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The incidence of tithes under the old law; the historical origin of tithes; a free-will offering; a customary payment; the appeal to conscience; ecclesiastical penalties for non-payment; a legal liability: tithes as parochial endowments; the Reformation; the collection of tithes in kind unpopular, and expensive to tithe-owners; substituted forms of payment; the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836; its object and machinery.
A SERIOUS obstacle to the progress or recovery of agriculture was presented by the incidence of tithe upon the produce of the land. Tithe-owners were sleeping partners in the cultivation of the soil. They contributed neither capital nor labour to the enterprise of the farm; they risked nothing in the venture. But they shared the profits derived from increased productiveness. While agriculture remained stationary, the burden was light. As soon as farming began to advance, and to demand a greater outlay, the grievance was acutely felt. In times of prosperity the incidence on produce discouraged improvement. In days of adversity, when every penny was important to struggling agriculturists, it retarded recovery. Since the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836, much of the ancient law of tithes has retained only an antiquarian interest. But the long history of the payment has left an indelible mark on rural life. Historically, tithes were a tenth part, taken yearly, of all produce of the land, of the stock nourished upon the land, and of the clear profits of the personal industry of tradesmen, artificers, millers, and fishermen. In other words, tithes were, as lawyers distinguished them by their sources, predial, mixed, or personal. Predial tithes were derived directly from the soil, such as corn, hay, beans, peas, turnips, hemp, flax, saffron, rushes, fruits, and wood of various kinds. Mixed tithes arose from the increase or produce of animals maintained by the fruits of the earth, as of cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry or their eggs, wool, milk or cheese. Personal tithes on the clear gain of the labour of man had early fallen into disuse. Manufacturers were never liable for the payment, which only survived in such forms as a tenth of the fisherman's catch, or a tenth of the miller's clear profits on meal ground in all but ancient mills. Another classification, distinguished between great and small tithes according to the nature of the produce on which they fell. Thus great or rectorial tithes included corn, beans, peas, hay, and wood; all the other predial tithes, together with all mixed tithes, were small or vicarial.
The legal obligation to pay tithes, as distinct from the older moral duty of giving them, dates back to a remote period of history. No real dispute arises respecting their origin, until the point is reached where the offering passed from a free-will gift into a liability enforced by legal penalties. From the fourth century onwards, throughout the Christian world, the practice of dedicating fractional parts of produce to religious objects was recognised by the faithful as a moral duty. As a matter of conscience, the gift was enjoined by Councils of the Western Church, and enforced by appeals to the rewards and punishments of religion. Thus the practice gradually acquired something of the binding force of custom. The final stage was reached when the State recognised as a civil duty the religious practice of giving tithes, and compelled payment, not by appeals to conscience, nor even by spiritual penalties, but by temporal sanctions. This last step, by which tithes passed from moral obligations into legal liabilities, was taken at different dates by the different countries of Christian Europe.
Before the landing of Augustine in England (597), and before the introduction of Christianity into this country, the moral duty of giving tithes had been enjoined on the Continent by at least one Church Council. As a matter of conscience, therefore, the first missionaries to Anglo-Saxon England preached the consecration of a tenth of produce to the service of God, and as a religious custom the practice was established by their successors among their Christian followers. The appeal was the more forcible since it came from men who were believed to hold the keys of heaven and of hell. But there were as yet no divisions into parishes, no parish churches, no parochial clergy, and no parochial endowments. The cathedral, monastery, and "mother church," generally conventual, of the locality, were mission centres, from which radiated itinerant missioners, who preached under rude crosses the rudiments of Christianity to the inhabitants of outlying districts. Into the hands of the Bishop or monastic bodies were paid all the offerings of the faithful. The married clergy, outside the cloister, were slowly and with difficulty obtained. They were for the most part ignorant, uncouth men, recruited from the lower classes of native converts, entrusted only with the humbler offices of the ministry. They taught the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed in remote hamlets, watched by the bedsides of dying penitents, and in special cases administered the rites of baptism. It is not strange that, on earth at least, their lowly labours should have been ignored or forgotten. Very different was the fate of the monastic bodies. To them fell power, riches, credit. Kings were their nursing-fathers, queens their nursing mothers; the wealthy nobles vied with one another in the munificence of their endowments. In comparison with existing civilisation, the monastic bodies attained a standard of wealth, refinement and culture which was at least as high as that of later times. They laid acre to acre, and field to field. For miles round their farms, barns, flocks, herds, fish-ponds, and dovecotes dotted the country. They entranced the senses by the beauty of their architecture, their music, their ritual; they commanded respect by their learning; they inspired awe by the austerities of their lives. They alone could offer an inviolable resting-place for the dead, since there were no parochial burial-grounds, and they practically monopolised rights of sepulture. Thus in death, as well as in life, they appealed irresistibly to the favour of the world.
Till the closing period of the Anglo-Saxon Church, there were, as has been said, no resident parochial clergy. Ecclesiastical organisation proceeded downwards, not upwards. It was provincial, diocesan, conventual, before it became local and parochial. The cathedrals of the dioceses and the conventual churches of the monasteries at first provided for the religious wants of the people. Yet the material was ready for the introduction of the parochial system. Townships suggested the necessary divisions, and village communities, on the self-sufficing system of these agrarian societies, had probably been accustomed to provide for their pagan priests. From the first the rulers of the Church felt the need of continuous local ministrations, though, probably, the earliest advances towards a parochial system were forced upon the country by external causes. From the ninth century onwards Danish invasions struck a series of staggering blows at the monastic organisation. Monasteries were the first objects of the invaders' attack; their wealth and their defencelessness made them an easy, as well as a tempting, prey. They were sacked, pillaged, burned, and their inmates either dispersed or massacred. To save rural Christianity from extinction by a relapse into paganism it became necessary to encourage local efforts, to favour the erection of private chapels, to enlarge the powers of the rural priests or chaplains by whom they were served, even to consecrate as burial-grounds the precincts in which they stood. Thus a permanent resident clergy began to grow up on the rural estates of great nobles in connection with private chapels and oratories. With the gradual extension of this local provision for permanent religious ministrations begins the increased importance attached to the payment of tithes as parochial endowments.
Early documents confirm this explanation of the growth of parochial tithes. On the one side, the Church, backed by all her supposed power over the destinies of man, urged the consecration of tenths to the service of God. On the other hand, the earthly influence of the Crown, sometimes by royal admonitions, coupled with threats of loss of favour, sometimes by attesting and confirming the decrees of synods, sometimes even by treaties of peace with the Danes, supported the demand of the Church, and assisted in making the custom of paying tithes universal. Under this double pressure the practice grew. But it was not till 944 that King Edmund's synod at London for the first time made non-payment of tithes an ecclesiastical offence to be punished by excommunication. Henceforward the Church claimed as an ecclesiastical right what she had hitherto received, if at all, as a free-will offering. The moral duty had become a religious obligation, enforced by spiritual penalties.
The payment of tithes was not yet a legal liability, enforced by temporal sanctions. Nor were tithes, or any part of them, as yet, ecclesiastically or legally, appropriated as parochial endowments. But the times were ripening for both changes. Voluntary dedications of free-will offerings had been acted upon by the religious bodies to whom they had been made. On the faith of their continuance cathedrals had been erected and a diocesan system established; monasteries had been founded; manorial churches had been built and some local provision made for their service the dim outline of a future parochial system could be discerned. By these voluntary dedications the original donors had alienated portions of their own property. If neither appeals to conscience nor threats of excommunication sufficed to obtain payment, the State might not unreasonably be asked to enforce it as a legal liability, either against the original donors or against their representatives who had inherited estates already subject to the dedication of the consecrated portion.
In the reign of Edgar the Peaceful, during the primacy of Dunstan, the payment of tithes was made a legal liability, universal in its application. At the same time a step was taken towards the appropriation of a portion to the maintenance of district churches of a particular class. At Andover, in 970, the king and his Witenagemot issued an ecclesiastical ordinance, which was to all intents and purposes an Act of Parliament. The ordinance creates no tithes. On the contrary it presupposes their existence. It regulates the times when they were to be paid, and makes their payment a legal liability, enforced by a pecuniary penalty and a power of distraint. It does not profess to give them to the clergy. The first article ran as follows: "That God's churches be entitled to every right; and that every tithe be rendered to the old minster, to which the district belongs; and be then so paid, both from a thane's inland (i.e. land granted in the lord's own hands), and from geneat-land (i.e. land granted out for services), so as the plough traverses it." Undoubtedly, the law not only protects the Church in the possession of tithes already dedicated, but transforms the moral duty, religious custom, and ecclesiastical obligation into a legal liability. A reason is suggested by the passages which regulate their division. The general right of the "old minster," the mother church of the district--whether collegiate or conventual--to the local tithes was recognised. But an exception was allowed. If any landowner had built on his private estate a church with a burial-place attached, he was to assign to its support one-third of the local tithes. The remaining two-thirds were to be paid to the "mother church." If the landowner had built on his estate a church or oratory without a burial-place, the local tithes went to the "mother church," and he might provide privately for the priest of his private chapel. In other words, the old diocesan and monastic system still remained in force; but, side by side with it, had grown up manorial churches, providing " hrift districts" with burial-grounds, and therefore claiming some more permanent support than the caprice of the builder or of his successors. They were not yet parish churches; but they were their original type, and in the private chapels or "field churches" of the greater landowners are seen the germs of a further extension of a parochial system.
The law of Edgar remained unaltered at the Conquest. Practically re-enacted by Canute and by Edward the Confessor, it was accepted by William the Conqueror. As years passed, district or parochial churches were multiplied by their voluntary founders in various parts of the country. Some were built by kings or great nobles as private chapels; some by bishops, some by monastic houses, some by landowners, some by freemen on the landowners' estates. Church-building proceeded on no general system, and without any uniformity of date. There was a gradual growth under varying circumstances; but the people, acting through the legislature in a national capacity, neither built, nor endowed, nor repaired these churches. As with the buildings, so with the endowments. They were gradually appropriated to particular churches, in different proportions, without either system or uniformity. No priest serving a district could enforce any claim to local tithes, except for the third which was appropriated only to churches with burial-grounds. Though the payment had become a legal liability, the dedication of tithes to particular parochial uses is, therefore, still unexplained. Something more remained to be done. The final steps were taken between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.
The chief instrument by which local endowments were secured to parish churches was consecration. A founder desired to build a church on his estate, and to have it consecrated. But the bishop could refuse to consecrate, unless proper provision was made for its maintenance. Between the bishop and the founder, who in building the church was a free agent, there might be bargaining. There might also be opposition from outside. The neighbouring monastery perhaps resented the intrusion of a new church and a new priest into the field which it had regarded as its own. But at no stage, either in the bargain or in the opposition, does the national will express itself. Throughout, the founder was at first practically master of the situation. There was no compulsion on him to build a church at all. If he did, not only did he himself nominate and invest the priest, with or without the consent of the bishop, but he could delay appointing to vacancies, and thus leave the church without services. Even where local endowment had been secured to the parochial church at consecration, the system was thus incomplete. Both points were settled by ecclesiastical discipline at the close of the twelfth century. The necessity for institution by the bishop was established, and the bishop's right to appoint to vacant benefices, after a certain period of delay, was vindicated.
A further step was still required. The legal liability for the payment of tithes was satisfied if, with the exception of the third secured to the parochial churches which possessed burial-grounds, payment was made to any ecclesiastical body. A patron might increase the pittances of the poor priests at his door, or offer it to the collegiate cathedral, or heap the grain in the barn of a monastery, or sell the tithes issuing from his estate to any religious body that he chose, or even, by collusion, store the corn in the granaries of himself or his lay friends. Even after the formation of parishes had become general, and after the claim of parochial churches was commonly recognised, it was still possible, and still usual, to grant the local tithes to distant houses of religion. The same causes were at work which in Anglo-Saxon times sacrificed the secular clergy to the monasteries. Norman landlords preferred to assign their tithes to monastic bodies, with whom they were more in sympathy than with the native priests of rural districts. The increase of monasticism after the Conquest necessarily alienated a large part of the local tithes which naturally would have increased the local provision for religious services. This option on the part of landowners is inconsistent with the theory of the endowment of parishes by an exercise of the national will, expressed in some general law. It was not till the thirteenth century, and then not by any statute or Act of Parliament, but by the growth of custom, that the landowner's freedom of choice was limited. No doubt the growth of the custom was aided by the practice of such specific dedications of tithes to the parochial church as those of Hay and Exhall. At common law the courts presumed that the parish church was primâ facie entitled to the tithes which issued from the lands of the parish. By this presumption the burden of proof was thrown on tithe-payers or other claimants to show that the local tithes had been either paid to some collegiate or conventual body for so long a period as to create a prescriptive right, or had been by express grant alienated to some other religious body.
It was to custom that the parochial clergy appealed; other claimants relied on immemorial usage or express grant. This fact is in itself of extreme importance. Had any enactment of the national assembly established the primâ facie right of the parochial clergy to the tithes of the parish, they would have relied, not on custom, but on statute. If, as parochial endowments, tithes were statutory in their origin, we should expect to find that they commence with the legislation by which they are alleged to be created, and that the payment was certain in practice, uniform in amount, identical in source. If, on the other hand, the endowment of parish churches with tithes originated in a series of voluntary dedications, and if the State merely protected a property which was none the less real because it began as a free-will offering, we should expect to find that customary payments preceded any recorded legislation, and were uncertain in practice, varying in amount, irregular in source. Historical facts confirm the second view. The voluntary payment of tithes in this country preceded, by upwards of three centuries, parochial organisation, as well as both ecclesiastical and secular legislation. The first secular enactment on the subject assumes the prior existence of the charge, and for more than two centuries afterwards allows tithe-payers a wide freedom in the choice of the religious body to which payment was made. When this freedom was limited, it was restricted not by legislation but by the growth of custom. Both in respect of the persons to whom tithes were due, and of the produce on which they were payable, the practice was not certain, but uncertain. The amount paid was varying, not uniform. The sources from which the payment was derived, are not identical, but irregular. If, therefore, the State endowed parochial churches with tithes, all those signs, which would naturally accompany such a national act, are conspicuously absent. On the other hand, all those signs, which naturally indicate the legislative protection of customary practices, are conconspicuously present.
The gradual, piecemeal, and discretionary endowment of parochial churches with the tithes of the parish has left its mark on the existing organisation. It explains, for instance, as no other assumption can explain, the freedom from the payment which the "Hall," "Court," or " Manor" farm frequently enjoyed; it lies at the root of the distinction between rectorial and vicarial tithes, and between ecclesiastical appropriators and lay impropriators; it suggests the reason why land in one parish should be charged with tithes for the benefit of the church of another parish. Many of the old anomalies in the law of tithes have been smoothed into comparative uniformity by the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836. But the previous history of the charge renders it difficult to believe that the nation ever by a legislative action endowed parochial churches with the local tithes.
The Reformation left the parochial organisation untouched. But it made an important change, which greatly embittered objections to the payment of tithes. It alienated a considerable portion of the tithes from religious uses. Rectories, together with the local tithes, might be, and often had been, "appropriated" to a monastery or other religious corporation, which appointed vicars to discharge the religious duties attached to the endowment. Originally the stipend of the vicar was arbitrary. But gradually it was recognised that the person responsible for religious ministrations in the parish ought to have some fixed determinate means of support. This was generally made by endowing the vicarage with land, or by assigning to it some portion of the great tithes, or the whole of the small tithes, or by a combination of all three methods. At the Dissolution of the Monasteries all the rectorial tithes in their possession, which had not been already allocated to the support of vicarages, passed into the hands of the Crown, and were subsequently granted out by letters patent to lay subjects. These lay grantees were called " ay rectors," or "impropriators," in order to distinguish them from the original "appropriators," who were of necessity spiritual persons or ecclesiastical corporations. When the Tithe Commutation Act was passed in 1836, and tithes of produce were commuted into rent-charges, it was found that nearly one-fourth of the annual value had thus been diverted from religious purposes into the hands of laymen. There is strong evidence that the lay impropriators or their lessees, who were generally absentees, and without other interests in the parish, exacted their legal dues with a strictness which was relatively rare among clerical tithe-owners.
Tithes in themselves, and apart from their incidence, could scarcely be regarded as a legitimate grievance by either owners or occupiers of land, especially as no attack was as yet made on the religious objects to which they were devoted. No landlords could honestly believe that the payment robbed them of any part of the rents to which they were justly entitled. For centuries, in every transfer of land, whether by purchase or inheritance, the estimated value of tithes had been previously deducted from the value of the estate so bought or inherited. Nor could any tenant honestly complain that tithes increased the burden of his rent. Land only commands what it is worth. If 100 acres of land fetched £l per acre, it made no pecuniary difference to the farmer whether he paid £100 to the landowner or £90 to the landowner and £10 to the tithe-owner. But the real practical grievance was the incidence of the charge upon the produce of the land. In this way tithes become a charge which was increased by good farming, or diminished by bad, --a tax on every additional outlay of money and labour,--a check upon enterprise and improvement.
Tithes in kind were admittedly out of date. Though rents and wages had long been placed on a money basis, a tithe-owner could still exact payment in the ancient fashion. As a fact, however, the Reports to the Board of Agriculture (1793-1815) prove that, at the close of the eighteenth century, comparatively little tithe was collected in kind. Especially was this the case when the tithe was in the hands of clerical owners. For this change of practice there were many reasons. Collection in kind was extremely unpopular. Where it prevailed, farmers showed their dislike to the system in various ways. Many tenants so greatly resented putting money into the pockets of tithe-owners that they preferred to lose it themselves, and refused to plough up pastures which would have been more profitable under tillage. Sometimes the tenant left his tithable land unmanured. A Hertfordshire farmer, for instance, occupied land in two parishes, in one of which a reasonable composition was paid, while, in the other, tithe was collected in kind. The result was that he farmed one part of his occupation with spirit on improved methods, and that the dung-cart never reached the other portion of his land. Sometimes the tenants made the collection as inconvenient as possible. Thus a Hampshire farmer gave notice to the tithe-owner that he was about to draw a field of turnips. When the tithe-owner's servants, horses and waggons had come on the land, the farmer drew ten turnips, gave one to the tithing-man, and said that he would let his master know when he drew any more. In a wet season the collection was often the cause of heavy loss. Notice had to be given to the tithe-owner to set out the tithe. Farmers risked a lawsuit, if they carried their crops before the process was completed. Consequently, in catchy seasons the rain often outstripped the slow progress of the tithing-man, and the crops were ruined.
The collection of tithes in kind, regulated as it was by the subtle and technical distinctions of case-made law, provoked endless bickerings, disputes and litigation. If tithe-owners were clergymen, living in their parishes, they naturally welcomed any reasonable system of payment which enabled them to live on friendly terms with their parishoners. Non-resident pluralists, or lay impropriators who let out the tithes to proctors, could better afford to defy the public opinion of the neighbourhood. But they were not always proof against business arguments. The heavy cost of collecting tithes in kind suggested the commercial prudence of adopting other arrangements. Barns must be built and repaired for the storage of produce. The weekly wages of servants must be met. Waggons and horses, with the necessary cart-sheds and stabling must be provided and maintained. The cost, not only of collecting, but of threshing, dressing and marketing corn had to be met. The net profits of a crop were thus reduced to a minimum by the duplication of expenses. Various forms of payment were therefore substituted for collection in kind. Sometimes, and especially under enclosures of open fields, tithes were extinguished by allotments of land of equivalent value. Sometimes it was considered that the increase of the area of land held in mortmain or the difficult position of clerical landowners were objections to the exchange of tithes for their equivalent in landed property, and a corn-rent was substituted. Sometimes tithes were commuted for a composition calculated on the acre or on the pound of rent paid, and either fixed for a term of years or based on an annual estimate of the value of the crops. Sometimes farmers had the option of taking the tithable portion at the surveyor's valuation or leaving it to be collected by the tithe-owner. Sometimes, in a few fortunate parishes, a modus had by immemorial usage taken the place of tithes. Moduses were payments of definite sums, which had been permanently fixed in amount at a time when the purchasing power of money had been far greater than it had since become. They were, therefore, advantageous to the tithepayer. A modus of 1d. on every fleece shorn in the parish was no real equivalent to a tenth of the value of the wool.
No variety in forms of payment could entirely remove the reasonable objection to a tithe of produce in kind. So long as farming remained stagnant the grievance was imperceptible. It became acute when progressive methods of agriculture were generally adopted. Here and there tithe-owners recognised the altered conditions by allowing deductions from their tithes to meet the cost of all purchased manures. But the practice was by no means general. The fair adjustment of compositions was in other ways extremely difficult. Tithable crops were of greater value to farmers, who could collect and market them at a small additional expense, than they were to tithe-owners, whose necessary outlay diminished their net profits by a half. The difference allowed a large margin for dispute. Even when compositions were reasonable, they tithed the increased produce of improved husbandry. Land, highly cultivated, might be valued at 3s. 6d. an acre; soil of the same natural quality, under slovenly management, might escape with 1s. 6d. In the case of wastes, the objection to tithes on produce was strongly felt as an obstacle to improvement. When land, which at the best had afforded only rough pasture, was reduced to cultivation, owners and occupiers risked labour and money on a venture which might succeed or fail. In either event tithe-owners were safe; they profited by the success, and lost nothing by the failure. The legislature had endeavoured to meet the case. Under the Barren Lands Act, barren heaths and waste grounds were exempted from tithes for seven years after they had been reduced for the first time to cultivation. But the decisions of the law courts deprived improvers of the benefits which they expected from the Act. Only land which was so barren that it paid no tithe by reason of its barrenness was held to be exempt. The initial cost of draining fen-lands, or grubbing and stubbing wood-lands, or of paring and burning moors and heaths was not to be taken into consideration. Whatever the cost at which the land had been fitted for cultivation, the only question to be asked was whether, when ploughed and sown, it was so naturally fertile as to produce a crop, or so naturally barren that it would yield nothing without an extraordinary expenditure on liming, chalking, marling, dunging, or manuring. Only in the latter case could the seven years' exemption be legally claimed.
The law of tithes needed complete revision. Its inadequacy to meet changed conditions had long been felt. The necessity for a large expenditure of capital in order to recover the ground which had been lost during a long period of disaster forced the question to the front. In 1836 the difficulty was solved. Peel in 1835 had proposed the voluntary commutation of tithe. Lord John Russell, adopting in his Bill the machinery which Peel had sketched, made commutation compulsory. When once this point was decided, party considerations were for the moment subordinated: Whig and Tory loyally co-operated to frame a workable scheme. The aim of legislators was to commute tithe of produce in kind for a variable money payment charged on the land, to make the commuted sum fluctuate with the purchasing power of money, to preserve the existing relations between the values of tithable produce and the cost of living. It never attempted to fix the payment, once and for all, at the sum which represented the value that tithe then possessed. On the contrary, it converted tithes into a corn-rent, fluctuating in value according to the septennial average of the prices of wheat, barley and oats.
The first step was to determine the value of the tithes; the second to adjust the purchasing power of the money payment at which they were commuted.
Within a limited time tithe-owners and tithe-payers of any parish might agree upon the total sum to be paid in lieu of tithes. This agreement was first to receive the assent of the patron; secondly, to be communicated to the bishop; and, thirdly, to be approved and ratified by the Commissioners. If no agreement was arrived at, a local enquiry was held on the spot by the Commissioners or their assistants, who estimated the value of the tithe, taking as their basis the actual receipts of the tithe-owner during the preceding seven years; framed their draft award; deposited it for the inspection of interested parties; and, finally, confirmed their award, which from that time was binding upon tithe-owners and tithepayers.
The mode in which the purchasing power of money was intended to be preserved was as follows. The average of the gross annual value of the actual receipts of the tithe-owner was ascertained in money for the seven preceding years. The net annual value, arrived at by deducting all just expenses, was taken as the permanent commutation of the great and small tithes of the parish. This net sum was divided into three equal parts, and the average value for the seven years ending with 1835 was taken for wheat, barley and oats. It was then asked how many bushels of wheat could be bought at cost price by one of these equal portions, how many of barley by the second, how many of oats by the third. Each £100 of tithe was divided into three equal sums of £33 6s. 8d.: the septennial averages for the three grains were respectively 7s. 0½d. for a bushel of wheat ; 3s. l 1½d. for a bushel of barley; 2s. 9d. for a bushel of oats. In 1836 at those prices £33 6s. 8d. bought 94.96 bushels of wheat, or 168.42 bushels of barley, or 242.42 bushels of oats. These have been the fixed multipliers in use ever since. Each year the average prices for the last seven years are multiplied by these fixed quantities, and the result is the tithe rent charge for the coming year. It will be noticed that the charge is affected most by variations in the price of oats, and least by those of wheat.
One other point requires to be mentioned. Lord Althorp in 1833, Sir Robert Peel in 1835, Lord John Russell in 1836 were agreed that the payment should be transferred from occupiers to owners of land. Section 80 of the Act of 1836 empowered tenants to deduct the rent-charge from the rent payable to the landlord. But the section was permissive only. For mutual convenience tenants paid the rent-charge direct to the tithe-owner, and their other rent to the landlord was calculated on this basis. By the Tithe Rent Charge Recovery Act of 1891 the tenant was no longer permitted to be the conduit-pipe for the payment. The liability to pay the tithe rent charge was transferred to the landowner; the tithe-owner's remedy of distress was altered into a process through the county court; and, instead of the corn averages absolutely determining the amount of tithe rent charges, provision was made in certain cases for a reduced payment when the charge exceeded a certain proportion of the annual value of the land.
Acting on the principles then laid down, it became the duty of the Board of Agriculture to collect the corn prices at the markets specified in the Act and at the beginning of each year to publish the average prices for the previous year and the septennial average from which the current value of £100 of tithe rent charge could be calculated. The Board itself did not publish the calculation, but tables were always produced by private enterprise. Towards the close of the century the low prices of all cereals resulted in tithe rent charge falling much below par; for example, £100 at par which in 1875 had risen to £112 15s. 6¾d. had become as little as £66 10s. 9¼d. in 1901. Towards the end of the war, however, with the famine prices to which wheat, even though controlled, had risen, the value of the tithe rent charge began to rise steeply and would obviously become very high indeed as more of the years of scarcity became ineluded in the septennial average. An Act was then passed in 1918 which took the current figure of £109 3s. 11d. for each £100 at par and stabilised that value until 1925, with the provision that after that year the value should be calculated on a fifteen instead of a seven years' average so as to include years of high and low prices. This was not welcome to tithe owners, who argued that for a long period they had been receiving far less than the par values, indeed, on the average from 1837 to 1918 a trifle less than £92.
However, it was avowedly temporary legislation to meet the emergency and a return to the earlier system was promised in 1925. But as that period approached it was apparent that a great increase in the charge would come into operation under the method indicated in the 1918 Act, indeed that the value of £100 at par would become over £130. An attempt was then made to put the whole vexed question of tithes upon a new basis, to commute afresh this time at a fixed, instead of a fluctuating rate, and to provide for the eventual extinguishment of a charge which had always aroused a good deal of opposition on sectarian grounds, however truly it could be argued that payment came not from the farmer but from the owner, who was cognisant of the burden when he bought the land.
By the Act of 1925 the tithe rent charge was finally stabilised at £105, to which the landowner had to add £4 10s. in order to provide a sinking fund for the eventual extinction of the charge. At the same time all ecclesiastical tithe rent charges, whether attached to benefices or owned by ecclesiastical Corporations, were vested in the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty, which became responsible for payments to the previous beneficiaries.
Certain other legislation affecting tithe may also be recorded. It had always been a grievance among the clergy that their tithes were treated as rateable property, especially as rates even in rural parishes had been rising steeply towards the end of the nineteenth century. Relief was accorded by successive Acts of 1899, 1920, and 1922, the eventual result of which was to accord remission of rates on all tithes attached to a benefice, varying from complete remission when the income was below £300 to half remission for incomes above £500. Corporations and lay impropriators received no remissions. The 1925 Act simplified still further by removing all rates upon ecclesiastical tithes; the rating authority received the amount due on the new tithe from the Inland Revenue Commissioners, who were in turn reimbursed from Queen Anne's Bounty.
The various Acts specified above also made a series of provisions whereby tithe rent charges could be redeemed. Under the earlier Acts redemption required agreement between tithe owner and landowner, the commutation value being fixed at twenty-four and then twenty-five years' purchase of the par value, not a very tempting proposition to the landowner when the current value had fallen below 80 as it had from 1890 onwards. The 1918 Act gave the landowner power to redeem on providing such a sum as when invested in Government securities would produce an annuity of the gross annual value of the tithe rent charge, less rates and land tax and an allowance for the cost of collection which was not to exceed 2½ per cent. of the gross.
The Board of Agriculture had to determine the gross annual value as well as the rate of interest defined as obtainable from Government securities, and from 1918 to 1921 the formula adopted was twenty-one years' purchase of the par value less the specified deductions. Between 1921 and 1925 the following factors prevailed-118 par value x 17, 108 x 18½ and 104 x 22. With the 1925 Act the gross annual value became finally defined at £105, from which a deduction of £5 was made for rates in the case of benefices (£l6 for Corporations) and of £2 10s. for costs of collection. The number of years' purchase still has to vary with the current rates of interest and by 1934 had risen as high as 30. Obviously the years immediately following the war offered exceptionally favourable opportunities for redemption, for the tithe rent charge had been fixed at a relatively low figure and the rates of interest were so high that a small number of years purchase were required. Prior to the war the amount of rent charge redeemed annually lay between one and two thousand pounds, but for the years 1920-23 it averaged nearly £82,000, from which it has since fallen to something of the order of £5,000-£8,000, a figure necessarily swollen by the necessity of redemption when land has been cut up for building plots.
Though the 1925 Act had appeared to provide a not unsatisfactory settlement of a question that had long been a source of trouble, one, too, that would eventually secure the extinction of what had often been an onerous charge, like other fixed charges it was not prepared for the shock which came with the break of prices from 1929 onwards. The larger landowner would have had no ostensible cause for complaint, tithe had become a fixed charge upon their land, they had no remedy against falling rents due to the unremunerativeness of farming. Agricultural landowners obtained little public sympathy or political consideration, in view of the accretions in land values enjoyed by the owners of the ever-increasing margin of urban land. But during the heyday of war prices no inconsiderable proportion of agricultural land had passed into the possession of the men who farmed it. They had seen its capital value fall by one-half and they had now to carry the burden of tithe when the land was earning so little. So a new agitation against the tithe sprang up from 1930 onwards, embittered in some cases by the old anti-church feeling, but obtaining its real strength from the owner occupiers. In Kent, in Essex and other of the Eastern Counties an organised opposition to the payment of tithe developed, and the distraint sales were forcibly broken up or effectively boycotted. The situation became dangerous both to public order and to the Church of England, which was placed in a most invidious position. For the moment the question still remains unsettled pending the report of a Royal Commission which was appointed in 1934, in view of which and of the large measures of relief that have been accorded to agriculture, the opposing organisations are holding their hands.