io8 History of the English Landed Interest. 



the name of tithes.^ Lord Selborne considers that the first 

 canon relating to tliis payment was tliat enacted at Rouen a.d. 

 630, and tliat the first law was the celebrated ordinance of 

 the eleventh year of Charlemagne's reign. A large amount of 

 ambiguity however surrounds the exact period when this 

 Continental practice came to be general in our country. The 

 discipline of the Church abroad, with its methodical quadri- 

 partite distribution of prsedial, mixed, and personal tithes, was 

 as distasteful to disorderly Bersaker landowners as were foreign 

 feudal customs. 



When, therefore, St. Augustine sought his superior's in- 

 structions, the Bishop of Rome merely cited the Continental 

 custom of tithe distribution, and left a wise freedom of action 

 to the discretion of his lieutenant.^ 



That the bishops of the Heptarchy received tithe as early 

 as the eighth century, is evident from allusions to the custom 

 by Boniface, archbishop of Mentz, in his letter to Cuthbert, 

 archbishop of Canterbury, and from the remark in one of 

 Beda's latest letters, that " there is no village in the remotest 

 parts of Northumbria which could escape the payment of 

 tribute to the Bishop.^ And here it may be as well to examine 

 the Latin nomenclature of the old laws, canons, and charters, 

 with a view to deciding once for all where tithes and where 

 some other church due is intended. In this particular instance 

 the word used by Beda is "tributum," which, as a generic 

 term, covering all Church offerings, eleemosynary and compul- 

 sory, may and probably does include the specific due of 

 " decimse." To be strictly accurate, the word " decimse," i.e., 

 tithes, is not used in either St. Augustine's message to Pope 

 Gregory or in the latter's reply. " De his quae fidelium obla- 

 tionibus accedunt altari, quantae debeant fieri portiones ? " asks 

 Augustine, and the same word (" portionibus ") is used in the 

 Pontiff's answer. Then again, " decimam terrsB suae," " cleci- 

 mam mansionem," " decimam omnium hidarum," " decimam 



* Ancient Facts and Fictions concerning Churches and Tithes, p. 49, 

 ed.I. 

 ^ Lord Selborne, Ane. Facts and Fictions, p. 104, ed. T. 

 ' Lingard, Anglo-Saxon Church, vol. i. p. 103. 



