The Tithe Commutation Awards – Part 1

That Burdensome Tithe

By the early nineteenth century, the payment of the tithe had become inconsistent, burdensome and outdated¹. In England and Wales, the tithe represented the payment of one tenth of farm production to the established church. The payment by agricultural communities had been a contentious issue since the eleventh century but in Scotland the tithe (teind) had been abolished as early as 1623, while in Ireland the tithe disappeared in 1823. However, it remained in England and Wales.

The tithe took at least three forms. It could be levied on crops such as corn, hay or wood, on animal products such as lambs, wool, milk or honey, or on gains through labour such as fishing and milling. However, there were local anomalies, which had become established.

The tithe owner had a right to claim payment in kind, but since the 17th century a monetary payment had become more usual. The annual payments in cash were known as compositions, which could be adjusted or terminated by common agreement. A further method of settling payment of the tithe was the modus, which took the form of a permanent charge in lieu.

Dissatisfaction

Perhaps, the problems involved here can be imagined. How can a tithe, payable in kind, be collected when the number of animals owned is less than ten? If the number is greater than ten, how are the tithed animals chosen from this number? When during the year should the tithe be assessed and collected? How is the monetary payment to be calculated when the price of a commodity is varying significantly? How is a modus agreed? A modus had generally been fixed before the middle of the 16th century, and was confirmed by parish custom. A quaint example was found in the parish of Llanfihangel Esgeifiog in Anglesey, where in lieu of hay the farmer supplied dinner for the tithe owner and feed for a horse on alternate Sundays. On the other Sundays, dinner and feed were supplied at another farm! Of course, the owner of the tithe was the local minister.

The discriminatory and intrusive tax was much resented by those who had to pay. The reasons for this were several. The disparity in the incidence of the tax between urban and country areas was discriminatory. The tithe fell particularly harshly on agricultural land under development. A tithe owner, who contributed nothing towards such improvement, nevertheless reaped a considerable proportion of any profit from the investment. Dissenters rebelled against any such payment because it was made to an established yet unsupported church. They sometimes refused to pay. Since there also existed numerous stratagems to evade payment, it follows that the assessment of tithes could be, and was, frequently disputed. Costly legal proceedings could follow.

The possible consequences of an unjust, unpopular and impractical system of taxation were heightened during the economic depression, following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. The issue of the tithe was just one of the causes of political unrest in England. This unrest was particularly disruptive in rural areas, where farm wages were allowed to slip below a subsistence level. In Essex, some the population resorted to hayrick burning. In the Dorset village of Tolpuddle, farm labourers had formed themselves into a trade union in order to add weight to their cause. In Kent, angry mobs were known to have attacked their parsons. Initially, this lawbreaking was subject to severe justice, but increasingly fearful of the level of civil unrest and its possible repercussions the Government was called upon to look critically at the causes.

The Tithe Commutation Act

The Tithe Commutation Act, introduced by Lord John Russell on 9 February 1836, was passed six months later by Parliament on 13 August 1836. The bill was passed with an urgency not experienced in earlier parliamentary attempts at such reform. The Act commuted the tithe in England and Wales and replaced it with a fluctuating tithe rent-charge. This rent-charge was to follow a seven-year average of the price of wheat, barley and oats.

A Tithe Commission of three commissioners was set up in London to administer the Act. Considering the task, the Act imposed an ambitious timescale. Commissioners were to confirm those agreements reached before 1 October 1838, and thereafter impose awards in the remaining districts. Local agents were recruited to oversee the process.

One of the first tasks of the commissioners was to set up the districts within which the tithe surveys were to be undertaken. The scale of the task may be understood when it is realised that the total number of tithe districts reached 14,829 and covered 36.2 million square miles. The district usually equated to a parish or township. Not all districts required detailed work, certainly in cases where the tithe owner and the payer were the same; such districts numbered 3,044, leaving about 11,800 to be fully completed.

Surveyors were taken on, both to value the land and apportion the rent-charge, and to generate an accurate map of the district. Adequate maps already existed for some districts but surveyors had to be recruited in the majority of districts. Although the original deadline was not met, by 1856 only the tithe in seven districts remained to be agreed. In 1863, just five were unresolved with the final commutation of the Barham district in 1883. The delays were invariably due to boundary or other legal disputes.

Early agreements, some completed even before the end of February 1837, were accompanied by maps which were often deemed unsatisfactory by the commissioners. The standards of map-making, usually at a scale of three chains to the inch (1:2,376)³, were increasingly refined since it was realised that the opportunity could be used to generate a national resource. Great demands were placed on the surveying—and map-making industry in the short-term. However, the archive has proved to be invaluable, and the foresight justified. Indeed, the tithe award provided the most complete survey of England and Wales since that recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086.

Tithe Commutation in the High Country

Within the High Country, the last parish to commute its tithes was Greensted in 1840, the map being signed by Roger Kynaston, the Assistant Tithe Commissioner for the district, on 30 December 1840. The details of the maps for the four parishes follow.

Parish Date Scale Size Surveyor
Greensted 1838 26.6” to 1 mile⁴ 38” x 27” E. Corfield
Stanford Rivers 1839 13.3” to 1 mile 116” x 92” Robert Hale
Stapleford Tawney 1838 13.3” to 1 mile 51” x 23”
Theydon Mount 1838 8” to 1 mile 44” x 28”

Stapleford Tawney maps is 1:4,752 and that of Theydon Mount is 1:7,920. The amount of detail differs slightly from map to map; the Stanford Rivers map is the most detailed.

The accompanying apportionments are written on rolls of parchment sheets. They list each tithe area with a reference number, which links the area to the map. The following is then listed against each area (by reference number):

○ owner,
○ occupier,
○ name and description of the area,
○ state of cultivation,
○ area in statute measure,
○ amount of rent-charge, and any remarks, but these are generally scarce.

From this, the extent of the information included in the tithe submission can start to be appreciated. In a future note, the information within will be discussed. It is worth noting that the Greensted map and apportionment has already been the subject of a volume within the Essex Place-Names Project⁵.