remarks of Sir. R. Inglis and his followers in 1840. The net income of the Common Fund is now over one million per annum. It has taken more than 125 Acts of Parliament directly and indirectly relating to the Church, and some thousands of Orders in Council to drag the State Church out of the sink of abuses in which it was found in 1832 when the first Reform Act was passed.
There were also grave and serious abuses in the Church in Wickliffe’s days. He was as hostile to the Pope’s supremacy as he was to the compulsory payment of tithes. He held that kings were superior to popes, and therefore that appeals from spiritual to temporal tribunals were just, right, and lawful. Time proved that his opinion on this point was correct. He must have been a man of great boldness to question in those days the supremacy of the popes. We, living in the end of the nineteenth century, can take a historical survey of the various changes and struggles which occurred, as regards the popes’ supremacy, since Wickliffe’s time. He utterly detested the monks for their luxurious and worldly habits. The parochial clergy also did not escape his lash. He preferred the good old custom of one paying one’s tithes, according to one’s own free-will, to good and godly men, who were able to preach the gospel; and he condemned in his complaint to King Richard II. and his Parliament, the practice of compelling people to pay tithes.[271]
If we examine the charters which appropriated tithes to monasteries, we shall find that the tithes are stated therein to be given as alms in perpetuity. As regards tithes given to rectors and vicars of parishes, the usual style of the grant ran thus: “The tithes were granted as free, pure, and perpetual alms for ever.” The words in italics are most remarkable. Richard de Clare, Earl of Herts, gave the rectorial tithes of Brenchley and Yalding, in Kent, to Tunbridge Priory in pure and perpetual alms. Robert de Crevequer, founder of Leeds Abbey about 1137, gave the canons there in free and perpetual alms, all the churches on his estates, with their glebe lands, tithes, and advowsons. King John had appropriated the rectory of Bapchild, in Kent, to the Dean and Chapter of Chichester, on the recommendation of the Bishop of Chichester, to be held in free, pure, and perpetual alms. The chapter received £437 a year tithe-rent charge; vicar, £167. William de Auberville, in 1192, gave to the priory of West Langdon the rectories of Oxney and of St. Mary’s, Liddon, in pure and perpetual alms.[272] I have given here only a few examples to show how the tithes had been granted by the owners to parishes and monasteries. Yet in the face of these grants, episcopal, cathedral and parochial, incumbents claim the tithes as their own exclusive property. But Wickliffe and the friars were much better judges of the facts than church defenders at the present time. They truly asserted that the tithes were by custom originally given as alms or free-will offerings without any compulsion whatsoever; and Wickliffe gave some additional information, viz., that they were given only to good and godly men who were able to preach the gospel. The fact that the landowners had given their tithes for any religious use to monks who were mostly laymen, to nuns, to the religious military orders, to foreign monasteries, I say that this proves to demonstration that tithes were not due by divine or legal right to the evangelical priesthood; that tithes were property which could have been and were disposed of, like any other kind of property, to whatever use the benefactor or owner wished. But by clerical pressure at home, by threats of anathemas and excommunications, by the power of the confessional box, and by ecclesiastical pressure from Rome, the English landowners, and also those who paid personal tithes, had slowly come round to the practice of paying them to the parochial clergy not as their exclusive income, but as trustees reserving an adequate portion of the tithes for their own personal use, and dividing the remainder among the poor and stranger, and for repairing the church. But the trustees appropriated all the tithes to their own personal use, and relieved the poor and repaired the church out of alms and contributions of the parishioners. These are the real facts of this disgraceful case of clerical trustees misappropriating the tithes to their own personal use, and this misappropriation has been going on at least 500 years, which gives them a prescriptive right to all the tithes. I have already sketched out how this misappropriation commenced, and the inability of the poor to obtain redress.
The following extract, taken from one of the charters granting tithes to monasteries, indicates how tithes were given:—