Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE ORIGINS OF THE PAROCHIAL SYSTEM
- PART II THE FUNCTIONS OF THE PARISH
- 5 The parish and its servants
- 6 The economics of the parish
- 7 The parish and the community
- 8 The parish and the church courts: a mirror of society
- 9 The parish church, popular culture and the Reformation
- PART III THE PARISH AND ITS CHURCH
- Notes
- Index
6 - The economics of the parish
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE ORIGINS OF THE PAROCHIAL SYSTEM
- PART II THE FUNCTIONS OF THE PARISH
- 5 The parish and its servants
- 6 The economics of the parish
- 7 The parish and the community
- 8 The parish and the church courts: a mirror of society
- 9 The parish church, popular culture and the Reformation
- PART III THE PARISH AND ITS CHURCH
- Notes
- Index
Summary
[H]e shall wryt for the church wardens & keepe
the bookes of the accontes & helpe them for
all other wrytings they shall have need of his
helpe.
Instructions for the parish clerk, Stepney, 1586Even before the parish had begun to take shape in any formal way, Anglo-Saxon law required the laity to make contributions to the support of the church. Of these tithe was from the first by far the most important. It had both a respectable ancestry and biblical authority, and yet its early history is wrapped in obscurity. It was at first paid in some way to the bishops and was used for their support, for charitable uses, and for the furtherance of the faith. The obligation to pay to the church a tenth of the return of nature was imposed by the Anglo-Saxon kings on their subjects, and to it were added the further payments of ‘soul-scot’ and ‘church scot’. The former was a gift to the church to ensure the safe passage of the soul beyond the grave, clearly a relic of pagan practice, and the latter a contribution to the support of the temporal church. Added to these sources of income was a landed endowment. It varied greatly in extent and value (pp. 214–18), but there were few benefices that did not derive some income from the ‘glebe’. And in some guise or other the local church continued to receive these contributions throughout the Middle Ages and early modern times.
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- A History of the English ParishThe Culture of Religion from Augustine to Victoria, pp. 200 - 249Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000