Definition
Personal tithes are a category of tithe — a levy of one-tenth — assessed not on land or its produce, but on the profits arising from a person's own labor, skill, or trade. Where predial tithes attached to the fruits of the earth and mixed tithes attached to livestock and similar produce, personal tithes reached commercial and artisanal gain: income from buying and selling, mercantile profits, the earnings of craftsmen and tradespeople, and similar returns derived from human industry rather than from real property.
In ecclesiastical law, personal tithes were owed to the church out of the net gains of a person's occupation, after deducting the costs of carrying on that occupation. The parishioner's labor — not the land — was the taxable subject.
Why It Matters in Research
This is primarily a historical legal term. Personal tithes belong to the body of English ecclesiastical law that governed the financial support of the established church, and they were legally cognizable and enforceable in ecclesiastical courts well into the nineteenth century. Researchers encountering personal tithes in historical sources — particularly in English ecclesiastical court records, tithe commutation proceedings, or early American colonial religious law — should understand that the term carries precise technical weight distinguishing it from the broader category of tithes generally.
The most important navigational point is the tripartite classification: predial, mixed, and personal. Sources that use "tithes" without qualification may be referring to any of these three types, and the legal rules governing each differed substantially — in how they were calculated, who owed them, and how they were enforced. A researcher working with tithe disputes in historical records must determine which category is at issue before the applicable law becomes clear.
In the American context, personal tithes largely ceased to have legal force with the disestablishment of state churches following the Revolution, though colonial-era records (particularly in Virginia and the southern colonies, where the Anglican establishment was most developed) will reflect their earlier operation. English sources remain the primary doctrinal home for this term.
The Tithe Commutation Act 1836 in England effectively converted most tithes — including personal tithes where still operative — into rent charges, which substantially reduced practical litigation over tithe categories thereafter. Post-1836 English sources discussing tithes are often discussing the commutation scheme rather than the underlying ecclesiastical liability.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence define personal tithes as "those that are paid out of such profits as come by the labor of a man's person, as by buying and selling, gains of merchandise, handicrafts, &c." This is the standard formulation drawn from classical English ecclesiastical law and tracks the treatment found in earlier authorities including Blackstone and Burn's Ecclesiastical Law. The definition is serviceable and accurate as far as it goes, though it does not address the deduction rule (that expenses of trade were subtracted before the tithe was calculated on net profit), which was a point of recurring dispute in ecclesiastical courts.
Historical dictionaries generally agree on the core distinction between personal and predial tithes. Where they tend to be thin is on the enforcement mechanism and the gradual practical obsolescence of personal tithes even before formal statutory commutation, as ecclesiastical court jurisdiction waned and commercial life grew too complex for a tenth-of-net-profits assessment to be practically administered.
Jurisdictional Note
Personal tithes as an enforceable legal obligation belong almost entirely to English ecclesiastical law. In the United States, the First Amendment's Establishment Clause and the disestablishment of colonial churches eliminated any legal compulsion to pay personal tithes. Modern American references to tithing are exclusively matters of religious practice and voluntary church discipline, not law.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia: Personal Property — Intellectual Property as Personal Property (Overview) (property_138); Personal Property — Liens on Personal Property (Artisan's Lien, Statutory Liens) (property_141)