Its Connection with Church and State. 115 



The allusions to a tripartite distribution in the so-called 

 excerptions of Egbert, and in the canons of Theodore and 

 Aelfric, are in language so similar to those in certain MSS. 

 of Metz and Andain as to have led Lord Selborne to conclude 

 that they must have been extracted bodily from these older 

 documents, which, in their turn, probably owe their origin to 

 some earlier copy of the Capitulare Episcoporum.^ Now what 

 gives colour to this suggestion is the fact that the clergy in 

 England were gradually dividing into two great bodies, viz. 

 the monastic and the secular. The former were ardent sup- 

 porters of a continental polity in religious matters, while the 

 latter were becoming every day more national and insular. 

 Here were the germs of that difference in taste and character 

 which eventually culminated in open schism at the Reforma- 

 tion. We may therefore conclude that the practice of quad- 

 ripartite or tripartite distribution was attempted in England, 

 though possibly relinquished as impracticable amidst a people 

 so wild and stubborn as the Anglo-Saxons. It seems however 

 that in a more or less modified form something of the kind 

 would become a necessity on the introduction of the parochial 

 system, and we see traces of this both in the laws of King 

 Edgar, and later on in the frequent State intervention over 

 matters of monastic poor relief, about which we shall have 

 something to say in its proper place. The parochial system 

 initiated a new departure in the division of the counties, 

 which, as we have already stated, had been parcelled out by 

 early Anglo-Saxon kings into hundreds and tithings. The 

 parish, consisting either of a township or a group of town- 

 ships, became for most purposes the substitute for the hundred, 



^ Briefly stated, Lord Selborne's conclusions are, thattlie excerptions of 

 Egbert could not have been compiled before the 11th centurj^, and were 

 not possibly the work of Egbert, who died a.d. 7G(j, but were traceable 

 to the sacerdotal laws of Andain ; (2) that the so-called canons of Theo- 

 dore were not a translation of those of the Nicene Council, but patched- 

 up rules of a Benedictine source for the use of priests ; (3) that the 

 Capitulare Episcoporum is the fountain head of the canons of Aelfric. 

 Vide Selborne, Anc. Facts and Fictions, ch. vii., viii., Ed. I. ; M. Fuller, 

 Ou)^ Title Deeds, p. 113; Eev. H. Clarke, A History of Tithes ; and Sel- 

 borne, Anc. Facts and Fictions, ed. II., Supplement. 



