Northamptonshire tithes IJRLH final (original) (raw)

The Church of England and the enclosure of England’s Open Fields – a Northamptonshire case study.

This article explores the tithe system in eighteenth-century Northamptonshire. At enclosure, many clergy exchanged their right to take tithe for a portion of the newly enclosed land in the parish. The article argues that while the clergy made financial gains from this, more important was the removal of a recurrent source of dissension with parishioners. As such the article tempers the dominant narrative that emphasizes only the material enrichment of the clergy at enclosure, and sees the social and cultural gulf this opened up between the clergy and their parishioners as a potent source of rural anticlericalism.

Custom and conflict: disputes over tithe in the Diocese of Canterbury, 1501-1600

1997

This thesis seeks to explore custom and conflict in Kentish society through a study of tithe litigation in the diocese of Canterbury. It is based on an examination of ecclesiastical court material. The approach differs from most previous studies of tithe litigation in the emphasis on the practice of tithe payment as opposed to its statutory, legal or administrative aspects. An understanding of the everyday operation of tithe payment and tithing methods is regarded as an essential precursor to analysing trends in litigation. The transmission and negotiation of customary practice within local communities is examined in the second chapter. Chapter three focuses on conflict over tithe, particularly as evinced in verbal and physical confrontations between tithe collectors and tithe payers. These were confrontations which often revealed themselves in ritual and symbolic form. This chapter also considers the resistance evident in the tithe collection process. A statistical analysis of tith...

Robin Hood’s Complaint: Tithes and Agrarian Theology in Early Modern England

2007

Whatever your image of Robin Hood, suspend it, because it will most likely not match with the representation of him in the texts I will be discussing in this paper. While certain elements of the myth-wearing green, living in the forest, skill in archery-are associated with the earliest articulations of the Robin Hood myth, 'robbing the rich to give to the poor' does not feature. Indeed, I will suggest in this paragraph only, since it lies out of the purview of my paper proper, that the image of Robin Hood as the proto-marxist redistributor of capital occurs in alongside the eighteenth-century enclosures and the Reform movements in the early nineteenth century. He emerges there as the terribly Romantic figure in our memory-living on the margins of society while still seeking to correct its severe economic injustices against the poor. But in the sixteenth century, the earliest printed texts establish Robin Hood as a rather different figure from the one who lives in our cultural knowledge (and our films and TV). As one example of this difference, there is a definite, pervasive religious landscape anchoring these early versions, though the texts resist an exact sectarian reading. 1

Anglican Clergymen and the Tithe Question in the Early Nineteenth Century

Journal of Religious History, 1980

has references to the relevant literature. Although I have dissented from Professor Evans's conclusions, it is incumbent on me to add that I have learned much from his volume. The.present article is part of a longer study of Anglican cler~meneconomist~. The asserhons made m the next paragraphs are justified in detail m my unpubhshed survey 'Anglican clergymeneconomists 1750-1850'. It is possible that, having studied them so long, I have come to identify partially with their cause. Salim Rashid is in the Department of Economics, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. 2. Very little is known of the life of the Rev. Edward Edwards. Accounts of Howlett, Jones, and Whately may be found in the Dictionary of National Biography. Howlett's contribution to this debate was An Enquiry concerning rhe Influence of Tithes upon Agriculture . . ., London 1801. There is an able review of it in the British Critic, 1802, pp. 454-69. Edwards contributed an article to each of the Quarterly Review, 1823, pp. 524-60 and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1830, pp. 213-81, and wrote a pamphlet, The Revenues of the Church of England not a burden upon the public, London 1830. Edwards reviewed his own pamphlet in Blackwood's. In correspondence .with William Blackwood (National Library of Scotland, Blackwood Mss) Edwards cIrumed that Bishop Blomfield of London had urged him to publish. Whately's views upon Titpes are contained in his evidence before the House of Lords, reprinted in the 2nd edihon of his Zntroducfory Lectures, London 1832.

Parliamentary enclosure, vermin and the cultural life of English parishes, 1750-1850

Continuity and Change 28.1, pp. 27-50

This article explores the impact of parliamentary enclosure on the cultural life of English villages after 1750. It focuses on parish-sponsored vermin control, arguing that the popular ‘hunting’ sanctioned by parish vestries under Tudor legislation, and persisting into the early nineteenth century, created a highly participatory recreational culture which continued to exist under the radar of the game laws. Using a sample of parishes from the heavily enclosed county of Northamptonshire, the article demonstrates that this communal activity survived the reworking of the landscape by parliamentary enclosure, and that, by extension, the level of disruption to village cultural life was less than has been suggested.