614 Lord Mountcashcl and the Church. Q!UNE, 



Thus arose the general distribution of livings and churches. The bound- 

 aries of the estate being in general the boundary of the parish, and the 

 services of the priest being appropriated to the particular estate, and of 

 course paid out of the proceeds of the property settled for his main- 

 tenance by the owner. It is impossible that any right can be more 

 natural or justifiable than that of a maintenance derived in this manner. 

 It was not forced from the owner : it was not taken from either the pro- 

 perty of the public nor of any unwilling individual. The lord of the estate 

 felt the necessity for having religious service on his estate ; to have that 

 advantage he set apart a regular salary for its provision ; and to continue 

 that advantage to his posterity, he made that provision permanent to all 

 time. 



That this was the origin of tithes and glebes is unquestionable. In a 

 number of instances, the documents under the seal of the feudal lord are 

 extant; in some instances establishing the payment of the priest by his own 

 authority ; in other, joining the seals of his immediate heirs, when they 

 happened to have any peculiar power over the disposal of the lands. Sel- 

 tlen's History of Tithes abounds with evidences of this style of distri- 

 bution. 



The seizure of the church property by Henry VIII. was the act of a 

 notorious tyrant, and cannot justify any interference with property of any 

 kind. But even that tyrannical seizure had a pretext which can be offered 

 no longer. In the perpetual civil wars of England, the parish clergy 

 had been, in a great measure, driven to take refuge in the monasteries, 

 which were then places not only of great opulence, protected by the pre- 

 valent superstition of the time, and under the powerful sanction of the 

 papacy, but were in general places of considerable strength. The splen- 

 dour, the luxury, the learned leisure, the popular veneration, the easy 

 and social life, and the actual personal safety of those magnificent com- 

 munities, forming an irresistible contrast with the seclusion, the narrow 

 means, the rude association, and the personal insecurity of life and 

 property, gradually made the convent the permanent refuge of the secu- 

 lar priesthood. In return, they contributed their income to the support 

 of the convent. The tithes and glebe, in process of a few generations, 

 thus became the property of the convent; the service of the parish 

 churches being almost wholly supplied by priests sent from the con- 

 ventual body, as its agents, and thence named vicars; for whose support 

 a certain smaller portion of the tithes was allotted, thence called vicarial; 

 the original tithes or Great Tithes, with the glebe, or actual lands at- 

 tached to the priests' house, being the property of the convent. This 

 abuse rapidly grew excessive, in the disturbances and superstitions of 

 the long interval between the Conquest and the Reformation. The cru- 

 sades, and the prodigal and profligate lives of the great barons, who ex- 

 pected, by a death-bed legacy to the convent, to atone for a life of vio- 

 lence ; augmented the convent lands, until they were computed to amount 

 to a third of the island. An abuse of this magnitude undoubtedly called 

 for a remedy ; and Henry's passion for plunder of every kind broke up 

 the convent estates. But the measure had the taint of tyranny. The 

 rightful and ancient property essential to the religious education of the 

 people, the revenues for popular instruction, the funds for the poor, and 

 the lands of hospitals, were all involved in the fate of the ill-gotten gains of 

 the convent. The country was but little enriched by the change; for the 

 church-lands were given to the profligate retainers of the court ; and that 



