Definition
An archaic spelling variant of TITHE. A tythe is a compulsory levy of one-tenth of a person's annual produce, income, or profits, historically paid to support the established church or its clergy. In English law, tythes were enforceable obligations running with the land, not voluntary contributions, and carried legal remedies for non-payment including suits in ecclesiastical courts and, later, civil courts.
The levy was calculated on the tenth part of the fruits of the earth, the increase of livestock, and the personal industry of the parishioner. Tythes were broadly divided into those arising from agricultural output and those arising from other forms of labor or commerce.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Obsolete spelling of tithe.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): See Tithe.
Editorial note: Both the common and legal meanings converge on the concept of a one-tenth portion. The gap is not semantic but historical and legal: in ordinary modern usage, a tithe is understood as a voluntary religious contribution. In its legal sense — preserved under this spelling in older English legal sources — a tythe was an involuntary legal obligation, enforceable through courts, with well-developed doctrine governing what was tytheable, who was exempt, and how disputes were resolved. Researchers reading historical legal materials must not import the modern assumption of voluntariness.
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Common Confusion
TYTHE vs. TITHE: These are the same word. TYTHE is simply the older orthographic form, common in English legal writing through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Black's Law Dictionary uses both spellings across its editions as cross-references rather than as distinct terms. Researchers searching historical legal texts, pleadings, statutes, or ecclesiastical court records should query both spellings, as scribal and printing conventions were not uniform.
TYTHE vs. TAX: In historical legal argument, the line between a tythe as an ecclesiastical due and a secular tax was contested and significant. Tythes ran to the church (or to lay impropriators who had acquired tythe rights); they were not general public revenue. The distinction affected jurisdiction, remedy, and the defenses available to a party resisting payment.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
As with TITHE, the law recognized several categories:
Predial tythes: Arising from the produce of the land itself — grain, hay, wood, fruit.
Mixed tythes: Arising from things nourished by the land but requiring human labor — livestock, poultry, dairy.
Personal tythes: Arising from the gains of personal labor, trade, or industry, after deducting costs. This category was the most contested and varied most across jurisdictions and periods.
Great tythes: Conventionally, the major crops — corn, hay, and wood — which were typically retained by rectors.
Small tythes: The residual categories — livestock increase, garden produce, and similar items — which were frequently assigned to vicars.
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Why It Matters in Research
The spelling TYTHE is a reliable indicator of chronological depth. Its appearance in a document or source signals pre-nineteenth century English legal writing. When the Law Mind corpus surfaces this spelling, researchers should expect ecclesiastical law context, disputes adjudicated in church courts or early equity proceedings, and a body of doctrine that was substantially altered or abolished by a series of English statutes beginning in the 1830s, culminating in the Tithe Commutation Act 1836, which converted most in-kind tythes to rent charges.
Jurisdiction matters acutely here. The law of tythes was a creature of English ecclesiastical and property law and was transplanted unevenly — and often not at all — into American colonial and post-revolutionary legal systems. Researchers encountering TYTHE in American materials are almost always looking at either early colonial law drawing on English precedent, disputes involving Anglican church properties, or a writer consciously employing English legal vocabulary. Do not assume American cases or statutes reflect the full English doctrinal structure.
In the Law Mind corpus, TYTHE will appear most naturally in treatises on ecclesiastical law, early property law materials discussing glebe lands and church endowments, and equity materials involving lay impropriators — private persons who had acquired tythe collection rights through dissolution of monasteries or private conveyance. These materials require understanding of both the ecclesiastical and property law dimensions simultaneously.
Researchers should also be alert to the concept of modus decimandi — a customary payment in lieu of the tythe in kind — which generated extensive litigation and appears frequently alongside TYTHE in case materials.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary define TYTHE identically and minimally: "Tithe, or tenth part." This is effectively a see-also cross-reference rather than a substantive definition, and both editions carry the full doctrinal treatment under TITHE. The brevity here is consistent with period practice of noting spelling variants without duplicating the full entry.
What the Black's entries do not capture is the procedural complexity that surrounded tythe disputes in English practice: the concurrent jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts and courts of equity over different aspects of tythe liability, the role of the Court of Exchequer in tythe matters, and the extensive litigation over exemptions claimed by religious houses, by custom, or by prescription. A researcher relying solely on the dictionary definition will miss the institutional architecture entirely and should supplement with treatise sources dealing with ecclesiastical law and English property practice.
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Jurisdictional Note
The law of tythes as a legal institution never took root in American law in any systematic way. English ecclesiastical courts had no American counterpart, and the constitutional separation of church and state foreclosed the established-church model that made tythes operable. Researchers working in American legal sources will encounter TYTHE almost exclusively as a historical reference or in the context of early colonial land grants and church property disputes with English antecedents. The term carries full doctrinal weight only in English and Welsh legal materials.
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