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396 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
so many ways, it hardened rather than loosened the private
ownership of churches, which was more comprehensive in
Normandy than in pre-Conquest England, and had been
given an institutional and hal&legal status by being taken up
and knit into the feudal system. It was, indeed, the conception
ofownership and supreme dominion over churches that made
the imposition offeudal service and burdens upon the bishop/*
rics and abbeys an easy and natural step for the Conqueror.
The Normans, moreover, were in the habit of engrossing the
tithes and often also the oblations of their churches, and the
practice was adopted in England by lay and monastic owners
alike. Consequently, the value of the small church to its
priest
declined, and with it his status in the community, which be'
came nearer to that of the villein, while on the other hand the
church became more valuable as a pecuniary asset to its new
owner, who gained from tithe more than he had lost by his
greater scrupulosity, stimulated by the reforming legislation,
over receiving money as an entrance fee from his priests. Feeling
against lay ownership of tithe, however, increased, and re
ceived ecclesiastical sanction, and it became common for lay
owners to farm out their churches to a clerk, or to bestow their
assets in tithe, with or without the church itself, upon religious
houses. These latter came to have more and more churches in
their possession, from which they drew more of their income
than before. In the early decades after the Conquest, some
churches were given to the monks and more to the regular
canons, in the hope of assuring a more regular and decorous per
formance ofthe services, but in practice the religious rarely un
dertook the cure of souls. Instead, they carried out their duties
by means either of a clerical 'farmer' or of a priest-pensioner;
they had thus in fact gone nine-tenths of the way towards impropriation.
As is familiar to all, the lay control of churches
great and small was a principal object of attack for the Gre
gorian reformers, and the revived canon law, which was their
of it. After their success in
principal weapon, knew nothing
the investiture contest they hoped also to abolish lay ownership
ofadvowson even in the lower churches. In this they failed, and