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‘The Right of the Church’; the Clergy, Tithe, and the Courts at York, 1540–1640

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

W. J. Sheils
W. J. Sheils*
Affiliation:
Borthwick Institute, University of York
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Extract

A Certificate From Northamptonshire, published anonymously in 1641, proclaimed that the current attacks being made on the bishops had a secret purpose behind them: the abolition of the requirement to pay tithe, whether to cleric or layman. ‘If the bishops and their courts were overthrown’, so the author claimed, the people would be freed from paying tithes, ‘which is the secret thing which our common free holders and grand jury-men do so much aim at’. The writer’s claims concerning the motives which led men to demand the abolition of episcopacy may have had some truth in them, but he was to be proved wrong about the consequences of such abolition; as, indeed, a better informed observer pondering the extent of lay involvement in the ownership of tithes might have been able to predict. Despite several close calls and a variety of imaginative proposals for abolition or reform, tithes remained and survived the demise of bishops, deans, and ecclesiastical courts, standing alongside glebe as one of the twin pillars of the maintenance of the parochial ministry.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 24: The Church and Wealth , 1987 , pp. 231 - 255
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1987

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References

1 Quoted in Hill, C., Economic Problems of the Church from Archbishop Whitgift to the Long Parliament (Oxford, 1956), p. 130 Google Scholar.

2 James, M., ‘The Political Importance of the Tithes Controversy in the English Revolution, 1640–60’, History, 26 (1941), pp. 1–18 Google Scholar; Hill, C., The World Turned Upside Down (London, 1972)Google Scholar discusses the views of radical groups such as the Fifth Monarchists, Levellers, Ranters, and Quakers to tithe. More detail on Quakers is in B. Reay, ‘The Quakers and Tithes 1652–1660’, PP 86 (1980), pp. 98–120. For the later history of tithe see Evans, E. J., The Contentious Tithe: the Tithe Problem and English Agriculture 1750–1850 (London, 1976)Google Scholar.

3 C. Hill, The World Turned Upside Down, p. 187.

4 Hill, Economic Problems, passim.

5 Ibid., pp. 119–21, 124–9.

6 Thomson, J. A. F., ‘Tithe Disputes in Later Medieval London’, EHR 78 (1063), esp. pp. 12–13 Google Scholar.

7 Brigden, S., ‘Tithe Controversy in Reformation London’, JEH 32 (1981), p. 301 Google Scholar.

8 Davies, C. S. L., ‘Popular Religion and the Pilgrimage of Grace’, in Fletcher, A. and Stevenson, J. eds, Order and Disorder in Early Modem England (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 80–1 Google Scholar. It is perhaps significant that the barns attacked belonged to monastic appropriators or lay farmers and not to local clergy.

9 Even in London, separatists rarely articulated such views before 1640: Tolmie, M., The Triumph of the Saints: the Separate Churches of London 1616–49 (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 14, 41, 149 Google Scholar but see also Hill, C., Economic Problems, 275–88 Google Scholar which draws a different conclusion to mine, from London material.

10 See, for example, Sheils, W.J., ‘A Survey of the Diocese of Gloucester, 1603’ in Walker, D., Sheils, W.J., and Kent, J. eds, An Ecclesiastical Miscellany (Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, Records Section 11, 1976), pp. 61–102 Google Scholar. Nicholas Ridley had expressed the concerns of a bishop who, as an impropriator, had profits which originally belonged to the parish ministry, see Hill, Economic Problems, p. 152.

11 Brook, V.J.K., Whilgift and the English Church (London, 1964), pp. 175–6 Google Scholar.

12 See examples in Hill, C., Economic Problems, pp. 245–74, 289–306 Google Scholar.

13 32 Henry VIII, cap. 7; 2 and 3 Edward VI, cap. 13.

14 Houlbrooke, R.A., Church Courts and the People during the English Reformation, 1520–1570 (Oxford, 1979), p. 122 Google Scholar; for Bancroft see Hill, Economic Problems, p. 118.

15 Selden, J., History of Tithes (London 1680 edn.), preface, p. xvii Google Scholar.

16 See above, papers by Wilks and Coleman.

17 The main sources for this are the series of consistory court act books and the files of cause papers for the archbishopric of York, housed in the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, York. The act books provided the basic statistical framework for the study, and the cause papers provide the detail in individual cases. Many of the cause papers have been used in an earlier study, D. M. Gransby, ‘Tithe Disputes in the Diocese of York 1540–1639’ (York University M.Phil. thesis, 1966), and his work has guided and greatly assisted my examination of this class of record.

18 Such sources are naturally scrappy, but two good accounts of tithe exist in parish records and are discussed below. Even at its busiest the material from the act books suggest that the York courts were never troubled about tithe by more than one-third of the parishes at any one time, and in the majority of these cases the clergy were not participants.

19 Houlbrooke, Church Courts and Reformation, p. 146; O’Day, R., The English Clergy: the Emergence and Consolidation of a Profession 1558–1642 (Leicester, 1979), pp. 191–2 Google Scholar.

20 Marchant, R. A., The Church Under the Law: Justice, Administration, and Discipline in the Diocese of York 1560–1640 (Oxford, 1969), p. 62 Google Scholar.

21 Ibid. In the consistory court defamation cases numbered more than tithe suits for each of our sample years except 1621–2, and this business was also playing an increasing role in the work of the archbishop’s chancery courts after 1600; defamation at York has been discussed in J. A. Sharpe, Defamation and Sexual Slander in Early Modem England: the Church Courts at York, Borthwick Paper, 58 (York, 1980).

22 This differs somewhat from the situation in the West Midlands, see Barratt, D. M., ‘Conditions of the Parish Clergy from the Reformation to 1660 in the Dioceses of Oxford, Worcester, and Gloucester’ (Oxford D.Phil, thesis, 1950)Google Scholar. This may in part be due to the large number of impropriations of former monastic rectories which characterized the diocese of York, see Grove, H., Alienated Tithe…from Henry VIII to William III (London, 1896)Google Scholar.

23 For comments on the correlation between tithe disputes and times of dearth in the West Midlands see O’Day, The English Clergy, p. 193, and at Norwich, Houlbrooke, Church Courts ana Reformation, p. 150.

24 Barratt, D. M., ‘Parish Clergy’, pp. 255–6 Google Scholar.

25 See, for example, the preponderance of such tenants involved in litigation on the extensive rectory estates of the dean and chapter of York, Longley, K. M., Ecclesiastical Cause Papers at York: Dean and Chapter’s Court 1350–1843, Borthwick Texts and Calendars, 6 (1980), pp. 13–77 Google Scholar.

26 Shells, W. J., ‘Profit, Patronage, or Pastoral Care: the Rectory Estates of the Archbishopric of York 1540–1690’ in O’Day, R. and Heal, F. eds, Princes and Paupers in the English Church 1500–1800 (Leicester, 1981), pp. 91–109 Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., p. 99.

28 See below, p. 249–50.

29 See for example the figures in Marchant, The Church Under the Law, p. 68 and Foster, A., ‘A Biography of Archbishop Neile (1562–1640)’ (Oxford D.Phil, thesis, 1978), pp. 250, 254, 306–7 Google Scholar.

30 Houlbrooke, Church Courts and Reformation, p. 149; O’Day, English Clergy, pp. 191–2.

31 I am grateful to Dr Peter Lake for discussion of this point.

32 This is, of course, difficult to give precise figures for, the information from ecclesiastical estates is relatively easy to come by, but the precise status of a plaintiff on an impropriate rectory is not always clear. The figures in Table 2 refer to those describing themselves as ‘farmers’ or ‘tenants’ as far as lay rectors are concerned, and the proportion of such may thus be slightly underestimated.

33 Longley, York Dean and Chapter’s Court, pp. 13–77.

34 Borthwick Institute, York (hereafter B.I.), D/C CP.1608/9; for Thornborough see DNB.

35 B.I. D/C CP.1636/3.

36 Longley, York Dean and Chapter’s Court, pp. 55–73 lists the causes.

37 B.I.D/CCP.1638/2–4.

38 Ibid., Bp.Dio.3.

39 Between 1582 and 1629 twenty files of tithe cause papers survive for Masham, only four of which involved the clergy, the rest being sued by lay farmers, they are listed in Longley, York Dean and Chapter’s Court, pp. 32–68. Lay farmers also pursued small tithe elsewhere, as at Letwell in Nottinghamshire, B.I., D/C CP.1628/2; 1631/10, or at Stockton on Forest and Little Ouseburn in the Vale of York, D/C CP.1614/10; 1615/11.

40 See York Minster Library, lease registers Wc and Wd.

41 D. Marcombe, The Dean and Chapter of Durham 1558–1603’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Durham, 1973), pp. 203–4. F. Heal, ‘Archbishop Laud Revisited: Leases and Estate Management at Canterbury and Winchester before the Civil War’ in O’Day and Heal, Princes and Paupers, pp. 132–40.

42 R. Houlbrooke, Church Courts and Reformation, pp. 150, 276; for a general discussion of arbitration and settlement see J. A. Sharpe, ‘Such Disagreements hetwyxt Neighbours, Litigation and Human Relations in Early Modern England’ in Bossy, J. ed., Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West (London, 1983), pp. 167–87 Google Scholar.

43 The York courts did not suffer from writs of prohibition to the same extent as those in southern dioceses, R, A. Marchant, ‘The Ecclesiastical Courts of the Diocese of York—Part II 1559–1644’ (Unpub. Leverhulme research project deposited at B.I., 1963), pp. 48–9. For a general discussion of prohibition see Hill, Economic Problems, pp. 125–8.

44 The surviving tithe cause papers from the consistory court number 1, 320 and are numbered consecutively with the prefix G for the sixteenth century and H for the seventeenth, to which are added 268 files from the capitular court. In general this represents about one-sixth of the tithe business brought to the courts, but whether that proportion is a constant or whether the types of case for which files survive are representative of the total tithe business is difficult to say; their use for statistical purposes is consequently questionable.

45 B.I., CP.G.1319, 1321, 3063.

46 Ibid., G.3260.

47 Ibid., G.1279, 1299, 1522, 1595, 1312, 1338, 1360, 1362, 1370, 1421, 1490, 1529, 1552, 1595. Part of 1338 is printed in J. S. Purvis, Select XVI Century Causes in Tithe, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, RecS 94 (1949), pp. 110–11.

48 Hill, Economic Problems, p. 121.

49 B.I. CP.G.1388, see Constable’s bill of costs.

50 See below, p. 245.

51 See the discussion in Hill, Economic Problems, pp. 93–9.

52 Ibid., p. 118.

53 Barratt, ‘Parish Clergy’, p. 272.

54 Hill, Economic Problems, p. 128.

55 See, for example, the list of surviving files in Longley, York Dean and Chapter’s Court, pp. 13–77.

56 B.I.CP.G.1661.

57 Ibid., G.2992, 3031.

58 Ibid., H.1863, 2135; for Easdall see Marchant, The Church under the Law, pp. 48–9, 232–4.

59 B.I. CP.H.2327.

60 2 & 3 Edward VI, cap. 13.

61 B.I., CP.G.1506, 1530, 1533, 1548–9, 1558, 1577, 1602–4, 1607, 1610, 1617–19, 1656, 1944, 2436.

62 Ibid., CP.G.2100–11, 2113 (Redcar); 3192–6 (Swine). The latter is another example of a lay farmer conducting several prosecutions simultaneously.

63 Watson, J., The History and Antiquities of Halifax (London, 1775), pp. 344–6 Google Scholar; Francois, M. E., ‘The Social and Economic Development of Halifax 1558–1642’, Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, 11 (1966), pp. 226–48 Google Scholar.

64 Purvis, Select Tithe Causes, pp. 120–3. Hill, Economic Problems, p. 98 takes a somewhat different view of Holden’s motives in this case.

65 B.I., PR.B/P.16; for Bunney see Collinson, P., Archbishop Grindal 1519–1583; the Struggle for a Reformed Church (London, 1979), p. 208 Google Scholar.

66 See below, n. 68.

67 The cases of the Earl of Shrewsbury and Christopher Modye mentioned above p. 245.

68 B.I., PR. B/P16 fols. 5, 6, 11, 14, 23, 56.

69 B.I., CP.G.2672–8 over Appleton farm.

70 For More see Marchant, R. A., The Puritans and the Church Courts in the Diocese of York 1560–1642 (London, 1960), pp. 20–1, 25, 34, 212–14, 263–4 Google Scholar.

71 Leeds. Archives Dept., Sheepscar, Leeds, Guiseley Parish Records/ro. The volume was subsequently used as an exhibit in a case heard before the exchequer court in 1746.

72 Drake, M., Historical Demography: Problems and Projects (Open University, 1974); pp. 97–103 Google Scholar discusses the 1620s in Morley Wapentake.

73 Leeds Archives Dept., Guiseley Parish Records/10.

74 B.I., CP.G.799, 1275.

75 Ibid., G.2596; for recusancy there see Aveling, H., Northern Catholics (London, 1966), pp. 169–70, 174 Google Scholar.

76 B.I. CP.H.1921; Marchant, Puritans and Church Courts, pp. 58–68; idem. Church under the Law, p. 68.

77 Ibid., PR3/P.16 fol. 44.

78 Hill, Economic Problems, pp. 96, 101–3.

79 Green, I. M., ‘Career Prospects and Clerical Conformity in the Early Stuart Church’, PP 90 (1981), pp. 71–115 Google Scholar.

80 B.I. H.2306, St Lawrence. For the poverty of the York clergy see Cross, C., ‘The Incomes of the Provincial Urban Clergy’ in O’Day and Heal, Princes and Paupers, pp. 73–8 Google Scholar.

81 B.I. CP.H.661. This is special pleading as the living was assessed at £42 2s.6d.in 1535, Valor Ecclesiasticus (Record Commissioners, London, 1810–22) 5, p. 37.

82 B.I. G.319, 1964, 2102, 2117, 2119, 2124, 2165, 2953, 3293.

83 Ibid., Reg. 31 fol. 137.

84 Ibid., D/CCP.1638/2–4.

85 See above, n. 49.

86 B.I. CP.G.1394, 1426. The background to this dispute was a particularly bad harvest.

87 Ibid., G.2783, H.877.

88 Ibid., G.472, 2184. Similar decisions are recorded in G.581, 993, 1773.

89 Ibid., H.1843 (Tuxford), 1952 (Lastingham), 1989 (Ripon). All these cases were brought by lay tithe-holders pursuing great tithe.

90 At Marton in Cleveland in 1639, ibid., CP.H.2586. This was to benefit lay tithe farmers of a rectory belonging to the Archbishop.

91 See Tables in Gransby, Tithe Litigation at York’, pp. 318–31, 347–9.

92 See Table 2 above.

93 The recent study by G. Ignatijevic, ‘The Parish Clergy in the Diocese of Canterbury and Archdeaconry of Bedford under Charles 1 and the Commonwealth’ (Sheffield PhD., 1986) supports this view pp. 89–13 5, stating that after the outbreak of war some 18 per cent of rithe cases at Canterbury involved charges of neglect (p. 116), but that nothing, prior to 1640, anticipated the intensity of activity in the ‘40s and ’50s (p. 131).