With the exception of a few rural historians, cartographers and genealogists, most people today have never heard of that “tenth part of the annual increase of the produce of the land, the stock upon the land and the personal industry of the inhabitants” which was known to countless generations as the tithe. In real terms if a farmer produced 500 bushels of grain [a bushel was 8 gallons or approx 40 litres] he had to give 50 bushels to the rector of the parish. If he produced 100 lambs then ten were given over and so on.

The Origin of the Tithe

For the first five hundred years or so of the Christian church, no tithes were paid, indeed Christ himself said little about tithes, and that which he did say was somewhat condemnatory. The tithe was a product of the Roman Church , it was never claimed by the Eastern Orthodox churches, and the sources cited in justification of the tithe were a few passages in the old testament.  As this is a short history we cannot explore these texts individually but the following gives a flavour of them.

“And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the Lord’s: it is holy unto the Lord….. And concerning the tithe of the herd, or of the flock, even of whatsoever passeth under the rod, the tenth shall be holy unto the Lord. He shall not search whether it be good or bad, neither shall he change it”

Leviticus 27

As the early church grew it required money and these entries led to the development of the tithe. It was noted that one of the tribes of Israel, the Levites, had been paid a tithe by the other tribes of Israel. The Levites were tasked with providing and supporting the priests at the temple in Jerusalem , maintaining the fabric of the temple and giving alms to the poor. It seemed quite natural for the clergy in this early church to see themselves in the same role as the Levites and soon found reasons in the bible why the tithe should be paid by the faithful, not simply as a voluntary offering but a compulsion, a divine law, ordained by God. This view went largely unchallenged until the 19^th century when one historian of the tithe, himself a clergyman, would write “These canons [ecclesiastical laws] were framed and passed by ecclesiastics. The people who paid [the tithe] had no voice in the matter….Tithes were too profitable a source of income to be ignored in the Christian Church.”

Once re-discovered the Church exerted great influence on secular rulers to make payment of the tithe compulsory, and in this they were eventually successful. Needing the support of the Church ancient Kings were often ready to agree to their payment – the laity were not so keen – and it was not until the reign of King Athelstan, in 927 , that collection of the tithe could be ordered across the whole of England .

Rectors

The tithe was always paid to the Rector of the parish which was simply the person, or organisation, legally entitled to claim the tithe. From the very outset the great lords, on whose land the produce of the earth was grown, were free to appropriate [give] the tithes of their manors [including the tithes of their tenants]  to whomever they wanted and this was mostly to the abbeys, priories, convents, colleges of priests, and so on that dominated the countryside. It was assumed that these powerful institutions had the most clout with the Divine and until their dissolution in the 16th century, the monasteries were to remain the main recipients of the tithe.

Although there were some eight hundred large monasteries at the time of the dissolution the fact remained that most were remote from the parishes. How then was the care of the souls of the laity to be undertaken? From the first some parishes had their own churches, funded by the lord of the manor, but their introduction was slow and it was not until about the 13th century that the monasteries [under pressure from the Pope] were made to provide substitute priests to look after the care of souls [as it was known] in the parishes. ‘Substitute’ in Latin is ‘vicarii’ and so we arrive at the term Vicar; others below them in the pecking order were also charged with the care of souls [curatus in Latin] and became known as curates.

The question then arose as to how these vicars were to be paid. The monasteries were naturally reluctant to let the tithe go and so allowed for the diversion of a small, or lesser portion, of the tithe to go to the vicar. This led to the idea of ‘Great tithes’, payable to the rector, whilst the vicar got the small, or vicarial tithes. Curates occasionally got got the vicars share but usually were on a fixed stipend.

After the dissolution of the monasteries the King appropriated the monastic lands releasing some four million acres of agricultural land. Contrary to popular belief this land did not all go to Henry’s cronies instead the majority, perhaps two thirds of the land, together with its tithes, was given by Henry to support his newly established church. This is why so many ‘Cathedral churches’ became the rectors of parishes far distant from them.

Even so about a third of the old church lands fell into lay hands and Henry VIII was extraordinarily generous to them for he allowed them to retain the tithe on these lands. In so doing he created a new class of tithe owner – the lay impropriator. These lay impropriators had no religious responsibilities of any sort.

Paying the tithe

Originally the tithe was paid “in kind” which meant that every tenth bushel of wheat , every tenth lamb , every tenth pail of milk etc etc was paid to the rector directly. As has been mentioned most tithe went to the monasteries who, receiving tithe from diverse and distant parishes, built massive tithe barns to store it. Payment in kind persisted into the 19th century and if a dispute arose between the tithe owner and the landowner the rector retained the right to demand the tithe in kind. Having said that, the fact was that in the later centuries many landowners [who paid the tithe] and many rectors [who received it] found it more convenient to make a monetary payment known as a composition.

Compositions came in three types. Firstly if the rector was rich he could afford to have the tithe assessed by a land surveyor annually. This is what John Martin did at Allington in 1827. He visited the parish, valued the crops in the fields and counted the number of lambs born etc. This method of setting the composition ensured that the value of the tithe kept up with market value. It was expensive however.

Poorer rectors often agreed a payment with the landowners based on a flat rate per acre of land for a period of up to seven years. The risk with this approach however was that if the price of grain rose or fell sharply either the rector or landowner might lose out.

Finally in most parishes there was a curious payment known as a modus. Moduses were so ancient that nobody could remember when or how they had arisen and their value was fixed , it had never altered. By the 19th century their value had fallen hopelessly behind the market value of the crop they were attached to. As a consequence moduses were loathed by rectors and the church but loved by farmers. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries the church made energetic efforts to overturn these moduses , there were innumerable legal cases seeking to do this, and an enormous amount of ill will was generated over it.

The value of the tithe.

For over a thousand years the tithe, in whatever form it was paid, was of immense importance in the life of this country as it formed the principle income of the Church in England. It is often said that the wealth of the church came from the land that it possessed but this is only a part of the truth. For you can own thousands of acres of land but unless it can be exploited it is of no value at all. The land provided the church with it’s capital but its income was provided by the tithe and it was a very considerable income. The 1831 edition of “The Extraordinary Black Book” [ a political publication] put the church tithe in 1815 as being some £5.25 million pounds. A value in todays money just short of £300,000,000.

The need for reform

By the 19th century the tithe system was creaking and many urged the need for reform. The principle objectors to the tithe became known to a later generation as the agricultural improvers, men like Arthur Young who wrote extensively on the subject. They pointed out that any farmer who improved his agricultural practice did so at his own expense and yet the church immediately took one tenth of the improved output [regardless of whether it actually yielded a profit]. As a result there was simply little point in improving the land.

Political radicals disliked the tithe as they saw the church taking the money, yet not fulfilling the remit which was the original justification for claiming it. Many rectors were pluralists, they occupied the rectories of several parishes and claimed the tithe from all . They were rarely seen in the parishes and left the care of souls to curates or vicars. They repaired the chancel of the church, but nothing else and alms giving had reduced to a pittance.

Landowners disliked the tithe as it meant they could not charge full market rents to their tenant farmers and the farmers themselves blamed the tithe for their inability to pay their labourers more. Even many of the clergy were unhappy because tithe disputes poisoned their relationship with their parishioners.

All in all a mess.

Reform

The biggest barrier to reform was the notion that the tithe was ‘property’. When asked to define what they mean by property most people give examples of tangible objects , cars, houses, phones and so on but in fact the only thing to define property, of any form, is the body of law surrounding an object. It turns out that with appropriate laws, and a society ready to enforce them, anything can be turned into property. Even human beings.

There were two aspects of the tithe which made it a form of property. The first were the tithe in kind or the composition that constituted the tithe, but more importantly perhaps the legal right to claim the tithe was also considered property in it’s own right having been established as such by both secular and canon [religious] law.

But if property is defined solely by the laws surrounding it there is one fundamental problem which is that laws can be abolished and if that happened no property of any sort was safe. This was anathema to the all classes of men [and women] for whom property rights were sacrosanct and had to be protected at all costs. Slavery it should be remembered was never actually ‘abolished’ , instead the government paid [compensated] the slaveowners for the loss of their property.

Similarly the tithe was never abolished . That would have meant abolishing property. Nevertheless the tithe was reformed, initially by the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 [ discussed in more detail here] and by a further similarly named act in 1936. By this time the tithe was being collected and distributed by an organisation known as Queen Anne’s Bounty. The government of the day paid the Bounty a sum of money which, once invested, earned enough income to replace the annual tithe income. The farmers however paid into a sinking fund which was intended to pay off the loan by 1996. In fact so successful was the Bounty at investing that the loan was eventually repaid in the 1970’s.

Instead when it ended in 1936 the Queen Anne’s Bounty, who by then collected and distributed the tithe, received a sum of money from the government which earned sufficient income to pay the tithe owners their money. The farmers paid into a sinking fund which eventually repaid the loan in the 1970’s.

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