Subjects: Tithes – modus

Tithes originated as a tax payable in kind of one tenth of all agricultural produce to be handed over annually by parishioners to support their parish church and clergy. Artisans were similarly required to pay one tenth of their income after expenses.

Over time a classification system developed whereby tithes were classified as:
‘predial’ arising from the ground or the fruits of trees or garden produce
‘mixed’ arising not immediately from the ground, but from things immediately nourished by it such as livestock, including calves, lambs, milk, cheese, poultry, honey and wool
‘personal’ arising from the product of labour or industry after deduction of expenses, although day labourers were specifically exempted by a statute of 1548/9

Predial tithes were further divided on the basis of value into great and small (or minute). Great tithes included corn, hay, wood and orchard fruit whereas small tithes comprised flax and other less valuable crops. Mixed tithes were also classified as small tithes.

Many Chester tithe causes refer to ‘greater and lesser, mixed and minute’ tithes. The great tithes were payable to the rector and generally comprised the more valuable crops while the small tithes were usually payable to the vicar and comprised all other produce.

The ownership of tithes could be bought, sold, leased or mortgaged like any other property rights and the occupier after such a transfer was known as the ‘farmer’.

Following the dissolution of monasteries and colleges in the 1540s many rectories, and their associated rights to tithes, passed into lay hands although the vicar usually continued to receive the vicarial tithes. There was an increase in tithe suits in the consistory court after about 1540, many brought by lay rectors or farmers. This may have been in part to confirm their right to receive the tithes in dispute.

In the medieval period money payments began to take over from payments in kind and in some cases fixed quantities of produce were agreed for some tithes such as corn. This fixed sum or quantity was known as a ‘modus’. Additionally, some variable payments known as compositions were agreed.

As inflation began to take hold in the sixteenth century, however, and as lay impropriators sought to increase their return from their ecclesiastical investments, they sometimes sought to overturn the old agreements.

Sources:

Andrew Lewis, ‘Tithe Personal and Praedial’, The Journal of Legal History, vol. 42:2 (2021), pp. 123-146

Thomas Moore (ed), Dictionary of the English Church Ancient and Modern (London, 1870)

J.S. Purvis, Select XVI Century Causes in Tithe,Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Record Series, vol. CXIV (1949), pp. v-viii

Anne Tarver, ‘The Due Tenth: Problems of the Leicestershire Tithing process 1560-1640’, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, vol. 78 (2004), pp. 97-107