ORIGIN OF PAROCHIAL ORGANISATIONS 335 



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 dis- 

 persed 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 confirm- 

 ing 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 dedica- 

 tions of free-will offerings had been acted upon by the religious 

 bodies to whom they had been made. On the faith of their con- 

 tinuance 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 



