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Updated: June 19, 2025
Pope Innocent, however, by sending out his famous decree before mentioned to king John, which was to be observed in England as well as in other places under his jurisdiction, and by which it was enacted, that every man was to pay his tithes to those only, who administered spiritual help to him in his own parish, settled the affair; for he set up ecclesiastical courts, thundered out his interdicts, and frightened both king and people.
The chief of these were the pallium or price paid to the Pope for an ecclesiastical investiture; the annates or first year's revenues of a church fief; and the tithes which were of two kinds, the great tithe paid in agricultural produce, and the small tithe consisting in a head of cattle. The latter seems to have been especially obnoxious to the peasant.
Poor laymen, however, were still to be supported out of these tithes, and the people were still at liberty to pay them to whichever religious persons they pleased. About the close of the tenth century, Edgar took from the people the right of disposing of their tithes at their own discretion, and directed that they should be paid to the parish churches.
They contended that, if they were due at all, they were due to the poor, from whom they had been forcibly taken, and to whom in equity they still belonged; that no prince could alter the nature of right and wrong that tithes were not justly due to the church, because Offa wished them to be so, to expiate his own crimes; or because Ethelwolf wished them to be so, from a superstitious notion, that he might thus prevent the incursions of the Danes; or because Stephen wished them to be so, as his own grant expresses, on the principle, that "the bonds of sin might be dissolved, and that he might have a part with those, who by a happy kind of commerce exchanged heavenly things for earthly;" or because the popes of Rome wished them to be so, from whose jurisdiction all the subjects of England were discharged by law.
Laborers were forced to work unpaid on fortifications, on roads, on governors' palaces. The farmer was taxed to death in tithes to the seignior. Shipping was confined to French vessels owned by royal favorites. Fishing was permitted only under a license. The fur trade was a corrupt monopoly held by a closed ring round the Royal Intendant.
"Just so; and the parson wouldn't allow other sheep there?" "Muster Smallbones mostly took all he could get, sir." "Exactly. The parsons generally did, I believe. It was the way in which they followed most accurately the excellent examples set them by the bishops. But, Mr. Brattle, it wasn't in the way of tithes that he had this grass for his sheep?"
"In our village, besides the tithes, seventy tomans were collected, and in the city two hundred and fifty. I hope the whole will go up to five hundred or more. I stand amazed. I can think nothing but, 'I am a miserable sinner. The glorious God has gone before us in mercy.
In a general council also held at Lyons, in the year 1274, it was decreed, that it was no longer lawful for men to pay their tithes where they pleased, as before, but that they should pay them to mother church.
All I assert here is that the Churches are not now leaning heavily on their political establishment; they are not using heavily the secular arm. Almost everywhere their legal tithes have been modified, their legal boards of control have been mixed. They may still employ tyranny, and worse tyranny: I am not considering that.
The cold of the North had chilled any ambition that was in his veins. Goodsooth! Such work as designing figureheads was only for those who had been to college, and who could read and write! So he worked away, day after day, and with the help of the goodwife's foresight and economy, managed to keep out of debt, pay his tithes at church and lead a decent life.
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