STATUTE LAW REVISION: SIXTEENTH ... - Law Commission

12 Group 2 - Tithe Acts
13 Background
2.1 The enactments recommended for repeal under this heading are those
concerned with the enforcement, commutation, redemption and general
administration of tithes, tithe rent charge and corn rents. These enactments
have long been obsolete. Indeed most of them were scheduled for repeal by the
Corn Rents Act 1963. 11 However the scheme required to trigger the repeals in
the 1963 Act has never been made with the result that the enactments remain
unrepealed. 12 The proposed repeals would not extinguish any subsisting liability
for payments due under tithe law, but rather the obsolete provisions for the
administration of that law and the recovery of sums due.
2.2 Tithe has been defined as “the tenth part of the increase yearly arising from the
profits of lands, stock upon lands, and the industry of the parishioners, payable
for the maintenance of the parish priest, by everyone who has things titheable, if
he cannot show a special exemption”. 13 It was a Church tax, and very early in the
history of the Church in every European country a tenth part of the produce of
the land was claimed. The Church based its right to do so on references in the
Old Testament but it is probable that the tithe was a vestige of the old Roman
tribute of one tenth.
2.3 Tithes were of three classes. Predial, or praedial, tithes were such as were
produced immediately from the soil, as corn, hay, wood, fruit and herbs. Mixed
tithes were such as did not proceed immediately from the soil. They included
calves, lambs, wool, milk and eggs. Personal tithes were derived wholly from
human labour.
2.4 Tithes were found to be a most unsatisfactory and unreliable source of income.
The practice gradually arose of commuting them into money payments. By
around the middle of the eighteenth century, at a time when large areas of
common land were being enclosed, tithes were regularly commuted either for
allotments of land or for yearly money payments, or for both. Such money
payments were known as corn rents. 14 The system of tithes was effectively
brought to an end by the Tithe Act 1836 (and subsequent amending Acts) which
commuted all tithes then remaining into tithe rentcharges. Tithe rentcharges were
themselves extinguished, with no material exceptions, by the Tithe Act 1936 with
effect from 2nd October 1936. Government Stock, redeemable no later than
1996, was paid by way of compensation to persons with an interest in the
extinguished tithe rentcharge. At the same time the owners of land now freed
11 Section 3(4) and Schedule.
12 The purpose of the scheme, if made by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, would be to
provide for the apportionment and redemption of corn rents and certain other payments:
section 1(1) of the 1963 Act.
13 See P.W. Millard, The Law Relating to Tithes, 3rd ed. (1938), p1.
14
The amount payable under corn rents was either fixed or else variable according to the
price of wheat or other cereals.
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