Definition
A tithe, in English ecclesiastical and property law, is the tenth part of the increase yearly arising and renewing from the profits of lands, the stock upon lands, and the personal industry of the inhabitants of a parish. Tithes constituted a species of incorporeal hereditament — an ecclesiastical inheritance collateral to the estate in land, owed not as a personal debt but by reason of the land's situation within a parish and enforceable under ecclesiastical law.
Tithes were not merely customary payments; they were a recognized form of property interest that could be owned, transferred, and litigated. They were owed to the ecclesiastical person entitled to receive them — typically the rector or vicar of the parish — and in extra-parochial places, to the Crown.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): In ordinary modern English, "tithe" functions primarily as a verb meaning to pay or give a tenth part, and as a noun meaning any voluntary or obligatory contribution of one-tenth of income, especially to a religious organization.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A tenth part of one's income or produce paid as a tax or voluntary contribution, especially to a church; also used loosely to mean any small portion.
The gap between common and legal meaning is substantial. In common usage, a tithe is an informal or voluntary religious contribution with no enforceable legal character. In English law, tithes were a legally defined property right — a form of incorporeal hereditament — that could be bought, sold, leased, litigated, and commuted by statute. The legal tithe was not a charitable gift; it was an obligation running with the land.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
English law recognized several formally established categories:
Predial tithes: Arising directly from the produce of the land itself — crops, hay, wood. These were the most ancient and most litigated category.
Mixed tithes: Arising from things that owe their existence to both land and human labor — the produce of animals kept on land, such as milk, wool, and young livestock.
Personal tithes: Arising from the personal labor and industry of the inhabitants, independent of land — profits from trade, manual labor, or other occupations.
Rectorial (great) tithes: Tithes payable to the rector of the parish, typically predial tithes of principal crops.
Vicarial (small) tithes: Tithes payable to the vicar, typically the residual categories after predial tithes were assigned to the rector.
Impropriated tithes: Tithes that had passed into lay ownership, often as a result of the dissolution of the monasteries.
Why It Matters in Research
Tithes are primarily a term of English ecclesiastical and real property law with almost no operative legal meaning in the United States. Bouvier states flatly: "In the United States there are no tithes." Researchers encountering the term in American sources should treat it as either a historical reference to English law or a colloquial usage with no technical legal force.
For researchers working in English legal history, several navigational points are essential:
Statutory commutation is the central pivot. By 6 & 7 Will. IV, c. 71 (the Tithe Commutation Act 1836) and subsequent legislation, nearly all tithes in England and Wales were converted into rent charges payable in money. Sources after this date will speak of tithe rent charges rather than tithes in kind. The distinction matters enormously when reading cases, conveyances, or ecclesiastical records: the two regimes differ in how they are valued, transferred, and discharged.
The ecclesiastical court jurisdiction is a research trap. Tithe disputes before commutation were generally heard in ecclesiastical courts, not common law courts, though equity courts and the Exchequer also played a role. A researcher looking for tithe litigation in the common law reports alone will miss substantial bodies of precedent.
Impropriate tithes introduce lay ownership. After the dissolution of the monasteries, large quantities of tithes passed to lay grantees. A tithe owned by a lay person is an impropriate tithe held by an improprietor. This ownership structure generated its own body of law and its own documentary record separate from ordinary ecclesiastical administration.
Tithe maps, produced under the 1836 Act as part of the commutation process, are a major source for agricultural and land-use history. They are not law, but they frequently appear in research contexts that intersect with property and enclosure records.
Historical Dictionary Support
The source dictionaries converge closely on the core definition. Black's (both editions), Burrill's, and Bouvier's all rely substantially on Blackstone's formulation: the tenth part of the increase yearly arising from the profits of lands, stock, and personal industry. Burrill adds the etymological note (Saxon teotha, Latin decima) and confirms the incorporeal hereditament characterization.
Rapalje & Lawrence provide the most practically useful supplemental detail, identifying the distinction between rectorial and vicarial tithes and noting the Crown's entitlement in extra-parochial places — points absent or understated in the other dictionaries. The Rapalje entry also situates tithes within the broader taxonomy of recurring land obligations alongside fee farm rents and quit rents, which is a useful contextual framing for real property researchers.
Black's second edition preserves several Latin maxims that circulated in tithe law, including the rule that tithes are not to be paid from that which is itself given for tithes (decimae de decimatis solvi non debent) — a principle governing the computation of tithe obligations that could affect valuation disputes.
The most significant gap across all source dictionaries is the failure to give adequate treatment to the Tithe Commutation Act 1836 and its successors. Bouvier's brief reference to commutation is the most direct acknowledgment, but no dictionary in this corpus fully explains the post-1836 regime. Researchers should not assume the pre-commutation framework describes the operative law in any English document dated after the mid-nineteenth century.
Jurisdictional Note
Tithes as a legal institution are essentially confined to English and Welsh legal history. Scotland had its own tithe system (called teinds), which followed a distinct path of commutation and operates under separate authority. Ireland had a tithe system abolished by the Irish Church Act 1869. American law never adopted tithes as a legal obligation; references to tithing in American contexts are religious or colloquial, not legally operative.