CHAPTER XIII

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_Appropriation of Tithes to Monasteries, pages 146-158._

Impetus to the building of monasteries, 146. Lay-owners arbitrarily appropriated their tithes and churches to whom they wished, 147. The monks initiated the practice of appropriating parochial tithes, 146. Bishops, chapters, and nuns followed their example, 147. Form of conveyance used, 147. The incumbent not originally a freeholder proved from one of the Acts of Third Lateran Council, A.D. 1180, p. 148. This Council gave a death-blow to arbitrary lay appropriations, 148. Its decrees opposed by English lay-owners, 148. A national assembly at Westminster, A.D. 1125, condemned lay appropriations, 149. They gradually ceased in the reigns of Richard I. and John, 149. Fourth Lateran Council, A.D. 1215, gave parsons the parochial rights to tithes for the future, 150. Monasteries and chapters had to show their title to tithes by grants or by prescriptions, 151. Monastic tithes were of two kinds, 151. 15 Richard II., c. 6 (1391), provides for the poor and the vicar, 153. Lord Selborne on this Act, 153. His remarks open to grave objections, 154. This Act failed, 154. So the Act 4 Henry IV., c. 12 (1403), was passed, 154. Vicar perpetual endowed by the bishop and not the monastery, 154. His three functions, 155. He was to provide for the poor out of his endowments, 155. A list of the small tithes given to vicars, 155. Various changes in shifting the persons who were to repair churches, 156. Archbishop Stratford’s 4th canon made in a provincial council, A.D. 1342, for the maintenance of the poor, 157. The poor had a claim on the tithes from this canon and the Act of 1391, p. 157. The Act of 1403 gives the vicar a permanent position, 158, 159.

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