A HISTORY OF TITHES

A
HISTORY OF TITHES

BY THE
REV. HENRY WILLIAM CLARKE, B.A.
Trin. Coll., Dub.
Author of “The Past and Present Revenues of the Church of England in Wales,” and
“The Public Landed Endowments of the Church in Anglo-Saxon Times.”

SECOND EDITION

London
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1894

PREFACE.

In my former[1] as also in my present work, I have taken Selden’s “History of Tithes,” ed. 1618, as my chief authority. I adopted his views on the interpretation of King Ethelwulf’s charter as having been the first legal title deeds of granting tithes to the clergy.

After carefully consulting the best authorities, especially Mr. Kemble, Mr. Haddan, and Bishop Stubbs, I have in my present work adopted their views, that Ethelwulf granted a tenth part of his lands and not the tithes of the lands of his kingdom.

I have also considered Archbishop Egbert’s alleged canon for the tripartite division of tithes as an anachronism.

In preparing my former work, I laboured under the great disadvantage of residing too far away from a good public library, where I could consult the best and most recent authorities on the subject.

Just as the sheets of my former work passed through the press, a third edition of Lord Selborne’s work, “A Defence of the Church of England against Disestablishment,” was published. And in the following year, 1888, appeared his “Ancient Facts and Fictions concerning Churches and Tithes.”

I could only then refer in the briefest manner in my former book to his first work. But his two works contain so many erroneous and fallacious statements, that I thought it a public duty to expose and refute them.

With this view and in order to prepare materials, I had taken steps to have access to the Library and to the manuscripts in the Manuscript Department of the British Museum.

I had not gone far with my work when I found it absolutely necessary to rewrite the whole of my “History of Tithes,” and to make the present work, as it really is, quite a new one.

I had not only to deal with Lord Selborne’s works, but also with historians, who wrote private letters to parsons against the threefold division of tithes, which letters contradicted statements made in their own histories which favoured the tripartite division of tithes, and the Church Grith law of A.D. 1014.

The tithe disputes in Wales brought forward crude, erroneous, misleading and ill-digested statements about the origin and history of tithes in this country. “Our Title Deeds,” by the Rev. M. Fuller, is a most remarkable specimen of that class.

Directly and indirectly, I have dealt with all these matters in my present work. I mention these facts in order to indicate the absolute necessity I was under of rewriting the whole of my history.

And now in reference to Lord Selborne’s works, which, owing to his high position, have influenced the opinions of many, one unsound mode of reasoning runs through many parts of them, especially his “Ancient Facts and Fictions.” I mean his inferences from negative evidence. And these inferences are so cleverly and shrewdly expressed, in the special pleading style, that although I knew they were wrong, yet I found it extremely difficult to prove how they were wrong, because they were based on negative evidence. This mode of reasoning in the hands of a shrewd, clever lawyer is most powerful, misleading and embarrassing; and is at the same time most difficult to answer from the nature of the evidence. In order to elucidate my meaning, I shall give one out of many examples. He wants, in support of a certain cause, to sweep away the Church Grith law (A.D. 1014) which enacts the tripartite division of tithes, and this is his mode of reasoning:—“Selden and Spelman were well acquainted with the Worcester (Cottonian) manuscript [he calls it “The Worcester Volume” on the same page]; and, as neither of them made mention of this Church Grith document, it may be inferred that they did not regard it as having the character or the authority of a law.”[2] The reader of the book would naturally suppose that Selden and Spelman had seen the “document,” although it is an unquestionable fact that they had never seen it, simply because it was never in Sir Robert Cotton’s library during his lifetime for them to see. I could not have proved this point if I were not aided by the official catalogue of 1632.

I have often thought that Lord Selborne’s error arose in his assuming that all the manuscripts which are now in the Worcester volume, Nero, A. 1, were in the same volume when Selden and Spelman consulted it during the life of Sir Robert. If I am right, it is a clear proof how unsound it is to draw inferences from negative evidence, and how careless he must have been in not having made himself quite certain that the “document” was in the volume for them to see. As this is a vital point in the discussion, I have devoted the whole of [chapter x.] in defence of this Church Grith law. But the most unfair part adopted by the opponents of this law is, that whilst they parade, with a great flourish of trumpets, the opinions of Price and Wilkins against the law, they carefully omit material evidence furnished by Archdeacon Hale, which is dead against their opinions (see [pp. 107, 108]).

Since my former work was published, there appeared in July, 1887, the Parliamentary Return of the Tithes Commutation of 1836. I have dealt with this important information in [Chapter XIX.], and also in the [Appendices].

In Chapter [XVII.], I have given a very full account of the enormous revenues received from tithes and house rentals by the incumbents of parishes in the City and Liberties of London for the spiritual work of small populations, and which revenues have become a public scandal because valuable endowments are thus wasted.

The “Redemption” of tithes is dealt with in [Chapter XVIII.]

I have inserted in [Chapter XX.] the Tithe Act of 1891.

[Appendix F] contains a summary by counties of the rent charges of England and Wales, taken from the return of 1887.

[Appendix G] is an analysis of the Tithe Commutation Return as regards (1) the number of old parishes; (2) parishes appropriated and their vicars; (3) parishes which had not been appropriated. Nearly one-half (or 3,864) in England were appropriated. It was worse in Wales, for of 834 old parishes, 468 were appropriated. When we add the sinecure rectories, pluralities and non-residence of incumbents, we can form a correct conclusion as regards the cause of the present position of the Church of England in Wales.

In addition to the above, I have also given the number of parishes in receipt of lands and money payments in lieu of tithes by numerous Inclosure Acts.

But the most important statistics are given at [page 257] as regards the gross aggregate amount of the “Revenues of the Church of England.” Hitherto, very small and misleading amounts of these revenues have been given. But the Parliamentary Return, made up in the office of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and just published, has now given the public, for the first time, a generally correct idea of the gross annual amount, from permanent sources, of these revenues, and also the number of benefices and parsonage houses with their rateable value, which is much less than their actual value.

The Return is defective; (1) because it is framed on values in 1886, and (2) it omits the large fluctuating income—about a million a year—from fees, pew-rents, and Easter offerings. Correctly, the gross income in 1890, was £6,825,730. But the permanent income capitalized equals £140,000,000.

My best thanks are due to Walter de Gray Birch, Esq., of the MSS. Department of the British Museum, for his kind assistance and courtesy; also to the officials connected with the Library.

Henry William Clarke.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

When engaged in writing the History of the Rise, Progress, and Present Position of the Ecclesiastical Commission for England, I had to deal with the endowments of the Church. My desire was to collect facts as to their origin in the Christian Church generally, and in the Church of England particularly. In searching after truth and facts, I experienced no little difficulty in arriving at correct conclusions, from the various contradictory statements on the subject. One party saw in the payment of tithes a continuity of old Scriptural laws in the Christian Church, payment which Christians were bound to make, whether they liked it or not; passages from the Old and New Testaments were distorted, and forced meanings given to them; apostolical constitutions were forged in support of their payment. What Isidore did as regards his forged decretals we find other writers did as regards tithes, and sham miracles are paraded in their works in support of tithes in the Christian Church. Another party, of whose views John Selden is the impartial exponent, took a more correct view of the subject, and denied that the patriarchal custom, or Mosaic law, bound Christians to the payment of tithes quâ tithes. He asserted, with truth, that the Divine Founder of the Christian religion and His apostles left behind them no written instructions for the payment of tithes, but the latter did state how the ministers were to be maintained, viz., on the purely voluntary principle. I am certain it is against the whole tenour of the New Testament writings, that any funds for the support of those who minister at the altar, or in building or repairing sanctuaries for divine worship, should be collected vi et armis. It is revolting to all Christian principles enunciated in the New Testament, that men should be imprisoned, or their goods seized, or, even as it has happened in Ireland within this century, be shot dead, because they refuse to pay tithes. But there have been, and there are still, men in England who unblushingly justify all the above means by which an odious and unscriptural tax should be collected for the support of the ministers of the Church of England. Some foolish writers assert that the payment of tithes is not a tax. It is unquestionably a tax. On the other hand, there have been, and there are still, in England noble-minded, sympathetic, and large-hearted Christians, who have conscientiously opposed such taxation as unscriptural.

For centuries after the Christian Era, the Christians paid no tithes quâ tithes. In some of the episcopal writings of the second and third centuries suggestions are thrown out, but nothing more, recommending the payment of tithes according to the Mosaic law; certainly not with the view of handing over to the ministers all the proceeds of such payments, but to supplement the Church funds for the support of the poor, the fabric of the churches, and the ministers. According to the Mosaic law, the priests received but the one-hundredth part of the tithes, for the Levites had also to be provided for.

It was not until the fifth century that canons were passed for the payment of tithes. They were unknown in the British Church when Augustine landed on our shores, at the end of the sixth century. His mission was a mixture of good and evil. It was good, because it introduced among the Anglo-Saxons an active evangelical spirit. It was evil, because it formed the first link of an alliance between the Church of England and the Church of Rome. From that time forward the bishops of Rome interfered in the discipline and doctrines of the English Church. They sent their legates to England to attend provincial synods and to pass canons for the payment of tithes, without consulting the laity. The Church of Rome never allows the laity to have a share or a voice in any ecclesiastical matters. That was always, and is still, the most prominent feature in her organization. In the eighth century, tithe free-will offerings were first given in England by a few individuals. In the ninth century Charlemagne passed the first lay law for the payment of tithes in his dominions. This was a great victory gained by the Church. His father, in A.D. 755, gave Ravenna to Pope Stephen III., and thus initiated the temporal territorial power of the popes. Milman in his history gives a sad account of the working of the tithe law in the Emperor’s territories, so different to the teaching and spirit of the Gospel! The laity, however, refused to pay the tax.

In England, the custom of giving tithes as free-will offerings gradually began, as I stated above, in the eighth century, or eleven hundred years ago. The clergy were then quite satisfied with such voluntary offerings. A few only at first gave them; then the number gradually increased, by means of the pressure exercised in the confessional box, in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, until it finally became customary for all to pay their tithe offerings. The usual question put by the priest from the confessional box was, Did they duly pay their tithes to God? In A.D. 850 a German bishop in his visitations had specially this article of inquiry, “Si decimas recte darent?” The custom in England gradually changed into a common right, and it was by virtue of this common right that people were legally bound to pay tithes. There was no positive law made for their payment. But here is their injustice. When this custom commenced, the population of England and Wales could not have exceeded 160,000, with less than a quarter of a million of acres under cultivation, and yet this custom, originating under the above circumstances, generated a common law right, which legally bound all subsequent generations to the payment of predial, mixt, and personal tithes. I call this barefaced injustice. It is utterly wrong to state, as some Church defenders do, that all the parochial tithe endowments were voluntarily bestowed on the Church by the landowners. In a subsequent part I have explained the 2 and 3 Edw. VI., c. 13, s. 5, about barren and waste grounds brought into cultivation, and also the lands and corn rents awarded in lieu of tithes by the various Inclosure Acts passed in the last and present centuries.

Certain writers argue in the most unreasonable manner against the division of tithes in England, and assert that the parson was legally entitled to, and had enjoyed, all his tithes without diminution. Lord Selborne, in his recent works, is the latest supporter of this erroneous view. In another part I have fully explained how untenable these views are.

The Norman monks initiated the appropriation of tithes to monastic bodies. The lands belonging to the four privileged orders were specially exempted from paying tithes, whilst others purchased bulls of exemption from the popes.

The Third and Fourth Lateran Councils, held in 1180 and 1215 respectively, issued decrees against Infeudations and for the payment of tithes. The latter council gave the English parson a common right to parochial tithes. General Councils in which the laity were unrepresented, had no right to pass decrees for the disposal of the private property of the laity to whatever religious purpose they wished, or for the payment of tithes. Their functions were confined to the discipline and doctrines of the Church.

When monasteries and chantries were swept away by Henry VIII. and his son, the lands, tithes, and all other kinds of property passed to the Crown, and the Crown granted the greater part of the tithes to bishops and chapters in exchange for landed estates which were granted to laymen, many of whose posterity or assignees hold them at the present day. In Edward VI.’s reign about six millions of acres were under cultivation, but from that time to the present over twenty millions of acres of waste lands have been brought under cultivation, and for which tithes are paid.

From A.D. 1547 to 1890, about 5,000 new parishes and districts have been formed, of which 1,530 were formed from A.D. 1547 to 1818, and about 3,470 from 1818 to the end of 1890.

Towards the end of the first quarter of the present century there arose a cry for Church Reform. Dr. Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the first to take steps, in 1829, to reform the then existing abuses in the Established Church, as to episcopal revenues, commendams, non-residence of incumbents, sinecures, pluralities, etc., which were like so many cancers eating away the body politic. This led to Earl Grey’s Royal Commission of Inquiry, dated 23rd of June, 1832; to Sir Robert Peel’s Commission, dated 4th February, 1835; to the five remarkable reports of this Commission; to the Episcopal Act and Tithe Commutation Act of 1836; to the Ecclesiastical Commission for England, 1836; to the Pluralities Act of 1838; to the Cathedral Act of 1840; in fine, to the passing, from 1836 to 1890, or fifty-five years, of about one hundred and thirty statutes directly and indirectly affecting the Church of England, besides some thousands of Orders in Council, having the force of Acts of Parliament when published in the London Gazette. Yet many Churchmen boastingly assert that the Church of England has received no help from the State (!) The Ecclesiastical Commission is actually a State Department. And what amount of money would have remunerated the members of the various successive governments from 1832, who boldly stepped forward to drag the State Church out of that sink of abuses in which the first Reformed Parliament found her? If our leading statesmen in and after 1832 had not promptly and energetically taken steps to reform the flagrant abuses of the Church, it could not possibly long survive as an Established Church.

The Commutation Act of 1836 settled a long-burning question. The gross value of the tithes was about six millions. These were commuted to four millions. The landlords not only gained two millions, but also increased rentals from the improvements which their tenants made when the tithe was commuted into a corn rent payable in money and permanent in quantity, but fluctuating yearly in value, so that any improved value given to land would not increase the amount of the rent charge. Again, the landlords gained about half a million a year by the various changes which were made in the extraordinary tithe rent charges. By the Commutation Act, the landlords and not the tenants are the real tithe-rent payers. But the landlords having contracted themselves out of the 80th clause of that Act, and having arranged with the tenants to pay the tithe rent-charge, a good deal of ill-feeling has sprung up in certain parts of the country, especially in Wales, on the part of the farmers against the tithe-owners. The Tithe Act of 1891 makes the owner of the lands and not the occupier liable for the tithe-rent charge.

Henry VIII., as “Supreme Head of the Church of England,” made no change in her doctrines, and the clergy received their tithes as hitherto for saying masses for the repose of the souls of departed parishioners, granting absolution, teaching transubstantiation and doctrines as regards purgatory. The tithes and landed endowments were originally granted for teaching these doctrines. But in the reigns of his son and Elizabeth changes were made in both ritual and doctrines, and those incumbents who refused to adopt the doctrines, framed in accordance with those used in the Primitive Christian Church, were deprived of their incumbencies and consequently of their tithes and other Church endowments. But there was no physical transfer made then of such endowments, and the Church was the same Church of England, but reformed. Their successors, who embraced the doctrines against masses, purgatory, absolution, confession, transubstantiation, etc., were appointed on the condition of strictly complying with the Act of Uniformity and of the doctrines enunciated in the Thirty-nine Articles. It was in virtue of such compliance that they were put in possession by Acts of Parliament of the tithes and other endowments of the Church, which their predecessors had enjoyed. It was purely a change of usufructuary possessors without the least disturbance of the property. The new tenant solemnly engaged to comply with the new laws of the Church; the old tenant refused to do so, and had therefore to leave. That was all. The incoming trustee held his endowments by a Parliamentary Title. The present usufructuary possessors of Church endowments hold them also on the above conditions, and by the same Parliamentary Title. And as Parliament gave the Title, it can also change the Title. But how do matters stand now? Dr. Vaughan, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Salford, in a small pamphlet recently published, says of the Church of England, “Its bishops, ministers and people are busily engaged in ignoring or denouncing those very articles which were drawn up to be their eternal protest against the old religion. The sacramental power of orders, the need of jurisdiction, the Real Presence, the daily sacrifice, auricular confession, prayers and offices for the dead, belief in purgatory, the invocation of the Blessed Virgin and the saints, religious vows, and the institution of monks and nuns—the very doctrines stamped in the Thirty-nine Articles as fond fables and blasphemous deceits—all these are now openly taught from a thousand pulpits within the Establishment, and as heartily embraced by as many crowded congregations. Even the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary has been recently enthroned upon a majestic altar under the great dome of St. Paul’s.” From these facts Bishop Vaughan claims that England is already “half Catholic.”

A HISTORY OF TITHES.

CHAPTER I.
BEFORE THE CHRISTIAN ERA.

The first instance on record of the payment of tithes is found in Genesis xiv. 20, when Abraham, after having rescued Lot, was returning a victor from the battle with the spoils of war. King Melchizedek met him on the way, and Abraham gave him, in his office of priest of God, “tithes of all.” It is a disputed point whether Abraham meant a tithe of all his property or of all spoils of war which he had with him.

The next instance we find is the vision of Jacob’s ladder. He vowed to God “Of all that Thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto Thee” (Gen. xxviii. 22). It is laid down in the Mosaic law, “And thou shalt surely tithe all the increase of thy seed, that the field brought forth year by year” (Deut. xiv. 22). It is important to note the word “increase” in this passage, which in our law courts had often decided disputed cases, whether certain things were tithable or not. For instance, Were all herbs tithable? Only those which man eats. In Leviticus xxvii. 30-32, “All the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the Lord’s: and the tithe of the herd, or of the flock, even of whatsoever passeth under the rod, the tenth shall be holy unto the Lord.” It was the custom for a person to be at the sheep-cot with a coloured rod, and as the sheep came out one by one, every tenth was marked with this rod; and that is what is meant by “passing under the rod.”

The priests at Jerusalem received the first fruits and heave offerings, but not the tithes. The heave offerings were the one-sixtieth of the gross produce. But the tithes were devoted to the whole tribe of Levi at Jerusalem, and they gave the tithe of their tithes to the priests—that is, one-hundredth part. It was from this custom, and in order to support the Crusades, that the popes of Rome exacted, early in the fourteenth century, the first fruits and the tithe of the tithes from the hierarchy and beneficed clergy, who were under their spiritual jurisdiction. And when King Henry the Eighth displaced the pope and assumed the supreme authority in the Church, he also exacted the first fruits and tenths. Queen Anne, by an Act passed in 1704, gave the first fruits and tenths back to the Church for the special purpose of augmenting poor livings.

After the destruction of the second temple and the dispersion of the Jews, the payment of tithes among the Jews ceased, because they thought that Jerusalem alone was the place where tithes ought to be paid, and also because it became impossible to trace out the tribe and priesthood to whom alone they were to be paid. It is a question whether the Jews who were converted to Christianity before the destruction of the second temple had paid tithes to the Levites.

The heathen nations seem to have copied and adopted the Jewish custom of paying tithes. We read of the Greeks having paid tithes of the spoils of war to Apollo, and of the Romans to Hercules. But, properly speaking, they were not the sort of tithes mentioned in the Mosaic Law. They were only arbitrary vows and offerings; but no conclusion can be drawn that they were tithes because tenths were given. Sometimes the heathen offered more and sometimes less than one-tenth.

Some ardent supporters of the payment of tithes make themselves ridiculous in tracing their origin to Adam. They state that Adam paid tithes. Here is their story as stated by Selden: “God charged Adam when there was but one man in the world that he should give Him the tenth part of everything, and to teach his children to do the same; but as there was no man to receive it for Holy Church, God commanded that the tenth part of everything should be burned. In the offerings of Cain and Abel, Abel tithed truly of the best, but Cain tithed falsely of the worst. Cain killed Abel because he said he tithed evil. So people must see that false tithing was the cause of the first murder, and it was the cause that God cursed the earth.”[3]

It is very wrong that Scriptural passages, such as that given above, should be distorted in order to induce people to pay tithes to “Holy Church.”

CHAPTER II.
FROM THE CHRISTIAN ERA TO THE COUNCIL OF MASÇON.

In Apostolical times the Christian ministers were supported by voluntary contributions out of a common fund, and this practice prevailed for four hundred years.[4] Those who preached the Gospel lived by the Gospel, but this Scriptural statement did not mean, as some assert, that they were to live on the payment of tithes, otherwise it would have been stated. St. Paul ordered weekly collections to be made for the saints in the Churches of Galatia and Corinth (1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2). The voluntary contributions of the faithful were collected and put into a common treasure (Acts ii. 44; iv. 34). The liberality of the Christians then far exceeded anything which could have been collected from tithes. And even if tithes had been exacted, it is exceedingly doubtful whether the progress of Christianity would not have been materially checked at its outset.

The Jewish Law, as regards the payment of tithes, was not binding on Christians, no more than the custom of bigamy and polygamy adopted by the Israelites is binding on the Christian Church. There is no injunction in the New Testament binding Christians to pay tithes to their ministers. And when the payment was first urged in the Christian Church, it was supported by references to the Mosaic Law and not to St. Paul’s words, viz., “That those who preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel.” There was a growing habit of looking upon the clergy as the successors and representatives of the Levites under the Old Law, and this habit had given an impulse to that claim which they set up to the payment of tithes by the laity.[5]

The Apostolical Constitutions for the Christian Church, collected, as it is alleged, by Pope Clement I., the successor as is said of St. Peter, first bishop of Rome, were fabricated more than eight centuries after apostolical times. Cardinal Bellarmine is honest enough to ignore them. But they imposed on the credulous and were accepted without criticism as genuine, even by canonists, in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Selden thinks they were concocted about A.D. 1000; others think in 1042. In these Constitutions tithes are stated to have been paid by the Christians to the Apostles. Sir H. Spelman (p. 108) thinks the first thirty-five canons are very ancient. “Dionysius Exiguus,” he says, “who lived within 400 years after the Apostles, translated them out of Greek.”

The fifth canon ordained that first fruits and tithes should be sent to the house of the bishops and priests, and not to be offered upon the altar. The Greek word in the copy is not δεκασμούς. No solid argument for the payment of tithes can be founded on this canon, for if we take the custom of the Anglo-Saxon Churches at the end of the sixth century, which was in accordance with that in primitive times, we find no account for the payment of tithes. “There is no mention of tithes,” says Lord Selborne, “in any part of the ancient canon law of the Roman Church, collected towards the end of the fifth century by Dionysius (called Exiguus or the Little), a Scythian monk who collected 401 Oriental and African canons.”[6]

The monks in their cells had sufficient leisure to concoct these Constitutions, and palm them on the credulous as the genuine production of the Apostles. The concocted Constitutions were copied and handed down from century to century without any attempt being made to test their genuineness and authenticity. It seems exceedingly strange that African divines and laymen should refer to the Apostolical Constitutions as an authority for the payment of tithes in apostolic times, although Cardinal Bellarmine, a great champion of “Holy Church,” ignored them.[7]

Churchmen like Archdeacon Tillesley, many of whom are in the receipt of tithes or tithe-rent charges, will naturally act like drowning men, and snatch even at passing straws to save the tithes. Could anything, for example, be more childish and absurd than the story of tracing the payment of tithes to Adam? And what makes the case worse is to distort Scripture so as to deceive the people who could neither read nor write, and even those who could read had no open Bible to consult to see for themselves whether these things were so.

Members of the Anglican Church forget when using such weapons as the “Constitutions” in support of tithes, that the very cause of the English Reformation in the sixteenth century was the adoption into the English Church of the traditions and errors of the Church of Rome, which were said to have been handed down by the Apostles in the so-called Apostolical Constitutions, although many of them can be shown to be contrary to the Scriptures. Archdeacon Tillesley does not defend the whole volume of the so-called Constitutions of Clement I., but he does that part which deals with the payment of tithes. He evidently had forgotten the mechanical axiom, that nothing is stronger than its weakest part. “Because the early Christians,” he says, “were liberal to the Church, therefore it was reasonable that tithes in the ‘Constitutional Apostolical’ were true.” Nothing of the sort, because it does not follow as a logical sequence.

After apostolical times, monthly offerings and oblations, we are informed, were made in all the churches, and were used for three purposes. (1) In maintaining the clergy; (2) in supporting the sick and needy; and (3) in repairing the church fabric. These monthly contributions were in the third century augmented by grants of lands, which were annexed to churches, the revenues derived from which were appropriated to the same three purposes. In A.D. 322 Constantine, the first Christian emperor, published an edict which gave full liberty to his subjects to bestow as large a proportion of their property to the clergy as they should think proper. From all these sources of revenue the Christian Church was rapidly increasing in wealth. But for more than four hundred years after the Christian era there was no authoritative Church canon made for the payment of tithes; and then such canon was founded upon the Mosaic Law. The question then is, are Christians justified in adopting the Mosaic Law for the payment of tithes? This law had no force outside Jewish territory. There is no order in the New Testament for their payment. Among the Jews we fail to find such anomalies, rather scandals and misappropriations, in respect to the distribution of tithes, as are found in England and Wales. The gross amount of tithe-rent charge is slightly over four millions per annum. Add to this the extraordinary rent charges on hops, the corn rents and extensive lands awarded in lieu of tithes by the large number of Inclosure Acts. Among the Jews we find no record of lay impropriators, schools, colleges, charities and hospitals receiving tithes. Granted, for argument’s sake, that the Christian priesthood as succeeding the Mosaic priesthood, claimed the tithes according to the Mosaic Law, then it is a misappropriation of tithes to give them to those outside the priesthood, and who perform no spiritual functions. We must therefore go back to very early times, to the history of tithes in the Christian Church, for the beginning of the scandalous misappropriations of tithe endowment for spiritual purposes. In England the scandal commenced after the Norman Conquest with the Norman monks who were in English monasteries.

About one-fourth of the whole tithe rent charge is appropriated or rather misappropriated to lay purposes by laymen, many of whom are quite unconnected with the religious duties of those parishes from which the tithes arise. Then, again, we have a large extent of land—formerly monastic—which is tithe free. There are also lands in the vicinity of large cities and towns built upon, for which the landlords receive enormous ground rents, and when the leases expire they take possession of the house property. But they pay nothing to the Church for the increased value of their land, which may be one hundred times the yearly value per acre before it was built upon.

In the Christian Church tithes were at first given by the faithful as spontaneous offerings, at the urgent solicitations of the clergy. “Nam nemo compellitur,” says Tertullian, “sed sponte confert.” These spontaneous tithe free-will offerings were not given in cash but in kind. Some gave a tithe of sheep, others of wool, or of corn, etc., just according to the free-will of the donor. This was the germ of tithes in the Christian Church, which commenced in the fourth century, and were ordered to be paid by canon law about the beginning of the fifth century. These canons were framed and passed by ecclesiastics. The people who paid had no voice in the matter. The canons which were framed afterwards had ordered them to be paid as a right, as a divine law of the Old Testament, and were not to be considered as free-will offerings. Here is just that specimen of arbitrary conduct on the part of the ecclesiastics which would only be tolerated in the dark and middle ages. Tithes were too profitable a source of revenue to be ignored in the Christian Church. A book entitled, “The Englishman’s Brief on behalf of his National Church,” has been published by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. A good cause needs no fiction to bolster it up. In that book there is quite twice as much fiction as fact. The extensive circulation of this mixture has embarrassed many in gaining a correct knowledge of the tithe question from the earliest period to the present time. It is written in the style adopted by special pleaders. It gives a one-sided account of the subject. It asks questions and then furnishes the answers. The answers are most misleading and also erroneous, and it carefully omits a great deal which could be said on the other side. I strongly object to this way in dealing with so important a subject as the history of tithes in this country. To be appreciated, the “Brief” should be impartial, which it is not. It is not my object to review the book here seriatim, and to point out what is fiction and what is fact. In my statements a good deal of the fiction is refuted indirectly without reference to the “Brief.” But I may just indicate one remarkable feat of fiction which appears in it. When the Christian religion was first propagated, the writer of the “Brief” would have us to believe that the converted Jews transferred the payment of their tithes from the Jewish to the Christian ministers, just as easily and as quietly as one could transfer the payment of a cheque from one bank to another. Here is the statement, “So that when the Jews and heathen became Christian, throwing off their old religion and adopting the new religion of Christianity, they never dreamt of being less liberal to that form of religion which they loved the more and had adopted, than they had been towards that which they had loved the less and had discarded. Hence the transfer of tithes from the old religion to the new religion.”[8] We are not informed upon what authority this statement is made. There is nothing about it in Josephus. There is no order in the New Testament for the payment of tithes. No order of a general or provincial council. We read nothing of this in the writings of the first and second centuries. We read of exhortations to pay tithes in the writings of the third and fourth centuries. We read of canons having been made for their payment in the fifth century. But I have failed to find any evidence to support the statement quoted above from the “Brief.”

The Provincial Council of French bishops, held at Masçon in A.D. 586, is commonly considered to have been the earliest council which ordained the payment of tithes. It ordained, “Ut decimas ecclesiasticas omnis populus inferat, quibus sacerdotes aut in pauperum usum, aut in captivorum redemptionem erogatis, suis orationibus pacem populo ac salutem impetrent.” Isidore, in his compilation of decrees of councils, makes no reference to this council. Friar Crab is the first to have mentioned it in his edition of the councils under Charles V.

Lord Selborne considers the canon of this council as spurious, because it proves too much, for it wanted to prove that the Mosaic Law, as regards the payments of tithes, was regarded in A.D. 586 not only as binding from the first upon Christians, but also as having been for centuries universally observed. This was going too far, in his lordship’s opinion, and therefore he stamped it as spurious. Selden was the first to throw considerable doubt upon the genuineness of this canon at the Council at Masçon.[9] The mistake originated in calling the offerings and oblations tithes. The same mistake is repeated by writers at the present time. For instance, Dr. J. S. Brewer, in his “Endowments and Establishment of the Church of England,” 2nd Edition, 1885, translates “portiones” (quoted from Bede), tithes. Pope Gregory says in his reply to Archbishop Augustine’s question, “Communi autem vita viventibus jam de faciendis portionibus, vel exhibenda hospitalite et adimplenda misericordia, nobis quid erit loquendum.” “But as for those who live in common, why should we say anything now of making portions?” etc. Brewer translates the passage thus, “As for those who are living in common, I need give no advice about dividing tithes,” etc. Now, the Latin word for tithe is decima, and is so used in all the monastic charters. The same writer states, and he is followed by writers of leaflets for the Church Defence Institution, that the scriptural precept, “To live of the Gospel” (1 Cor. ix. 14), refers to the payment of tithes. I am certain that St. Paul never intended anything of the sort. I fully admit that the passage may cover a tithe free-will offering, as it would any other free-will offering, but I cannot admit that it implies a compulsory payment of tithes, that is, to carry it to its logical sequence, a distraint on the goods of a person who is unable or unwilling to pay tithe. Such compulsion would be contrary to the spirit of the Gospel of Christ.

I hold strongly to the view that free-will offerings are the only scriptural mode for the maintenance of the Christian ministry, and these are the same kind of offerings to which Pope Gregory referred in his answers to Augustine’s questions.

The instances are many in which words of old authors and passages of Scripture are not only strained but intentionally distorted, in order to show the early origin of tithes. There is nothing gained, but much confidence lost, in this critical age by distorting the meaning of, or giving a forced interpretation to, plain words of Scripture, or of secular and religious writers.

The Christian religion had been introduced into Britain at a very early date, and from Britain it passed over to Ireland. Ireland was specially remarkable for her evangelical missionary monks, who visited Scotland, England, and the Continent, for the purpose of converting the heathen. Its geographical position favoured a quiet, retired and contemplative life. Britain served as a buffer for many centuries against the piratical devastations of the northern hordes. The inhabitants of Ireland were therefore left in quiet and undisturbed possession of their lands, churches, and monasteries at a time when the inhabitants of Britain were driven from the east and south to the west of the island; their lands were taken from them, their churches and monasteries were pillaged, and then burnt down by the invaders.

CHAPTER III.
THE ROMAN MISSION TO ENGLAND.

In A.D. 596 Pope Gregory, commonly called Gregory the Great, selected Augustine, prior of St. Gregory’s monastery in Rome, to conduct in the same year a mission to Britain in order to convert the people to Christianity. The journey to Britain was then considered a hazardous undertaking, being thought in so remote a part of the world. Even this band of Christian pioneers became disheartened on their journey. Augustine, much discouraged, left his companions in France and returned to Rome, but Gregory sent him back, urging him and them to valiantly carry out their mission.

In 597 Augustine and forty companions landed in the Isle of Thanet. Ethelbert, a noble-hearted, liberal-minded and intelligent heathen, was then King of Kent; but his wife, Bertha, daughter of Charibert, King of Paris, was a Christian. Augustine announced his arrival to the king, and the object of his mission. The king repaired to Thanet and granted an interview to Augustine and his companions. He was much impressed with their external ceremonies, and permitted them to reside in Canterbury, the metropolis of his kingdom. He presented his palace in Canterbury to Augustine as a residence for himself and his successors. On the 2nd of June in the same year the king publicly declared himself a Christian and was baptized. On the 17th November, 597, Augustine went to France and was consecrated archbishop by the Archbishop of Arles, and returned to England in 598.

There were at that time in the island some British Churches, bishops and clergy, but no divisions of parishes, no parish churches, no connection with the Roman Church, and indubitably no tithes whatever were paid. We are therefore on solid ground in asserting that during the first six hundred years of the Christian era there is no genuine record of tithes in any shape or form having been paid or given to the clergy of this island.

The Roman Mission subsequently produced mighty changes in the Church of England through this initial connection. In the several letters which the popes addressed to the kings and archbishops of England in subsequent centuries, constant references are made to Augustine’s mission; and the popes refer to this event as the source of their supreme authority over the Church of England.

King Ethelbert’s laws which were passed between 596 and 605, recognise Christianity and the Christian priesthood. Bede informs us that they were enacted by the advice of his Witan.[10]

Article 1. “The property of God and the Church [when stolen, a fine of] twelve-fold; a bishop’s property, eleven-fold; a priest’s property, nine-fold; a deacon’s property, six-fold, etc.”[11] The title runs thus, “These are the dooms which King Ethelbert established in the days of Augustine.” The Laws of Ethelbert and other Kentish kings are taken by Mr. Thorpe from the Textus Roffensis, in possession of the Dean and Chapter of Rochester, and is the only ancient manuscript in which they are found. The manuscript is of the twelfth century.

“We shall hardly,” says Mr. Kemble, “be saying too much if we affirm that the introduction of Christianity was at least ratified by a solemn act of the Witan.”[12]

In 601 Augustine received his pall from Rome, died on the 26th of May, 605, and was buried in St. Augustine’s Abbey, near the high altar. He was not of the Benedictine order of monks, but followed the order of Pope Gregory in the cloister which he had founded in Canterbury.[13] In 602 he laid the foundation of his cathedral church in Canterbury. In 604 he ordained Mellitus, one of his companions, bishop of London; and Justus, another companion, bishop of Rochester. King Ethelbert granted them London and Rochester respectively as their episcopal sees.[14] These bishops and their clergy were then but missionaries among the heathen Saxons in the country, and being monks, had lived together close to their cathedral churches, from which they proceeded as itinerant preachers to the neighbouring localities. The bishop’s church was at first the only one in his diocese, hence it was called mater ecclesia. Subsequently it was called the Cathedral Church, because the bishop’s cathedra, sedes, stool or chair was in the choir and on the same level with the seats of other members of the choir. But now there are only two cathedral churches in England in which the bishop’s seat or throne is in the choir, and that in a raised position. In all the other cathedrals, the throne is placed outside the choir in a conspicuous part of the church.

The bishop’s circuit or diocese was the parish. It will hereafter be shown that the origin of parishes was erroneously traced back to the episcopal division of dioceses, when “parish” and “diocese” were synonymous.

The bishop was originally both bishop and rector of the parish or diocese, and the episcopi clerici were his curates.

Augustine, Mellitus, and Justus, and their respective clergy were supported by the offerings and oblations of their flocks, which were brought to the bishop’s house, and put into a common fund, which was disposed of by the bishop himself. Canon law gave the bishop the right over all these collections.

Augustine asked Pope Gregory, “Into how many portions ought the oblations given by the faithful to the altar to be divided?” “De his quæ fidelium oblationibus accedunt altari, quantæ debeant fieri portiones?” He answered, “That all emoluments which accrue ought to be divided into four portions, namely, one for the bishop and his family, because of hospitality and entertainments; another for the clergy; a third for the poor; and the fourth for the repair of churches.” “Ut in omni stipendio, quod accedit, quatuor debeant fieri portiones; una, videlicet, episcopo et familiæ propter hospitalitatem atque susceptionem, alia clero, tertia pauperibus, quarta ecclesiis reparandis.”

The pope added, “But because your brotherhood has been brought up under monastic rules, you ought not to live apart from your clergy in the English Church, which, by God’s assistance, has been lately brought to the faith; you ought to follow that course of life which our forefathers did in the time of the primitive Church, when none of them said anything that he possessed was his own, but all things were in common among them.” “Sed quia tua fraternitas monasterii regulis erudita, seorsum fieri non debet a clericis suis in ecclesia Anglorum, quæ, auctore Deo nuper adhuc ad fidem adducta est, hanc debet conversationem instituere, quæ initio nascentis ecclesiæ fuit patribus nostris; in quibus nullus eorum ex his, quæ possidebant, aliquid suum esse dicebat, sed erant eis omnia communia.”

He further adds, “But as for those who live in common, why need we say anything of making portions?” “Communi autem vita viventibus jam de faciendis portionibus, nobis quid erit loquendum.”[15]

This last passage is thus translated by Mr. Brewer and endorsed by the new editor, Mr. Lewis T. Dibdin, a barrister: “For those who are living in common (i.e. the monks) I need give no advice about dividing tithes or offerings among them.”[16] It is not only misleading, but bad scholarship to translate “portiones” by “tithes.” Decimæ is always the word used in Latin for tithes.

The quadripartite division of Church funds mentioned here by the Pope existed in Italy and France. In Spain and other countries the tripartite division was the custom.

Pope Sylvester, early in the fourth century, decreed, it is said, but with which I do not agree, that the revenues of the Church should be divided into four parts. One part should be assigned to the bishop for his maintenance; another part to the priests and deacons and the clergy in general; the third part to the reparation of the churches; and the fourth part to the poor, and to the sick and strangers.[17] Pope Simplicius, in the fifth century, mentions the fourfold division of the Church funds in his third epistle. Pope Gelasius (A.D. 501), in his ninth epistle, renews the regulation of Simplicius, and orders the bishops to divide their diocesan revenues into four portions and distribute them as above indicated. This was before the establishment of tithes.

Augustine, being a monk, could have no separate share of his own, and the probability is that all the offerings were divided into three but not necessarily equal parts. One part was for the maintenance and clothing of the bishop and his clergy; a portion was given to the poor and strangers, and a portion went towards the repairs of the church and erecting oratories and schools.

Blackstone states that “At the first establishment of parochial clergy, the tithes of the parish were distributed in a fourfold division: one for the use of the bishop; another for maintaining the fabric of the church; a third for the poor, and the fourth to provide for the incumbent. When the sees of the bishops became otherwise amply endowed, they were prohibited from demanding their usual share of these tithes, and the division was into three parts only.”[18]

Wharton, in his “Defence of Pluralities,” refers to the fourfold and then to the tripartite divisions in England.[19]

The rules and vows of the monks prevented them from being scattered over the diocese. They lived together in common and within their monastery. Their chief functions were to instruct the converts, who, when duly prepared, were sent forth by the bishop as ordained itinerant ministers to convert their countrymen in the distant parts of the diocese where there were no churches but crosses erected at convenient spots, and around these crosses the people assembled to hear the word of God, to have their children baptized, and to partake of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Collections were always made on such occasions, which the preachers brought and deposited at the bishop’s house for the common fund. When the itinerant preachers saw people eager and zealous in their religious duties, they reported the same to the bishop, who caused to be built for them out of the common fund some wooden chapels, which served as chapels of ease to the mother-church. In some cases the bishop had a wooden house constructed close to the chapel, where a priest could permanently reside.

It is very improbable that Augustine preached or solicited the payment of tithes. It is stated in the alleged laws of Edward the Confessor, that “Augustine preached the payment of tithes, which were granted by the king (Ethelbert), and confirmed by the barons and people, but afterwards, by the instigation of the devil, many detained them; and those priests who were rich were not very careful in getting them,” etc.[20]

These so-called laws are pure fabrications. Thorpe takes his text from a Harleian manuscript written about the beginning of the 14th century. Internal evidence condemns their genuineness, for in law xi. there is a reference to the Church having been exempted from paying Danegeld, and adds, “This liberty had been preserved by Holy Church even to the time of William the Younger, called Rufus, who sought aid from the barons of England in order to keep Normandy from his brother Robert when he went to Jerusalem; and they granted him four shillings from every ploughland, not excepting Holy Church,” etc.[21]

The Rev. Morris Fuller, rector of Ryburgh, states, without the slightest authority, “May it not have a reference to the time of Ethelbert, who began to reign in Kent A.D. 566, when tithes were by law paid to the clergy, and the time of Ina, King of Wessex, who began to reign A.D. 688, when there was a law by which they were then paid.”[22] There is not one word about tithes in the laws of Ethelbert and Ina. John Pulman, a barrister, ventilated exactly the same opinions in 1864 in his “Anti-State Church Association Unmasked.” Fuller copied the erroneous views of Pulman.

CHAPTER IV.
THE FIRST DOCUMENTARY STATEMENT OF TITHES IN ENGLAND.

The first genuine statement of the payment of tithes in England appears in the second book of Archbishop Theodore’s (668-690) “Penitential.” It was not composed by Theodore himself, but was drawn up under his direction and published with his authority. They are answers given by him to questions asked him on the subject of penance. It is edited by a “Discipulus Umbrensium,” or a Disciple of the Umbrians, for the benefit of the English. There is no doubt that this Penitential is genuine. Bishop Stubbs, Mr. Haddan and Professor Wasserschleben accept it as such.[23]

The following three notices of tithes appear in the “Penitential”:

1. “Presbitero decimas dare non cogitur.” The priest is not compelled to pay tithes.[24]

2. “Tributum ecclesiæ sit, sicut consuetudo provinciæ, id est, ne tantum pauperes inde in decimis aut in aliquibus rebus vim patientur.” Let the offering to the church be according to the custom of the province; that is, that no force should be put upon the poor as to tithes or anything else.[25]

3. “Decimas non est legitimum dare nisi pauperibus et peregrinis, sivi laici suas ad ecclesias.” It is not lawful to give tithes except to the poor and strangers, or laymen to their own churches.[26] This is a prohibition to the clergy against giving the laity presents out of the tithes.

“These articles,” says Lord Selborne, “put the payment of tithes on the footing of custom, depending for its observance upon episcopal or clerical influence, rather than ecclesiastical censures,”[27] the anathemas subsequently hurled against all who dared to keep them back from Holy Church.

Theodore’s “Penitential” was not a code of laws, but its contents are very important as reflecting the custom and practice existing with regard to tithes in that early age of the Anglo-Saxon Church.

The silence of Bede on Theodore’s “Penitential” is brought forward as evidence against it. But Haddan and Stubbs show conclusively that “Bede either did not know the book, or did not consider Theodore as the immediate author.”[28]

Bishop Stubbs makes a vital remark on (3). “Tithes are mentioned,” he says, “by Theodore in the genuine ‘Penitential,’ in a way that proves the duty of making the payment, but not the right of the clergy to the sole use of them.”[29]

Theodore encouraged landowners to build churches on their estates by permitting them to have the appointment of the priests who were to officiate in them.

It is remarkable that Bede, in his ecclesiastical history, mentions the word “decima” only once. It appears in bk. iv. c. 29. Writing of Bishop Eadbert, the successor of Bishop Cuthbert at Lindisfarne, he says, “So that according to the law, he gave every year the tenth part, not only of four-footed beasts, but also of all corn and fruit, as also of garments to the poor.” [Ita ut juxta legem, omnibus annis decimam, non solum quadrupedum, verum etiam frugum omnium atque pomorum, necnon et vestimentorum partem, pauperibus daret]. The law referred to here was the Mosaic or Divine law. Eadbert was made bishop A.D. 688, two years before Theodore died. He gave the tenth part to the poor. Bede’s history comes down to A.D. 734, and yet this is the only instance in which tithe is mentioned in his writings, and then it was given to the poor—strong evidence as to the common law right of the poor to a share of the tithe.

Dr. Lingard quotes another passage from Bede, which he says appears to him to allude to tithes, viz., “That there was not a village in the remotest parts of Northumbria which could escape the payment of tribute to the bishop.”[30] If Bede alluded to tithes, he would have written decimæ and not tributa. Tributum is from tribuo, which is allied to tribus, i.e., pars, and so tribus = to divide into parts. Hence tributa = parts or portions. Bede also uses the word “portiones” to express the same idea without any reference whatever to tithes. Theodore, in his “Penitential,” uses the two words, tributum and decimæ in the same passage with separate meanings. Tributum—a tax, contribution, tribute, collection, subscription.[31]

Before leaving Theodore’s genuine “Penitential,” I must refer to the second revised edition of Mr. J. S. Brewer’s “Endowments and Establishment of the Church of England,” by Chancellor Lewis T. Dibdin, published in 1885. In his preface, the new editor “gratefully acknowledges the valuable aid he received from Dr. Wace and the Bishop of Chester (Dr. Stubbs, now Bishop of Oxford) through more than one difficulty on endowments as to which he was in doubt.”[32]

“With regard,” he says, “to tripartition of tithes, the documents quoted in support of it are (as far as I am aware) a spurious passage in the ‘Penitential’ of archbishop Theodore; see Stubbs’ ‘Councils,’ iii. 173, n. 203.”[33] In referring to the volume quoted here, I find that the writers say nothing about this spurious passage, but at p. 203, Haddan and Stubbs give the three passages in Theodore’s “Penitential,” which “Penitential” they state is genuine, and to which I referred in a previous page. Then Mr. Dibdin adds, “An alleged law of Ethelred, 1013.” Where did he get 1013? He refers to Wilkins’s “Anglo-Saxon Laws,” p. 106, but Wilkins gives it as a genuine law of Ethelred enacted in 1014. The fact that he did not transfer this law to his “Concilia” is undoubtedly no argument against its genuineness as a law. I refer for additional information on the law of 1014 to another part of this book, where the Church-Grith law of Ethelred is fully discussed.

“I will not put,” says Blackstone, “the title of the clergy to tithes upon any Divine right, though such a right certainly commenced, and I believe as certainly ceased, with the Jewish theocracy. Yet an honourable and competent maintenance for the ministers of the gospel is undoubtedly jure divino; whatever the particular mode of that maintenance may be.”[34] I quite agree with these remarks. But as Mr. Serjeant Stephens, in his Commentaries, says, “The institution of tithes in its specific form is odious to the people and unsatisfactory to the political economists.”[35]

Landowners’ Churches.

The nobility and landed gentry were not slow in fully appreciating the advantages of resident over itinerant priests. Some of the princes, in changing from place to place, selected certain of the clergy to accompany them for the performance of divine service for their families. The Thanes followed their example and appointed chaplains, for they felt the great inconvenience, especially in winter, in attending services at the mother-church, which might have been at a very considerable distance from their residences. The villagers were even in a worse condition. To remedy these inconveniences, the landowners commenced slowly to erect churches on their estates about A.D. 686, but more actively about A.D. 700. The limits of these were conterminous with the extent of their properties. Hence we find some of the old parishes of very unequal extent. It is impossible to state exactly, in the absence of documentary evidence, the origin of the modern parish churches and much less their endowments. “At the original endowment,” Blackstone says, “of parish churches, the freehold of the church, the churchyard, the parsonage house, the glebe, and the tithes of the parish were vested in the then parson by the bounty of the donor.” Blackstone states here the parson’s common law right to the tithes, but after he receives them the same common law right obliges him to share them according to the usage and canons of the Church. The bishop was originally the recipient and distributor of all Church revenues. The parochial incumbents had taken his place and were bound to distribute them according to the original custom. It would never suit for the poor to collect their own share of the tithes. As Bishop Kennett says, the parish priest was the bank.

The manorial church was certainly the germ of the modern parish church. And we can trace this germ back to A.D. 686. From that time to Edgar’s reign the germ rapidly expanded, and the country became dotted all over with manorial or landowners’ churches, when Edgar passed his celebrated law which gave these with burial grounds a legal right to one-third part of the tithes of the estate. This Act upsets Blackstone’s statement, that the incumbent received all the tithes of the parish. It is true what Mr. Freeman says about the opinion of lawyers. “As for modern writers,” he says, “on the subject of the division of tithes, it is utterly useless to go to the opinion of mere lawyers, Blackstone or any other, as giving any help to either side. We may safely go to them to learn what is the law in force at the present moment; for historical purposes they are worse than useless.”[36] I endorse every word he says. Mr. Fuller did not take this advice, but quotes Blackstone as above. Lawyers are no better informed on this point than other men. When Blackstone wrote his Commentaries, he gave us what was then the accepted law, that the parson had a right to the tithes, and hence he is quoted as the best authority on this point. But he omitted to state that although the parson is the general collector, is the bank, by common law right, yet as trustee he is only entitled to a share of church funds, and the poor and the church building have also a common law right to a share of what the parson received. Edgar’s law, which was re-enacted by Canute, gave the manorial priest but one-third. When, then, did he get the whole? This is answered further on.

Bede gives an account as early as A.D. 686 of the erection of churches by landowners on their own private estates. “Not very far,” he says, “from our monastery, about two miles off, was the country house of one Puch, an earl. It happened that the man of God [Bishop John of Beverley] was at that time invited thither by the Earl to consecrate a church”[37] [at South Burton, Yorkshire].

“At another time also [A.D. 686] he [Bishop John] was called to consecrate the church of Earl Addi.”[38] These landed proprietors, who also had the advowsons, made a provision for the priests of their churches by erecting residential houses and attaching to the churches some glebe lands, from five acres to a hide and more. Add to the glebe the daily oblations. To the land and oblations were added in course of time one-third of the tithe of the produce of the manorial lands. Is it reasonable that a single man should have for his own personal use all the tithes of the estate, together with the glebe lands and oblations? No. Originally he had none of the tithes, all of which went to the mother or parish church. Edgar’s law, giving him one-third, was re-enacted by Ethelred in 1014, and again re-enacted by Canute, and the one-third of the tithes to the manorial church is to be seen in the Domesday Survey of 1086. The mother or monastic church discharged the poor man’s common-law right to a share in the tithes. His common-law right to a share not only in tithes but in oblations also, was as well established as that of the parson’s. But the parson in course of time became the recipient of all the tithes in a manner which I shall hereafter explain, and was obliged by the canons and custom of the church to distribute a portion to the poor and to repair the church and defray other church expenses out of the tithes and oblations after having allowed himself his own share.

As Christianity advanced in England the foundations of private oratories became very numerous, for almost every great man, as soon as he was converted to the Christian religion, built an oratory for the convenience of his family, tenants, and dependents. The bishops had prudently encouraged laymen to build such churches on their estates, and allowed them to have the advowsons. Residences for the incumbents were built close to the churches, and the landowners endowed them with lands varying in extent from five acres to over a hide as I have stated before. In course of time, they endowed them with the one-third of the tithes of their estates, transferring the remaining two-thirds to the monastic or conventual church, which was the mother-church of the entire parish. In these churches all seats were free. Pew-rents were then unknown. The church built by a layman had to be consecrated by the bishop, but the lay owner had the advowson or nomination of the incumbent. This was the origin of lay patronage in the Church of England. The church so built belonged to the manor or estate. When in course of time the property was sold or otherwise disposed of, the church and advowson went with the property. In the change of ownerships, the rectory and advowson were often separated from the manor, and were at first appropriated by the owner to bishops, chapters, or monasteries. At the Reformation, churches and advowsons, which became the property of the Crown, were granted to laymen, and were also granted to archbishops, bishops and chapters. The Crown separated in some cases the advowson from the great tithes, and sold or granted both to the same or different parties. Therefore we find two owners instead of one. The original patron never anticipated this change. An advowson or a rectory may be and is possessed in shares or turns by several owners. They are strictly treated as property and are dealt with accordingly. The sales of advowsons are carried on at public auctions and by private agents, and are given to the highest bidder. The public sale-room is now less resorted to, owing to the scandal thus created. But the sales are still vigorously pushed on privately by family solicitors and professional agents. A living, for example, is worth, say, £800 a year from glebe and tithe-rent charge; the incumbent is old, and the owner of the advowson is desirous of finding a purchaser of next nomination after the death or resignation of present incumbent. A life-interest only is thus purchased. There are other cases in which the advowson is completely sold. The parishioners have no voice in the matter.

As regards the payment of tithes, I shall show that for many years the English bishops and their clergy had threatened and cajoled the simple-minded Anglo-Saxons into the belief that the Church had the right to impose the Levitical obligations upon them. We have only to read the miraculous legends recorded by Bede and others to find out the means by which the clergy had imposed upon the credulity of those simple-minded people. It was by deceit, trickery, hypocrisy, and sham miracles that the Anglo-Saxon bishops and their clergy had obtained tithes, first as free-will offerings, then by legislative enactments, which made these free-will offerings compulsory.

The Confessional.

The Confessional was a powerful instrument in the hands of the clergy by which they obtained the payment of tithes. During the archiepiscopate of Theodore (668-690) auricular confession began to take the place of public discipline. Theodore’s “Penitentiary,” which was published with his authority, directed confessors how to conduct themselves in hearing confessions and how to enjoin penance. Confession to the priest was made necessary, not in order to obtain his absolution, but to be informed what sort of penance was required for every offence, and for the several degrees and circumstances of it. The most difficult part of the priest’s office was to proportion the private penance to the crime, and Theodore’s “Penitentiary” was looked upon as the best rule in this particular.[39] It is remarkable that the earliest mention of tithes in England is found in Theodore’s “Penitentiary.”

CHAPTER V.
WORKS ATTRIBUTED TO EGBERT, ARCHBISHOP OF YORK (734-766).

Briefly stated, they are—

(1) The “Penitential,” a document of the tenth century.[40] There are four books prefaced with twenty-one canons. The first book only is Egbert’s.

(2) The “Confessional and Penitential.” The fourth book only of the “Penitential” is Egbert’s. And as regards the “Confessional,” he may have translated it.

(3) The Excerptions. Mr. Thorpe takes these from Cott.: Nero, A. 1. They are in Latin, numbering 163. The first twenty-one are ninth century canons. There is another different compilation of excerpts in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, K. 2. The excerptions which appear in these two manuscripts are not Egbert’s.[41]

Sir H. Spelman, Wilkins,[42] Johnson,[43] Bishop Kennett, Dr. Lingard,[44] Kemble, Thorpe,[45] and others believed that the Excerptions were written in the eighth century by the archbishop himself, and some of these writers have referred to them in support of the threefold division of tithes. But there is ample internal evidence in the canons themselves to condemn them as the genuine production of Egbert, or that they could have been written during his archiepiscopate.

If any one should take the trouble or be obliged to refer to Dr. Lingard’s History and Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church, published in two volumes in 1845, he will observe the numerous references which this Roman Catholic historian makes to Egbert’s Excerptions and Penitentials, but which are now condemned as spurious. This is a serious matter for his Church, because he mainly supports many important acts of discipline in the Anglo-Saxon Church by such references. But when the references are condemned as spurious, all his arguments founded upon them fall of course to the ground.

Mr. Haddan and Bishop Stubbs say that the excerptions are not Egbert’s. What does Mr. Selden say? “An antient collection of divers canons written about the time of Henry the First, with this inscription of equal age, ‘Incipiunt excerptiones Domini Egberti Archiepiscopi Eburace Civitatis, de jure sacerdotali’ [= Here begin the excerptions of the Lord Egbert, archbishop of the city of York, concerning the duty of priests], hath these words, ‘Ut unusquisque sacerdos cunctos sibi pertinentes erudiat, ut sciant qualitèr decimas totius facultatis ecclesiis divinis debitè offerant.’ [That every priest teach all that belong to him to know how they are to offer the tithes of all their substance in a due manner to the churches of God.] And immediately follows, ‘Ut ipsi sacerdotes à populis suscipiant decimas, et nomina eorum, quicunque dederint, scripta habeant, et secundum authoritatem canonicam coram testibus dividant, et ad ornamentum ecclesiæ primam eligant partem, secundam autem ad usum pauperum atque perigrinorum per eorum manus misericorditèr cum omni humilitate dispensent; tertiam verò sibimet ipsis sacerdotes reservent?” [That the priests themselves receive the tithes of the people, and write down their names and what they have given, and divide it according to canonical authority in the presence of witnesses, and choose the first part for the ornament of the church, and distribute the second part with their own hands tenderly and with all humility for the use of the poor and strangers; and let the priests reserve the third part for themselves.][46]

“If the credit of this,” continues Selden, “be valued by the inscription, then it is about 850 years old. For, that Egbert lived Archbishop of York from the year 743 (?) to 767 (?). But the authority of that title must undergo censure. Whoever made it, supposed that Egbert gathered that law and the rest joined with it out of some former church constitutions; neither doth the name ‘Excerptions’ denote otherwise. But in that collection some whole constitutions occur in the same syllables, as they are in the Capitularies of Charles the Great, as that of ‘unicuique ecclesiæ unus mansque integer,’ etc., and some others, which could not be known to Egbert, that died in the last year of Pipin, father to Charles. How came he then by that? And how may we believe that Egbert was the author of any part of those Excerptions? unless you excuse it with that use of the middle times which often inserted into one body and under one name laws of different ages. But admit that; yet, what is ‘secundum canonicam autoritatem coram testibus dividant’? The ancientest ‘canonica autoritas’ for dividing tithes before witnesses is an old Imperial, attributed in some editions to the eleventh year of the reign of Charles the Great, being King of France; in others to the Emperor Lothar the First. But refer it to either of them, and it will be divers years later than Egbert’s death. And other mixed passages there plainly show that whosesoever the collection was, much of it was taken out of the Imperial Capitularies, none of which were made in Egbert’s time.”[47]

This is a reasonable and argumentative statement of facts. In addition to the above, I may refer to the seventh canon, “That all priests pray assiduously for the life and empire of our lord the emperor, and for the health of his sons and daughters.” Again, canon 24 is found in Charlemagne’s Capitulary of A.D. 813. Egbert died on the 19th November, 766,[48] and Charles became King of France in 768. These dates are very important in this controversy.

The first twenty-one canons are from the Audain manuscript in the monastery of St. Herbert in the Ardennes. Canons 22 to 28 inclusive are taken from other Gallican Capitulars. These twenty-eight canons were made between A.D. 789 and 816. The remaining 135 canons are taken from other foreign sources.

It is quite unnecessary to introduce into the discussion of the threefold division of tithes in England, doubtful canons, such as the “Excerptions” of Egbert and other writings copied from them. There are, without these, sufficient solid, genuine facts at our command with which to prove the threefold division of tithes in England, and these are stated further on.

CHAPTER VI.
THE FIRST PUBLIC LAY LAW FOR THE PAYMENT OF TITHES.

The first law making the payment of tithes legally imperative was enacted in 779 by Charles, King of France, in a general assembly of his estates, spiritual and temporal, viz., “Concerning tithes, it is ordained that every man give his tithe, and that they be distributed by the bishop’s command.” [De decimis, ut unusquisque suam decimam donet, atque per jussionem pontificis dispensentur.][49]

Charles’s civil law had only enforced by coercion the existing ecclesiastical law or custom of payment of tithes; and the ecclesiastical law was founded upon the Levitical law; but I hold that the Levitical law, as regards tithes, was not binding on Christians. In the New Testament there is no reference whatever to tithes to be given to the Christian priesthood. None of the apostles claimed tithes from their followers.

“The growing habit,” says Kemble, “of looking upon the clergy as the successors and representatives of the Levites under the old law may very likely have given the impulse to that claim which they set up to the payment of tithes by the laity.”[50]

The establishment of the right in England followed the same course as that in France.

It is important to give Milman’s observations on the working of the above law.

“On the whole body,” he says, “of the clergy, Charlemagne bestowed the legal claim to tithes. Already, under the Merovingians, the clergy had given significant hints that the law of Leviticus was the perpetual law of God. Pepin had commanded the payment of tithes for the celebration of peculiar litanies during a period of famine. Charlemagne made it a law of the empire; he enacted it in its most strict and comprehensive form as investing the clergy in a right to the tenth of the substance and of the labour alike of freemen and serf.”

“The collection of tithes was regulated by compulsory statutes; the clergy took note of all who paid or refused to pay; four or eight, or more, jurymen were summoned from each parish as witnesses for the claims disputed; the contumacious were three times summoned; if still obstinate, they were excluded from the Church; if they still refused to pay, they were fined over and above the whole tithe, six solidi; if further contumacious, the recusant’s house was shut up; if he attempted to enter it, he was cast into prison to await the judgment of the next plea of the Crown. The tithe was due on all produce, even on animals. The tithe was usually divided into three portions, one for the maintenance of the Church, the second for the poor, the third for the clergy; the bishop sometimes claimed a fourth. He was the arbiter of the distribution; he assigned the necessary portion for the Church, and appointed that of the clergy. This tithe was by no means a spontaneous votive offering of the whole Christian people. It was a tax imposed by imperial authority and enforced by imperial power. It had caused one, if not more than one, sanguinary insurrection among the Saxons. It was submitted to in other parts of the empire, not without strong reluctance. Even Alcuin ventured to suggest that if the apostles of Christ had demanded tithes, they would not have been so successful in the propagation of the Gospel.”[51]

Papal Legates in England, A.D. 787.

For 190 years no papal legate appeared in England since Augustine landed on our shores in 597. When Pope Gregory sent his missionaries to England, he thought the whole country was inhabited by English, and so ordered that there should be two provinces, each containing twelve Episcopal sees and governed by two Metropolitans, one at London and the other at York.[52] Still Gregory must have been aware of the existence of a British Church in the island, for British bishops were present at the Synods of Arles, A.D. 314; Sardica, 347; and Rimini, 359.

The following historical facts should be carefully noted. Each of the several divisions of England—call them the Heptarchy or anything else—owed its evangelization to a source not exclusively of the Roman mission. Kent and Essex had certainly remained Christian under the successors of Augustine; but Wessex, with Winchester as its capital, was converted by Birinus a missionary from Northern Italy; East Anglia by Felix, a Burgundian; Northumbria and Mercia by Irishmen; Essex by Cidd and Sussex by Wilfrid. Therefore the Roman mission, after the death of King Ethelbert whose successors relapsed into heathenism, was rather a failure.[53] Augustine was narrow-minded and sectarian, attached to everything Italian. There were seven British bishops then in England. In 602 a meeting was held at which representatives of the Italian and British Churches were present. Augustine demanded that the Celtic Church should change the time of keeping Easter in order to adopt the Roman time. The British bishops declined to do anything of the sort, and then Augustine lost his temper and rebuked them. His conduct thus exasperated the members of the Celtic Church. The Italians were looked upon as foreigners seeking to lord it over the native Church, and the Scots and Britons were determined to yield their independence to neither threats nor entreaties.

Augustine claimed metropolitan power, but the Celtic bishops haughtily rejected such a proposal.

On the death of Ethelbert, and when a difference arose between his son who succeeded him and Laurentius the archbishop, Laurentius, Mellitus and Justus, were about to throw up the Italian mission in England and retire to Gaul.[54] London was lost, and the whole aspect of the Roman mission was gloomy in the extreme, when the second Archbishop died in 619. Mellitus the third died in 624. Justus who succeeded him had consecrated Paulinus on the 21st of July, 625, as the first Archbishop of York. In 627 King Edwin held a Witenagemót in a room where the introduction of Christianity into the Kingdom of Northumbria was discussed. The result was that the king and his nobles were converted to the Christian religion.[55] The fact that a room was capable of accommodating the Witenagemót has led to the conclusion that the number must be small. Paulinus had fled from York in 633, eight years after his consecration, and after the battle of Heathfield. But his place was taken by Bishop Aidan, a missionary from Columba’s Irish monastery in Iona, who had established an Episcopal see in Lindisfarne.

There is a letter of Pope Boniface V. to Archbishop Justus, written between April, 624, and October, 625, conferring on him the primacy of all Britain and ending with these words, “Hanc autem ecclesiam utpote specialiter consistentam sub potestate et tuitione sanctæ Romanæ ecclesiæ.”[56] [But this Church as specially remaining under the power and instruction of the Roman Holy Church.]

In 634, Pope Honorius I. conferred on Archbishop Honorius, seven years after his consecration, the primacy of all Britain.[57]

But there is no evidence to show that the Celtic bishops acquiesced in this power of metropolitan over all England conferred by the Pope on the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was therefore an arbitrary assumption of ecclesiastical authority exercised by the Pope of Rome over the Anglo-Saxon Church, simply because a Roman mission was sent to Christianize the Saxon heathen. But other missionaries were at work in the same field, who were quite unconnected with Rome or its bishop.

The time of keeping Easter was the terrible stumbling-block in the way of a union between the Roman and Celtic missionaries.

In A.D. 664, a synod was held at Streaneshalch; the subject of the proper time of keeping Easter was discussed in the presence of King Oswy of Northumberland by Bishop Colman and Wilfrid. In the same year Deusdedit, Archbishop of Canterbury, died. The result was that the king espoused the Roman style.[58] Then followed an interregnum of four years. Wilfrid’s strong opinions about Easter kept him out of the archiepiscopate.

It is vitally important to note this turn of the tide to Rome. I take all particulars from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. If this turn had not occurred there would have been two separate and independent Churches in England, the Celtic and the Roman.

In 664 a synod was convened in the monastery of Streaneshalch (Whitby) presided over by King Oswy, who was at first a follower of the Celtic ritual, for the discussion of the proper time for keeping Easter. Bishop Colman spoke for the Celtic Church; Priest Wilfrid for the Roman time. The latter had previously gone to Rome to learn the ecclesiastical doctrine. Colman traced the Celtic time to the teaching of St. John the Evangelist; Wilfrid traced his to St. Peter, and then quoted, “Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; and to thee I will give the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.” This quotation turned the scales, as will be seen from what followed. “Is it true, Colman,” said the King, “that these words were spoken to Peter by our Lord?” “It is true, O King!” “Can you show,” said the King, “any such power given to your Columba?” Colman answered “None.” “Then,” added the King, “do you both agree that these words were principally directed to Peter, and that the keys of heaven were given to him by our Lord?” They both answered, “We do.” Then the King concluded, “And I also say unto you that he is the door-keeper, whom I will not contradict, but will, as far as I know and am able in all things, obey his decrees, lest when I come to the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven, there should be none to open them, he being my adversary who is proved to have the keys.” The King having said this, all present resolved to conform to the Roman ritual.[59] This was not the first nor the last case in England in which St. Peter and the power of the keys did good duty for the Church of Rome. The result of this discussion turned the scales from Irish to Roman Christianity as the religion of England.

King Oswy had, before the synod met, held the Celtic views. His son, who was present, held the Roman views. The result of this discussion led to serious changes in the Church of England, for in the same year, A.D. 664, the archbishopric of Canterbury became vacant, and Kings Oswy and Egbert sent to Rome Wighard, an Englishman, whom they appointed, there to be consecrated archbishop by the Pope, because there was no metropolitan in England to perform this duty of consecration. He died there, and then the Pope was empowered by the same kings to select and consecrate a suitable person himself. “We have not been able,” writes Pope Vitalian, “now to find a man docile and qualified in all respects to be a bishop according to the tenor of your letter.”[60] Again, “King Egbert, being informed by messengers that the bishop they had asked of the Roman prelate was in the kingdom of France.”[61]

From these two quotations, it is beyond all doubt or question that the English kings did ask the Pope to select a qualified person for the see of Canterbury. And it is absurd for Protestant writers, such as Soames, in the face of these quotations, to assert that Theodore’s appointment was a piece of skilful manœuvring on the part of the Pope. It was nothing of the sort. It is but reasonable to assume that when Wighard died in Rome, Vitalian wrote at once and informed the English kings of the event, and that they then, although we have not their letters, asked the Pope to choose a man for them. He therefore consecrated Theodore, a Greek by birth and education. We all know what followed. In the same year the Pope conferred on Theodore the “supremacy over all England.”[62] He landed in England in 669, and held his see for twenty-one years. The Churches of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were independent of each other up to the arrival of Theodore, who had energetically worked to unite all the Churches under the metropolitan power of Canterbury. Here then we are on solid ground. The Pope’s supremacy over all the Churches in England dates from the archiepiscopate of Theodore.

There is no reference to tithes from the publication of Theodore’s “Penitential,” probably about A.D. 686, until the two legates came to England in 787, or a period of one hundred years, Archbishop Boniface of Mentz, writing to Archbishop Cuthbert between 746 and 749, refers to tithes having then been received by English bishops, “In daily offerings,” he says, “and tithes of the faithful, they receive the milk and wool of the sheep of Christ, but they take no care of the Lord’s flock.” [“Lac et lanas ovium Christi oblationibus cotidianis ac decimis fidelium suscipiunt; et curam gregis Domini deponunt.”[63]] Here is an early instance of endowed bishops neglecting their flocks.

This brief sketch will enable the reader to follow further particulars.

King Offa.

Pope Adrian I. had risen from the position of a subject of the empire to that of a sovereign prince through the instrumentality of Charlemagne. Jaenbert, archbishop of Canterbury, thought that by the same person he could exercise sovereign authority, like the Bishop of Rome, over the kingdom of Kent as feudatory of Charlemagne. Offa, the Mercian king, had assumed the title of King of Kent and treated it as a province of Mercia. The King of France was too shrewd a diplomatist to encourage such a foolish idea as that of the Archbishop against the terrible and powerful Offa. But Offa found out this prelate’s intrigues, and instead of sending an army to Kent to crush Jaenbert, he adopted another line of policy of dividing his ecclesiastical province, and having a full-blown archbishop in his own kingdom of Mercia, with his seat at Lichfield, and endowed with the revenues which Jaenbert had drawn from that part of his province.[64]

Offa had thus touched Jaenbert’s pocket, a very sore point with some people. In order to carry out his design of changing the bishopric of Lichfield into an archbishopric with metropolitan powers, he sent a special mission to the Pope, and it was during this negotiation that the shrewd Adrian came on the scene in English history. Adrian had reason to fear Offa’s power, for there is a letter from Offa to Charlemagne, intriguing to depose Adrian, and put a Frenchman in the chair of St. Peter.[65]

Higbert, bishop of Lichfield (c. 779), was made archbishop by Offa in 785; he first signs the charter as archbishop in 788, but could not act as Metropolitan, and so be on an equality with the Metropolitans of Canterbury and York, without the pallium, which it was taken as granted could only be given by the Pope. The pallium is a long strip of fine woollen cloth, ornamented with crosses, the middle of which was formed into a loose collar resting on the shoulders, while the extremities before and behind hung down nearly to the feet. This pallium gave him the power to ordain the bishops of his province, or to summon them to his synod, or to sit on the archiepiscopal throne. It was the sign of the Pope’s confirmation of his appointment as archbishop.

The Roman Curia at first hesitated to comply with the King’s request. Offa was determined to carry his point, and he knew well by what means he could realize his object. He resorted to wholesale bribery among the Roman officials, and thus gained his point.[66] Peter’s pence probably was also part of the bargain.[67]

I have gone into details on this subject on account of the results which followed. Hitherto the Church of England was practically independent of the Roman Church. But here was a splendid opportunity for so astute a diplomatist as Adrian to advance Papal supremacy over the Anglican Church. Certainly, Theodore’s appointment was a great step in the same direction.

The Pope proposed, and Offa consented, that a mission should be sent to England with a view of holding a council in Mercia, and of making such regulations in the disorganized Church as may be found necessary. Thus the Anglican Church lost her independence, and subsequently became a slave to a foreign bishop and the Roman Curia. For what? What was the quid pro quo? To convert the bishopric of Lichfield into an archbishopric with metropolitan power from 788 to 801. The price was too much. Higbert was the only person who ever bore the title of archbishop of Lichfield. He died in 801, and his successor bore the title of bishop.

Legatine Councils in England.

In 786, the two papal legates, accompanied by Wighood, a French abbot, sent by Charlemagne to assist them, reached England with letters from the Pope to King Offa, Aelfwold, King of Northumbria, and to the two archbishops.

George, Bishop of Ostia, went to King Aelfwold’s court, and Theophylact, Bishop of Todi, repaired to Offa’s. These kings then summoned councils of their chief men, both spiritual and temporal. The Northern Council assembled in 787; Offa’s Council assembled at Calchyth, i.e. Chelsea, London, in the same year. The legates placed before each Council the twenty Injunctions, which were drawn up at Rome previous to their departure. After the Injunctions were read out at each Council, they were signed by the two kings, the princes, two archbishops, bishops, and abbots. These ecclesiastical synods, presided over by the kings, were Witenagemóts, and the twenty Injunctions were so many laws regularly and legally passed. The 17th Injunction relates to tithes; therefore the payment of tithes received on this occasion a legal sanction in the two kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria. Here then we put our fingers on the first case in which tithes in England had been legally ordered to be paid. Previous to 787 there existed the custom of voluntarily paying tithes. Some paid, and some did not. But in this year and in these two kingdoms only, the custom was made a legal obligation by the two Anglo-Saxon Parliaments.

“What copy,” says Selden, “of this synod the centuriators had, or whence they took it, I find not. But if it be good authority, it is a most observable law to this purpose. Being made with such solemnity by both powers of both states of Mercland (Mercia) and Northumberland, which took up a very great part of England; and it is likely that it was made general to all England.”[68] It is most important to note that for 120 years after these legatine councils were held, there is a dead silence in our laws and chronicles as regards the payment of tithes.

The legates, on their return to Rome, made a report to the Pope of their proceedings in England. The document was published in A.D. 1567 at Basle by the Magdeburg Centuriators, from a manuscript of which they give no account.[69] It contains, however, as Lord Selborne admits, abundant internal proof of authenticity.[70] Yet he adds: “But because it is not probable that, if the Injunctions which we now know from this source only had entered into the body of the public law of the three greatest Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of the eighth century, they would, in this country, have entirely disappeared.”[71] When such arguments from negative evidence as to laws are urged, I always think of Mr. Thorpe’s wise remarks, that “what we now possess of Anglo-Saxon laws is but a portion of what once existed.”[72] It contains twenty Injunctions, and was signed by the two kings and all the bishops, including an Irish and Welsh bishop.

In this document the object of the mission is thus stated: “To travel through and visit the island, and to confirm the authority of the Roman Pontiff acquired there formerly through the mission of Augustine.”[73]

First Civil Law in England for Payment of Tithes.

The seventeenth Injunction is this:

“Of giving tithes, as it is written in the law. Thou shalt bring the tenth part of all thy crops or first fruits into the house of the Lord thy God. Again, by the prophet: ‘Bring,’ he says, ‘all the tithe into My barn, that there may be meat in My house, and prove Me upon this if I shall not open unto you the windows of heaven, and pour out a blessing even to abundance, and I will rebuke the devourer for your sake, who eats and spoils the fruit of your land, and your vineyard shall no more be barren.’ As a wise man says, ‘No man can justly give alms of what he possesseth, unless he had first separated to the Lord what he from the beginning directed to be paid to Him.’ And on this account it often happens that he who does not give a tenth is himself reduced to a tenth. Wherefore we solemnly enjoin that all be careful to give tithes of all that they possess, because it is the special part of the Lord God; and let a man live on the nine parts and give alms, and we advise that these things should be done secretly, because it is written, ‘When thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee.’”[74]

“The terms of this article,” says Lord Selborne, “speak for themselves; their character is evident, being that of a pastoral precept, not legal enactment.”[75] He therefore rejects this as a civil enactment for payment of tithes.

“There can be no doubt,” says Haddan and Stubbs, “that the legatine canon, approved by the kings and Witan, had the force of law, although it is uncertain by what means the law was enforced, or whether it was enforced at all.”[76]

And Bishop Stubbs says in his history, “In 787 tithe was made imperative by the legatine councils held in England, which, being attended and confirmed by the kings and ealdormen, had the authority of Witenagemóts.”[77]

On the legal aspect of this question, Bishop Stubbs and Mr. Selden are correct. The tithe Injunction was not made legal or imperative by legatine councils quâ legatine councils, but because these councils were actual Witenagemóts, whose consent gave it the force of law in the respective kingdoms of the two kings. They made legal what was before customary, without attaching any punishment to its non-fulfilment. It will be seen as we proceed that the Anglo-Saxon laws had only endorsed the custom which previously existed of paying tithe. And as this custom became general, so the law enforced its payment. But this penal enforcement was not carried out in the laws of 787, because the custom of paying tithe was not then general.

It is important to notice here that the Anglo-Saxon ceorls, or churls, or freemen, occupying the social position between the thane and slave, had no voice whatever in the passing of the laws. The Witenagemóts, which sanctioned the payment of tithe, and granted away the national property, called folcland, to bishops, cathedral churches, and monasteries, were composed of archbishops, bishops, aldermen, abbots, priests, deacons, princes, dukes, earls, and thanes. In these assemblies, both secular and ecclesiastical laws were enacted, and charters embodying grants of public lands by kings were confirmed and ratified.

In the 17th Injunction, quoted above, there are references to Scripture in support of tithes. The two main positions taken up by Selden in his history of tithes are (1) that the tithes of the Christian Church are not the continuation of the tithes of the Levitical law as put forth by the Church in support of payment, and (2) that tithes had a legal as opposed to a Divine origin in the Christian Church. These two positions are impregnable, and can never be overthrown. The Levitical tithes were given to the Levites, “for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation.”[78] But charity was at the very root of all primitive references to the payment of tithes in the Christian Church. Some writers assent to Selden’s second position as stated above, but will not admit that they were given for different purposes to those given to the Levites, and yet they were. In this respect they indicate inconsistency. They would be consistent if they should assert, which they do not, that the English parsons receive their tithes by Divine right, and in continuation of the Levitical law; then all the tithes would go to the parson as they went to the Levites. But the history of the origin of tithes in the Christian Church is quite opposed to all this. Those who uphold the Divine right consider the tithes as private professional incomes, and not as trust funds to be used for the benefit of the people. Most of the sermons preached in the eighth century placed the summit of Christian perfection in the payment of tithes. The people in England reluctantly submitted to a general permanent tribute in the shape of tithes.

The obligation of paying tithes was originally confined to predial or the fruits of the earth. But about A.D. 1200 the obligation was extended to every species of profit, and to the wages of every kind of labour. I have already stated the passage from the Old Testament on which the Christian clergy base their claim to personal tithes.

Offa’s supposed Law of Tithes in A.D. 794.

Dr. Humphrey Prideaux, Dean of Norwich, published a work on Tithes in 1709, 2nd ed. 1736. The title is, “The Original and Right of Tithes for the maintenance of the ministry in a Christian Church.”

His main object was to prove the Divine in opposition to the legal right of tithes. He quotes questionable authorities in support of his views.

In reference to King Offa, he says, “And in imitation [of Charlemagne’s Capitulars] Offa made a law about the year 794, whereby he gave to the Church the tithes of all his kingdom, which the historians tell us was done to expiate for the death of Ethelbert, king of the East Angles, whom in the year preceding he had caused basely to be murdered on his coming to his court to marry his daughter.”[79] He quotes as his authority for this story the chronicle of Bromton, abbot of Jervaulx, in Yorkshire, who lived towards the end of the 14th century. Now, in referring to this chronicle, I find that Prideaux made two wrong quotations, viz. (1) that Offa made a law; (2) that he gave tithes of all his kingdom of Mercia. Let John Bromton speak for himself. “This Offa, by the wicked advice of his wife, treacherously (prodicionaliter) put to death St. Ethelbert, king of the East Angles, who was on a visit to him for the purpose of marrying his daughter; in atonement for which sin he brought down his pride to such a degree of humility and penitence that he gave to Holy Church a tenth of all that belonged to him.”[80]

Roger of Wendover gives a very graphic account of the murder of King Ethelbert by Offa’s wife in 792, in order to add his kingdom to Mercia. After his death Offa annexed it to his own.[81]

Polydore Vergil followed Bromton, and Holinshed followed Polydore. Selden quotes from Polydore thus: “Offa’s giving the tithe of his estate to the clergy and the poor.”[82]

Bromton says that he gave the tithe to Holy Church. Polydore explains what Bromton meant by Holy Church; viz., “The clergy and the poor.” Polydore was an Italian priest sent to England by the Pope to collect Peters pence. He was archdeacon of Wells, and wrote a history of England, which he dedicated to Henry VIII. In this history he explains what was meant by “Holy Church” thus: “He (Offa) gave the tenth part of all his goods to priests and other poor men.”[83] Holinshed says, “He granted the tenth part of his goods unto churchmen and poor people.”[84]

The poor were always considered in grants of tithes or offerings, because charity was, and is, the basis of the Christian religion. And this fundamental principle of Christianity runs through all donations to Holy Church in Anglo-Saxon and Norman times.

Lord Selborne considers Bromton’s statement as regards Offa’s grant of tithes, as a “mythical story,”[85] because other chroniclers do not mention it. Is Lord Selborne consistent in pushing on this theory of ignoring any statement which is not confirmed by some other independent writer? Let us take for example, the Ordinances made at Habam about A.D. 1012. They are found only in Bromton’s work. They are not confirmed by any other writer, but are copied by writers from this source. Does Lord Selborne state that they are “mythical,” because other chroniclers do not mention them? No. He admits them as genuine.[86] So does Mr. Thorpe.[87] If Lord Selborne were consistent, he would have rejected them, because they are not confirmed by other independent writers. No one knows from what source Bromton had taken his text.

Lord Selborne admits the other two statements made by Bromton; viz., (1) King Ethelbert’s murder. (2) The grant of Peter’s Pence.

Now, it appears to me that this so-called “mythical story” was not unreasonable, (1) because King Offa enacted the payment of tithes in his own kingdom in 787; and (2) because it was a tenth of his own property which was granted. It certainly was not a general enactment for the payment of tithes throughout his kingdom.

Kemble says on this point, “I think that in this case he [Bromton] has probability on his side, if we restrict the grant to Offa’s demesne lands, or to a release of a tenth of the dues payable to the King on folcland.”[88] This is exactly my opinion also.

Dean Prideaux is not correct when he states, “This law of Offa was that which first gave the Church a civil right in tithes in this land, by way of property and inheritance, and enabled the clergy to gather and recover them as their legal due by the coercion of the civil power.”[89] This dignitary of the Church, so often quoted, polluted the tithe question with so much fiction and ill-digested conclusions that he has made the true history of tithes very embarrassing. But there is one comfort that the light which the latest researches have thrown upon the whole tithe question has completely dissipated the numerous fictions which surround it.

It is erroneously stated that when tithes originated in England there were no poor, although our Lord says we should always have the poor among us; and that the owner of the soil was bound to support all that were born on his soil; that they worked and lived for him, and therefore there was no necessity for making provision for the poor out of the tithes. Now on this special point we have overwhelming genuine documentary evidence that provision was distinctly made for the poor in the first mention of tithes being paid in England. “It is not lawful,” says Archbishop Theodore, “to pay tithes except to the poor and strangers.” This is the first instance in which tithes are mentioned in English writings. It is therefore wrong to say that there were no poor in this country when the custom of paying tithes commenced in England. Theodore’s statement was written not later than A.D. 686. The second reference to tithes is in Bede’s “Eccl. Hist.,” where he states that Bishop Eadbert gave (A.D. 686) one-tenth of his own goods to the poor.[90] “Not tithes in particular,” says Lord Selborne, “but all church property of every kind was from early times, and down even to the fourteenth century, described as the patrimony of the poor. The poor were always, and almost must be in an especial degree, objects of the Christian ministry.”[91]

In Anglo-Saxon times the State did not provide for the poor. It demanded that every man should be answerable for himself in a mutual bond of association with his neighbour, or should place himself under the protection of some lord. The man without means or protection was treated as an outlaw. This was heathenism and not Christianity. The grand humanitarian, philanthropic principles of the Christian religion were taught the Saxon heathen from the very first by the Christian missionaries. Unquestionably these missionaries found poor, outcast Anglo-Saxons to whom they preached the Gospel, and assisted them with their charity and protection. This was the special function of the bishops and their clergy in their dioceses, and monks in their monasteries. When they appealed to the people for their voluntary offerings of tithes, the strongest point in that appeal was for means to help the poor and strangers, and so tithes went partly towards poor rates, partly towards a church rate to repair the edifice, and partly towards the clerical sustentation fund. These were originally the three distinct functions of tithes in England. There is sufficient evidence for a reasonable conviction on this much-disputed point of the division of tithes.

CHAPTER VII.
KING ETHELWULF’S ALLEGED GRANT OF TITHES.

“But this establishment,” says Prideaux, “reached no further than the kingdom of Mercia, over which Offa reigned, till Ethelwulf, about sixty years after, enlarged it for the whole realm of England. And because hereon the civil right of tithes in this land had its main foundation, and this matter hath been much perplexed by those who have wrote of it, both pro and con, I shall for the clearing of it from all objections and difficulties raised about it, here give a thorough and full account of the whole matter,” etc.[92] This erroneous view has been long exploded.

It is amusing to read what Prideaux calls Selden’s able and learned history of tithes: “Mr. Selden’s wild chimera,” and again, “his wild conceit”; but nothing could be wilder than his own conceit on the Divine origin of tithes in the Church of England. Another Dean—Comber—also wrote strongly against Mr. Selden’s “Tithes.”[93]

Mr. Selden had taken Ethelwulf’s charter passed in a Witenagemót, A.D. 844, as the first legal title-deed of granting tithes to the clergy. In this view he was followed by Prideaux, Hume, Collier, Rapin, Milman, Echard, and others.

Sir Henry Spelman had taken another view, and supposed the grant to have been the origin of the glebe-lands of the Church; but this opinion was wrong, because churches had been endowed with glebe lands prior to these grants.

The great question at issue is, “Did Ethelwulf’s charters grant a tithe of yearly increase?” They did not.

I have consulted the following chronicles on this matter:—

(a) The Saxon Chronicle under the year A.D. 855 writes: “In this year Ethelwulf, inscribing in a book the tenth part of the land and also of his whole kingdom, dedicated it to God’s praise, and thereby seeking also his own eternal salvation.” [“Decimam terræ suæ et regni quoque totius partem libro inscribens, in laudem Dei, suæque etiam æternal saluti consulens, dicavit.”]

(b) Simeon has under A.D. 855: “At this time King Ethelwulf tithed all the empire of his kingdom for the redemption of his own soul and the souls of his ancestors.” [“Quo tempore rex Ethelwulfus decimavit totum regni sui imperium, pro redemptione animæ suæ et antecessorum suorum.”]

(c) Huntingdon, under A.D. 854, writes: “Ethelwulf in the nineteenth year of his reign tithed all his land to the uses of the Churches for God’s love and his own redemption.” [“Ethelwulfus decimo nono anno regni sui totam terram suam adopus ecclesiarum decimavit, propter amorem Dei et redemptionem sui.”]

(d) Wendover, A.D. 854: “In this same year the magnificent King Ethelwulf conferred upon God and the blessed Mary and all the saints the tenth part of his kingdom free from all secular services, exactions, and tributes.” [“Eodem anno rex magnificus Athelwulfus decimam regni sui partem Deo et Beatæ Mariæ et omnibus sanctis contulit, liberam ab omnibus servitiis sæcularibus exactionibus et tributis.”]

(e) Malmesbury says: “Ethelwulf granted to Christ’s servants the tenth part of all the ploughlands within his kingdom, free from all duties, and discharged from all liability to disturbance.” [“Ethelwulfus decimam omnium hidarum infra regnum suum Christi famulis concessit, liberam ab omnibus functionibus absolutam ab omnibus inquietudinibus.”]

(f) Asser, surnamed Menavensis, from the place of his birth, writes, under A.D. 855: “In the same year Ethelwulf released the tenth part of his whole kingdom from all royal service and tribute, and by a perpetual inscription offered it as a sacrifice on the cross of Christ to the Trinity for the redemption of his own soul and the souls of his ancestors.” [“Eodem anno Æthelwulfus decimam totius regni sui partem ab omni regali servitio et tributo liberavit, in sempiternoque graphio in cruce Christi pro redemptione animæ suæ et antecessorum suorum, uni et trino Deo immolavit.”]

Asser was well acquainted with the traditions of the king’s house, having been tutor and biographer of Alfred, Ethelwulf’s son.

(g) Ingulphus, A.D. 855: “It added to the prosperity of the old age (of Guthlæ, Abbot of Crowland) that Ethelwulf, the famous king of the West Saxons, when he recently returned from Rome (where, with his younger son Alfred, he had visited abroad the thresholds of the Apostles Peter and Paul and the most holy Pope Leo), with the free consent of all his prelates and princes who ruled under him, the various provinces of all England, then first endowed the whole English Church throughout his kingdom with the tithes of the lands and other goods and chattels, by a writing under his own hand in this form,” then follows the charter. [“Accessit ad prosperitatem senii sui, quod inclytus rex west saxonum Ethelwulphus cum de Roma, ubi limina Apostolorum Petri et Pauli, ac sanctissimum Papam Leonem, multa devotione una cum juniore filio suo Alfredo peregre visitaverat, noviter revertisset, omnium Prælatorum ac principum suorum, qui sub ipso variis provinciis totius Angliæ præerat, gratuito consensu, tunc primo cum decimis omnium terrarum, ac bonorum aliorum sive catallorum, universam dotaverat ecclesiam Anglicanam per suum regium chirographum confectum inde in hunc modum.”][94]

(a) Refers to grant of lands, and not tithes; (b, c) use the word decimavit; (d, e, f) refer to a grant of lands freed from secular services, exactions, and tributes; (g) refers to tithes.

The word decimare had been often used as regards gifts in tenths quite apart from the idea of tithes. The whole difficulty in reference to Ethelwulf’s grants, turns upon his use of the word tenth as a convenient measure for ecclesiastical and other benefactions. This fact testifies to another fact; namely, the growing recognition of the tithe as the clerical portion.[95]

In order to get a correct idea of the application of the charters, it is essentially necessary to make oneself familiar with the proper meanings of “Folcland” and “Bocland.”

Folcland and Bocland.

Folcland was the general property of the community—i.e., Anglo-Saxon national property—terra fiscalis, and its possessors were bound to assist in repairing royal vills and in other public works; and were also liable to have travellers quartered upon them for subsistence. They were required to give hospitality to kings and great men in their progresses through the country; to furnish them with carriages and relays of horses, and to extend the same assistance to their messengers, followers, and servants, and even to persons who had charge of their hawks, horses, and hounds. Such are the burdens from which lands were liberated when converted by charter into bocland. For breach of these conditions they were liable to forfeiture or witeraeden; that is, fines. Freemen of all ranks and conditions, as well as common people, held folcland. The possessor had only a life-interest in it. On his demise the king could dispose of it to another. The holder may also possess bocland. Every one was desirous of having grants of folcland, and to convert as much as possible of it into bocland.

Bocland was land held by book or charter. It had been land severed by an act of the government from the folcland, and, by a written instrument was converted into an estate of perpetual inheritance. The possessors of bocland were released from all services to the public except the trinoda necessitas; that is, contributing to military expeditions, repairs of castles and bridges. The Church contrived in some cases to obtain exemption from them, but in general its lands, like those of others, were subject to them. The greater part of the charters granting exemptions to the Church, are forgeries. The estates of the higher nobility consisted chiefly of bocland. Bishops and abbots had bocland of their own in addition to what they held in right of the Church. The Anglo-Saxon kings had private estates of bocland, and these estates did not merge in the crown, but were devisable by will, gift, or sale, and transmissible by inheritance in the same manner as bocland held by a subject. Among the Anglo-Saxons royalty was elective. It sometimes happened that on the demise of the king his nearest blood did not succeed to the throne. The former king’s private estate did not then pass to his successor, but to his own children. Hence the advantage of a private estate in addition to the demesne or crown lands. The folcland could not be converted into bocland without the consent of the king by and with the advice of his Witenagemót, an expression of the national will in its distribution. There is hardly a Saxon charter creating bocland, which is not said to have been granted by the king with the consent and leave of his nobles and great men. “Cum consilio, consensu et licentia procerum,” or similar expressions. If that consent were withheld, the king’s grant would be invalid. There was a case of this sort. Baldred, king of Kent, had given to Christ Church, Canterbury, the manor of Malling, in the county of Sussex; but the king having offended his nobles, they refused to ratify his grant, and therefore the grant had not taken effect until King Egbert, in 838, with his counsel assembled at Kingston-upon-Thames, restored the manor to the Church through the action of Archbishop Ceolnoth.[96]

If the king himself received a grant of folcland, he had first to receive the consent of his Witan. Ethelwulf booked twenty hides of folcland to himself in his private capacity, but he had the consent of his Witan;[97] Offa did the same.

When folcland was appropriated to the king’s subsistence, that is, to the maintenance of his household, court, etc., it was said to be held in demesne, or let out to farm; afterwards called Terra Regis, or crownland. A great part of the “Terra Regis” of Domesday was folcland, or public property of the State, and the king was only the usufructuary possessor. We have an important definition of Terra Regis at page 75 of the “Exon Domesday,” viz., “The demesne land of the king belonging to the kingdom,” and we find a similar definition in the “Exchequer Domesday.”[98]

In dealing with Ethelwulf’s charters, it is essentially necessary to state Mr. Kemble’s six canons of tests by which the Saxon charter may not only be distinguished from a will or the record of a synodal decree, but whether it is spurious.

These canons are (1) The Invocation; (2) The Proem; (3) The Grant; (4) The Sanction; (5) The Date; (6) The Teste.

(1) The Invocation is a short ejaculation which usually forms the first member of the document. (2) The Proem is a general observation on the virtue of charity to the Church, the nothingness of earthly possessions, and the advantage of purchasing with them heavenly treasures. (3) The Grant, which is the important part of every charter. (4) The Sanction, by which is meant the punishment attached to the violation of the premises. It is called the “Si quis” clause. (5) The Date. (6) The Teste or Subscriptions. In almost all ecclesiastical documents the witnesses subscribed with their own hands.[99]

Ethelwulf’s Charters.

In Ethelwulf’s Charters we have all these points. I shall omit 1, 2, and 4, and give here 3, 5, and 6.

(3) Charter A.—“Wherefore I Ethelwulf, king of the West-Saxons, with the consent of my bishops and princes, have resolved on a salutary council and uniform remedy and have determined to make a gift of a certain hereditary portion of land to all ranks already in possession of it, whether monks or nuns serving God, or laypeople, always the tenth hide, where it may be the least yet the tenth part perpetually enfranchised so as to be free and protected from all secular services, royal dues, tributes, greater and lesser taxes, which we call ‘Witereden’ and that it be free from all things for the deliverance of our souls and sins, for serving God only, without military expedition and bridge-building and castle fortification, so that they may more diligently without ceasing pour forth their prayers to God for us, for which we in some degree lighten their secular services,” etc.

(5) “Now this Charter of donation was written in the year of the incarnation of our Lord 844, in the seventh Indiction, on the day of the nones of November, in the city of Winchester, in the church of St. Peter, before the high altar.”

(6) It was signed by King Ethelwulf, by bishops Elmstan and Aelstan, 6 dukes, 3 abbots, and 16 thanes.

(3) Charter A.—“Quamobrem ego Ethelwulfus, rex Occidentalium Saxonum cum consilio episcoporum ac principum meorum, consilium salubre atque uniforme remedium affirmavi, ut aliquam porcionem terrarum hereditarium antea possidentibus gradibus omnibus, sive famulis et famulabus Dei Deo servientibus, sive laicis, semper decimam mansionem ubi minimum sit tum decimam partem in libertatem perpetuam perdonare dijudicavi ut sit tutus atque munitus ab omnibus secularibus servitutis, fiscis, regalibus tributis majoribus et minoribus, sive taxationibus quod nos dicimus Witereden; sitque liber omnium rerum pro remissione animarum et peccatorum nostrorum Deo soli ad serviendum, sine expeditione, et pontis instructione, et arcis municione, ut eo diligencius pro nobis ad Deum preces sine cessacione fundant, quo eorum servitutem secularem in aliqua parte levigamus pro honore Sancti Michaelis Archangeli et Sancte Marie Regine gloriose Dei genetricis.”

(5) “Scripta est autem hæc donacionis cartula anno Dominicæ Incarnacionis DCCCXLIIII., Indictione vii., die quoque nonas Novembris. In civitate Wentana in ecclesia, Sancti Petri ante altare capitale, et hoc fecerunt.”

This Charter is printed by Kemble in the “Codex Diplomaticus,” vol. v. p. 93, No. 1048, from a Malmesbury cartulary of the 14th century, Lansd., 417, f. 6, which Haddan and Stubbs collated with a Malmesbury cartulary in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Wood., donat. 5, of the thirteenth century, see “Councils,” iii. p. 630, etc. The rubric in the Bodleian cartulary stands thus: “Quomodo Æthelwulfus Rex decimavit terram suam Deo et sanctæ Ecclesiæ; et quota parte hujus decimæ Meldunensem Ecclesiam ditaverit,” etc. [“In what way King Ethelwulf decimated his land to God and Holy Church, and with what part of that tenth he enriched the Church of Malmesbury, for the honour of St. Michael the Archangel and St. Mary.”] I have taken the orthography of the charter from Mr. Birch’s “Cartularium Saxonicum,” ii. No. 447, p. 26.

I have translated decimam mansionem as the tenth hide.

It appears from this Malmesbury cartulary that annexed to it was a statement of particular lands already in possession (antea possidentibus) of the monastery which by this charter were enfranchised. But in the copies of this charter the schedule of enfranchised land is omitted except in this particular case of Malmesbury.

As regards the date of this charter, Helmstan, whose name appears in it, was bishop of Winchester from 838 to 852. Swithun succeeded him in 852. If, therefore, the charter be dated 854 with Helmstan’s name in it, the date is spurious. I have taken the episcopal dates from Bishop Stubbs’s “Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum,” ed. 1858.

Wilkins gives the general provisions of this grant with the date A.D. 844, Indiction iv., but makes a serious blot by inserting Swithun’s name instead of Helmstan’s.[100]

Selden says, “In Malmesbury the date of the first charter is DCCCXLIV, Indict. iv., v. Nonas Novembris; plainly it is false, neither could that Indiction be in the charter of the year DCCCXLIV, which fell in the seventh Indiction.”[101]

Ethelwulf’s Second Charter of Grants.

Recital of the grant of Ethelwulf, king of the West-Saxons, to the Church of England, of a tenth of lands, etc. Grant by the same to Huntsige, the thane of land at Worthy, county of Hants, Easter, 22 April, 854.

Charter B.—“Wherefore I, Ethelwulf, by the grace of God, king of the West-Saxons, in the holy and most solemn feast of Easter, for the health of my soul and prosperity of my kingdom and of all the people by Almighty God committed to my care, with my bishops, earls and all my nobles, have resolved on a salutary counsel, that I have not only given the tenth part of the lands through our kingdom to Holy Church, but also have granted to our ministers placed in the same to enjoy them in perpetual liberty; so that such grant shall remain firm and immutable, freed from all royal services, and from all other secular services whatsoever.”

Here follows a statement that it had pleased Ælthstan, bishop of Sherborne, and Swithun, bishop of Winchester, with all those serving God, to agree that on every Saturday in each church five psalms shall be sung, and every presbyter shall sing two masses—one for King Ethelwulf and the other for the bishops and nobles, etc.

Then follows the date. “This charter was written in the year of the incarnation of our Lord 854, in the second Indiction, on Easter Day, in our Palace at Wilton.”

Charter B.—“Quapropter ego Æthelwulf gratia Dei Occidentalium Saxonum rex, in sancta ac celeberrima Paschale sollempnitate, pro meæ remedio animæ et regni prosperitate et populi ab omnipotente Deo michi conlati consilium salubre cum episcopis, comitibus, et cunctis optimatibus meis perfeci ut decimam partem terrarum per regnum nostrum non solum sanctis æcclesiis darem verum etiam et ministris nostris in eodem constitutis in perpetuam libertatem habere concessimus. Ita ut talis donatio fixa incommutabilisque permaneat ab omni regali servitio et omnium sæcularium absoluta servitute.”

“Scripta est autem hæc cartula, Anno Dominicæ incarnationis DCCCLIIII.; Indictione ii. die vero Paschali in palatio nostro quod dicitur Wiltun.”

Then follow the names of the king, two of the king’s sons, bishops Alhstan and Swithun, six dukes, two abbots, sixteen thanes.

This is found in Kemble’s “Codex Diplomaticus,” No. 1054, and he takes his text from the Codex Wintoniensis, MS. Brit. Mus., Add. 15,350, fol. 89.

Mr. Kemble marks this charter as doubtful, but Haddan and Stubbs remark: “This doubt lies on a very large portion of the charters contained in the Codex Wintoniensis. The above is, however, the best specimen of the class of charters which it represents.”[102]

Mr. Kemble thinks that Ethelwulf’s first grant in 844 does not refer to tithing in the legal sense of the term. The passages found in the ancient chronicles, as quoted above, refer, in his opinion, to two several transactions; one which took place in 854 (844?) before the king’s visit to Rome; the second in the year 857, after his return to England. “Ethelwulf,” Mr. Kemble says, “being humbled and terrified by the distress of wars and the ravages of barbarous and pagan invaders, devised as a useful remedy thus: he determined to liberate from all those various exactions and services, which went by the general name of ‘Witereden,’ the tenth part of the estates which, though hereditary tenure had grown up in them, were still subject to the general obligations of folcland, whether they were in the hands of laics or clergy; that when the estate amounted to ten hides, one was to be free; when it was a very small quantity, at all events a tenth was to be enfranchised; and as the greater part of this land was either in the hands of the clergy, or was very likely ultimately to come there, he granted this act of enfranchisement that on these estates the holders might be the better able to devote themselves to the services of God, all other services being discharged except indeed the inevitable three.”[103]

Mr. Kemble further adds, “Ethelwulf did three distinct things at different times:—

“(1) He first released from all payments, except the inevitable three, a tenth part of the folclands or unenfranchised lands, whether in the tenancy of the Church or of his thanes. In this tenth part of the lands, so burdened in his favour, he annihilated the royal rights, regnum or imperium, and as the lands receiving this privilege were secured by charter, the chronicle can justly say that the king booked them to the honour of God.[104]

(2) “The second thing he did was his giving a tenth part of his own private estates of book-land to various thanes or clerical establishments.[105]

(3) “And, lastly, upon every ten hides of his own land, he commanded that one poor man, whether native born or stranger, that is, whether of Wessex or some other kingdom, should be maintained in food or clothing.”[106] This is remarkable as the beginning of secular provision for the poor, a proof that there were poor in Anglo-Saxon times, which some deny, in order to show there was no need of a provision for them out of the tithes!

“Mr. Kemble’s views,” say Haddan and Stubbs, “of the several cartularies, and his interpretation of them, may be regarded as provisionally satisfactory.”[107]

Charter C.—Here is an abridgment of the charter given by William of Malmesbury, with altered date A.D. 855, November 5th, written at Winchester. I give only the grant, so that it may be compared with Charters A and B.

“Wherefore I, Ethelwulf, king of the West Saxons, with the consent of my bishops and princes, resolved on a salutary counsel and also a uniform remedy; viz., to give a certain portion of my land to God, the blessed Mary and all the saints, possessing it by a perpetual right; viz., the tenth part of my land, so as to be safe, protected and free from all secular services, and also from royal tributes, the greater and less, or from the taxes which we call ‘Witereden,’”[108] etc. Attention is drawn to the words in italics.

Selden’s Conclusion on Ethelwulf’s Charter.

“If we well consider the words of the chiefest of these ancients, that is, Ingulphus, we may conjecture that the purpose of the charter was to make a general grant of tithes payable freely and discharged from all kind of exactions used in that time.”[109] Selden is not correct in this conclusion; for if we take the collateral evidence of the chronicles, we shall find that the king’s grant referred to land and not to tithe of increase.

Selden says, “In Matthew of Westminster no other decima is mentioned in it than decima terræ meæ. Out of the corrupted language [of the charter] it is hard to collect what the exact meaning of it was.”[110] Here Selden unquestionably expresses a doubt as to the interpretation of the charter. And we are therefore bound to give him credit as having been the first to doubt Ingulph’s interpretation of the charter; namely, that “Ethelwulf first endowed the whole English Church throughout his kingdom with the tithes of the lands.” Therefore I agree with Lord Selborne that Haddan and Stubbs have not done justice to Selden in not having taken this doubtful statement into consideration.[111]

CHAPTER VIII.
TITHE LAWS MADE BY ANGLO-SAXON KINGS.

Prideaux says: “For King Alfred, the son of Ethelwulf, about thirty years afterwards (885), having published a body of laws for the well government of the realm, in one of them strictly enjoins the payment of these tithes to the Church.”[112] He quotes as his authority for this statement, Spelman’s “Concilia,” tome i. p. 360, No. 38: “Decimas, primigenia, et adulta tua Deo dato.” This is the Vulgate translation of the Saxon. Thorpe translates the Saxon thus: “Thy tithes and thy firstfruits of moving and growing things, render thou to God.”[113]

It is important to note that King Alfred placed a long Scriptural preface to his secular laws. He began with the ten commandments, translated and transposed them in a strange manner. It is all in Anglo-Saxon, which Alfred had translated from the Vulgate which they taught him at Rome when there in his younger days. The passage quoted from Spelman is taken from Exodus xxii. 29, and this is in Alfred’s Scriptural preface to his laws. The Vulgate translation is, “Decimas tuas et primitias tuas non tardabis reddere.” [“Thou shalt not delay to give thy tithes and firstfruits.”] The renderings of this passage in the Septuagint, Vulgate, and English Bible, are paraphrases and not translations of the Hebrew text. For example, “Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits and of thy liquors.”[114] Again, “Thou shalt not delay to offer from thy abundance and of thy liquors.”[115]

This passage in his preface was not one of his laws on tithes, as Prideaux states. “In King Alfred’s laws,” says Lord Selborne, “there is nothing about tithes. He made a treaty of peace with Guthrum; in that treaty there was nothing about tithes.”[116] I quote his lordship because recently the Rev. M. Fuller has dedicated “Our Title Deeds” to him. Should his lordship take the trouble to read through that book, he would be astonished at some of the statements made in it; e.g., Mr. Fuller says that King Ethelbert of Kent passed laws for the payment of tithes, and that King Alfred passed a law for their payment, quoting, of course, for the second case, Dean Prideaux, who has misled so many on the subject of tithes. “In a code of laws,” says Mr. Fuller, “published during Alfred’s reign, he in one of them strictly enjoins the payment of these tithes to the Church.”[117] And adds, “In this Digest of the laws of his predecessors, Alfred made not a new law for tithes; he merely copied from them whose laws have long since been lost.”[118] Now, the only reference to tithes in Alfred’s laws is the above quotation, which he made in his preface from the Vulgate translation of Exodus xxii. 29.

“No legislative enactment,” says Mr. Kemble, “can be shown on the subject of tithes in the codes of Alfred, Ini, or the Kentish kings.”[119]

“It is not easy to say,” says Johnson, “with what view Alfred put this Scriptural preface to his laws, if it were not to show his great esteem for God’s word. There is no hint given that he expected his people should make the judicial precepts of Moses the rule of their action,”[120] etc.

Again, Mr. Fuller says, “Alfred, with the consent of his Witan, entered into a treaty with Guthrum, by which the former ceded to the latter the provinces of East Anglia and Northumberland upon six conditions, the sixth being, ‘If any man withhold tithes, let him pay lah-slit (a fine of twenty shillings) among the Danes, and wite (a fine of thirty shillings) among the English.’”[121] Those Danes were heathen, and it seems strange that they were compelled to pay tithes to the Christian Churches. But this treaty was not concluded between Alfred and Guthrum I., but between his son Edward and a Guthrum II. “Our Title Deeds” must have been very loosely prepared. The rubric to this law states, “This is the ordinance which King Alfred and King Guthrum, and afterwards King Edward and King Guthrum, chose and ordained.”[122] “The rubrics to these laws,” says Mr. Thorpe, “are very defective in the manuscripts.”[123] “The party,” adds Mr. Thorpe, “to this treaty with Edward was apparently a second Guthrum, who, according to Wallingford, was living in Edward’s time, and probably succeeded Eohric, the immediate successor of Guthrum I.”[124] Edward the Elder succeeded his father in 901, and died in 924. The treaty was made in 907. Guthrum I. received East Anglia and Northumberland in 880, and died in 891.

Selden says, “It may be seen by this that some other law preceded for the payment of tithes, or else that the right of them was otherwise supposed clear.”[125] There may have been some previous secular law which is now lost. As I have stated before, we have lost most valuable Anglo-Saxon charters and laws during the incursions of the Danes and the disturbed state of the whole country. There is a dead silence as regards tithes for 120 years between the Council of Chelsea, A.D. 787, and the treaty between Edward and Guthrum, A.D. 909. “What we now possess,” says Thorpe, “of Anglo-Saxon laws is but a portion of what once existed.”[126]

Athelstan’s Law on Tithes.

Athelstan succeeded his father in A.D. 924, and in 927 published the following Ordinance:—

“I, Athelstan the king, with the counsel of Wulfhelm, archbishop, and of my other bishops, make known to the reeves at each burgh, and beseech you in God’s name, and by all His saints, and also by my friendship, that ye first of my own goods render the tithes both of live stock and of the year’s earthly fruits, so as they may most rightly be either meted or told or weighed out; and let the bishops then do the like from their own goods, and my ealdormen and my reeves the same. And I will that the bishops and the reeves command it to all those who ought to obey them, that it be done at the right term. Let us bear in mind how Jacob the patriarch spake, ‘Decimas et hostias pacificas offeram tibi’; and how Moses spake in God’s law, ‘Decimas et primitias non turdabis offerre Domino.’ It is for us to think how awfully it is declared in the books: if we will not render the tithes to God, that He will take from us the nine parts when we least expect; and moreover we have the sin in addition thereto.”[127]

This is unquestionably the first general law in England for the payment of predial and mixed tithes. I admit, and have stated, that tithes were paid by Edward’s treaty with Guthrum, and that clause in the treaty implied that they were paid previously, but there was no public law recorded like Athelstan’s, which set forth the payment of predial and mixed tithes.

Now, Lord Selborne states that Athelstan’s ordinance is not in form a public legislative Act, but merely a royal message addressed to his reeves, bishops, and ealdormen.[128] Against this opinion, I place the opinions of Selden, Kemble, Bishop Stubbs, and Dean Prideaux.

(1) Selden says: “King Athelstan, about the year 930, by the advice and consent of the bishops of the land made a general law for predial and mixed tithes.”[129]

(2) Kemble says: “It is well known that the earliest legislative enactment on the subject of tithes in the Anglo-Saxon laws is that of Athelstan, bearing date in the first quarter of the tenth century.”[130]

Kemble further adds: “The tithes mentioned by Athelstan is the predial tithe, or that of the increase of the fruits of the earth, and increase of the young of cattle. The nature of the sanction of tithes is obvious; it is the old, unjustifiable application of the Jewish practice, which fraud or ignorance had made general current in Europe.”[131]

(3) Bishop Stubbs says: “The formula by which the co-operation of the Witenagemót was expressed is definite and distinct. Alfred issues his code with the counsel and consent of his Witan; Athelstan writes to the reeves with the counsel of the bishops.”[132]