III.— THE EFFECT UPON THE GLEBEOWNER. 



Anciently all the land of the country held by laymen was 

 subject to the obligation of paying tithe. Unless a special 

 exemption could be proved there was no lawful discharge from 

 the duty. But at the present day half the land in England is 

 freed from tithe rent-charge ; in some districts it is scarcely 

 known. Under the Enclosure Acts, which were so numerous at the 

 close of the last and the commencement of the present centuiy, 

 lands were assigned to the clergy in lieu of tithes. The value of a 

 tenth of the produce was commuted, not in a corn i-ent, but in 

 land. Perhaps, in the strictest sense of the word, the lands 

 thus allotted are not glebes ; but it is to the lands which were 

 given to the clergy instead of tithes that I refer throughout 

 the following remarks. In the Midland counties, and especially 

 in the dioceses of Peterborough and Ely, very little ecclesiastical 

 property is held in tithe rent-charges. Clerical incomes are almost 

 entirely derived from the rental or other profits arising out of 

 glebe-lands. 



It has been said that as compared with glebeowners tithe- 

 owners are now in clover. On the other hand, in times past, 

 glebeowners benefited to the full by the increase in the amount 

 and the value of agricultural produce, which within fifty years 

 doubled the rental of laud. The effect of the Tithe Com- 

 mutation Act was to deprive titheowuers of their proportionate 

 share in this increment. Titheowners derive from the land the 

 limited profits, and ought now to suffer the limited losses, of 

 rent chargers ; glebeowners enjoyed the natural profits, and now, 

 as I hope to show, suffer more than the corresponding losses, of 

 landowners. The incomes of glebeowners swelled enormously 

 by the exchange of tithes for land in the "piping times" of 

 rural prosperity. The fortunate Midland incumbent not only 

 possessed the moral advantages of his professional position ; he 

 also enjoyed the social prestige and the country pleasures which 

 were the monopoly in the far-off days of agricultural felicity of 

 the landed squirearchy. A complete revolution has been accom- 

 plished ; the scale of the glebeowner's prosperity has kicked 

 the beam. 



To the incumbent the possession of land has often become an 

 intolerable burden which alienates his parishioners, nari'ows the 

 sphere of his influence, clogs and impedes him in the adequate 

 performance of his clerical duties. It identifies him with the 

 farming interest, to which in many rural districts the majority 

 of his parishioners are opposed. If he lets his glebe farms he 



