Tithes

[Bayleaf]

Down in Suffolk last week there were combine harvesters everywhere, trying to get the harvest in before the rain that was threatened every day (but never appeared).

It got me thinking about Tithes, so I did a bit of digging (no pun intended!).

For over a thousand years, tithes were part of everday life for most people.

Laws passed by King Edmund (939-946) and King Edgar (959-975) first made payment of Tithe compulsory, giving a tenth of all produce to the Parish Church. This was then divided into three (or sometimes four) parts. One third was for the maintenance of the Priest, one third for the care of the church building, and one third for the poor and travellers.

The law defines tithes as “The tenth part of all fruits, praedial, mixed and personal, which are due to God and consequently to

His Church’s ministers for their maintenance.”

Praedial meant from corn and other crops. Mixed were from animals; eggs, wool etc. Personal tithes were a form of income tax, which were almost impossible to collect in an organised way, and so came to be of little importance.

A distinction was often made between Great Tithes, -corn and other crops, and Small Tithes, -lambs, wool, eggs etc.

By their nature the Small Tithes were harder to collect, but in upland areas where husbandry was the mainstay, they were sometimes worth more than the Great Tithes.

Having become compulsory in England in Saxon times, in 1836 they were officially changed from in-kind, (corn, sheep etc) to cash, before being finally abolished in 1936. No-one now pays Tithes in the legal, historical sense, but the 1936 Act was complicated, and until 1996 there were some landowners paying something called a Redemption Annuity to the Government, which was similar to a Tithe.

In early times Tithes were paid to the priest of the parish in which they were grown, and that survived in some places until the laws changed as above. The produce was stored in the Tithe barn, some of which survive today, and others are remembered in place or street names.

This became unusual for three reasons.

1. The Lord of the Manor was free to give the Tithes of the parish away to some other religious body such as a cathedral or monastery, and often did. The Tithes thus became simply a source of income to some distant institution, a bit like investing in stocks and shares today.

2. Because Tithes were physically difficult to handle, it was often more convenient to both parties to change them into a money payment. This could be done in several ways, and sometimes the Tithe simply became part of the rent. In the 18^th Century Enclosures, when a parish was enclosed, the Tithe was changed into an allocation of many acres of land in the parish, and the receiver of the former Tithes could suddenly become rich.

3. When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, their possessions were dispersed. Many had been very large owners of Tithes, and these now nearly all passed into lay hands. Tithes still had to be paid, but now they were not paid to the church at all, but to some great landowner who’d done well out of the Dissolution.

Tithes had become a form of property which could be bought and sold as an investment. For example, when Vicar Wilkinson bought back Sheffield’s Small Tithes from the Duke of Norfolk in the 18^th Century, he didn’t buy the right to the tenth egg or tenth piglet, but a set of rents.

Tithes must have seemed a good idea at the time, making it possible for a priest to be maintained in nearly every village in England. Strictly observed, it could make it possible for ten men to support an eleventh, in which case quite small villages could afford a priest.

But in practice, it could be a pretty disastrous system, setting the parson and his parish against each other, since once the parson had his tenth, he was selling it in competition with his parishioners. To survive he had to be constantly vigilant to see he wasn’t being cheated.