1 1 2 History of the English Landed Interest. 



soon ttey cliangecl from a gospel oblation to a legal due. 

 There is however one main distinction in all the so-called 

 Anglo-Saxon laws relating to ecclesiastical imposts and 

 those relating to secular taxation. Attached to the former 

 we rarely, at any rate in the earlier records, find penalty 

 clauses, which, on the other hand, are a marked feature of the 

 latter. This is of course the battle-ground of the Liberationist 

 and Churchman ; and though if we held a brief at all, it would 

 be for the latter, we cannot help pointing out that neither side 

 has quite recognised the importance which the Anglo-Saxon 

 system of land tenure bears in the dispute. Owners of landed 

 property, we have remarked, made over as tithe offerings the 

 tenth of their produce. Such gifts however would be limited 

 to the demesne lands. There would have to be some special 

 understanding between lord and gebur over the common arable 

 o-round before the produce of every tenth plough land could 

 be dedicated as tithes. The landlord would have to consent to 

 forfeit his claim to the boon and weekly services of its culti- 

 vators, and they would have to forego the fruits of their in- 

 dustry in farming it. As soon then as every fresh district 

 taken from the waste came to bear crops the question of tithe 

 would ensue. With regard to the waste proper, it was the old 

 Roman scriptura arrangement over again, only under the new 

 name of mixed tithe. Thus, except with the tithe from the 

 thane's inland, it was not so much the lord as the people who 

 were concerned. That therefore on the common arable ground 

 would be dedicated, if dedicated at all, by the community, 

 and not by this or that individual, a circumstance which 

 rather points to some form of compulsory taxation than to the 

 free nature of this offering for which the champion of Church 

 interests contends. Thus, in the ordinance of King Edgar 

 tithe is to be paid both from a thane's inland and from geneat 

 land so far as the plough traverses it. 



Important though the history of the tithe undoubtedly is, 

 there is another aspect of it, viz. the legal, and this we shall 

 now examine. When a landed proprietor dedicated one-tenth 

 of his produce to the Church, he made no provision for the 

 variations brought about by time in agriculture and land 



