between the clergy and their parishioners. The burden of onetenth of the produce of the land was an old grievance, older than the time of the Reformation. Statutes passed in the time of Henry VIII show how the farmers complained of the burden, and speak of efforts to lighten it. When the property of the monasteries was confiscated and alienated from ecclesiastical uses, this was one of the subjects reserved for the 'thirty-two persons who were to inquire into Church canons and constitutions.' The inquiry was never made. The Church after the Reformation was miserably poor, and it was added to the hardships of the clergy, that they had to exact their slender incomes from farmers as poor if not poorer than themselves. In the time of Queen Elizabeth, four thousand four hundred benefices had not over ten pounds a year, and the majority were not more than eight. In the time of Charles I, when there was an outcry about 'scandalous ministers,' a Member of Parliament said that there were 'scandalous livings as well as scandalous ministers.'1

The tithe question was never in abeyance, but it was never more agitated than about the beginning of this century and the end of the last. The science, capital, and industry of the farmer had improved the soil. The tithe owner was reaping an unearned increment. The strife continued through the first three decades of the century. In 1836 fortunately for the Church, a commutation was made. It had been long opposed by many of the bishops and clergy, but now it was seen to be a necessity. The only bishop who finally held out against it was Henry of Exeter.2

1 Sir Benjamin Rudyard.

2 There is a continuous literature on the tithe question since the Reformation, very plentiful in the time of the Commonwealth, when some wished to escape paying tithes because they would not pay to Puritans. The collisions between the farmers and clergy are amusingly described by Cowper. It is tithe rent day. The parson sits in the Vicarage trembling. The poet says

'And well he may,
Each bumpkin of the clan
Instead of paying what he owes,
Will cheat him if he can.

One talks of mildew and of frost,
And one of showers of hail,

And one of pigs that he has lost,
By maggots at the tail.

Oh, why were farmers made so coarse,

Or clergy made so fine?

A kick that scarce would move a horse,

Then let the boobies stay at home;
'Twould cost him, I dare say,
Less trouble taking twice the sum,
Without the clowns that pay.'

In Kent, the cultivation of hops raised enormously the value of tithes. The farmers sometimes offered as much as they paid for rent, but the tithe owner sometimes exacted the tenth of the hops after they were picked. The Rector of Kensington put a heavy imposition on pine apples grown in green houses, and the Vicar of Battersea found tithe in kind so profitable that he engaged a man to hawk garden produce, shouting through the streets Asparagus and cauliflowers.' John Middleton said, 'Had tithes never been established, happy would it have been for the country and still more so for the clergy. They are a powerful cause of many quitting the Church, and of creating and supporting schism. They are the never-ending source of ill-will, quarrelling, and litigation, and are unquestionably one great cause of the continuance of so much common and uncultivated land in the kingdom.'

1 See Report of Board of Agriculture, 1792.

SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER IV

BIOGRAPHIES

IT has seemed desirable to add some brief notices of the chief writers who have been mentioned if sometimes only the birth and death. The order is alphabetical.

THOMAS ARNOLD was born at East Cowes in the Isle of Wight in 1795. He was educated at Winchester and at Corpus Christi, Oxford. In 1815, he was elected Fellow of Oriel. From 1820 to 1828 he lived at Laleham near Staines, taking private pupils. In 1828, he was elected Master of Rugby. An article written by him in the Edinburgh Review in 1836 called the 'Oxford Malignants,' that is the men who wished to keep Hampden from the professorship of Divinity, made him many enemies. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Howley, objected to his preaching the Consecration Sermon when Bishop Stanley was consecrated. His great success at Rugby is well known. It reached its climax about 1840. In 1841, he was chosen Regius Professor of History at Oxford. He died in 1842. His life was written by Stanley his favourite pupil and his lineal successor as a liberal Churchman.

CHARLES BABBAGE was born at Teignmouth in 1792. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, which he entered in 1811. He was afterwards Laucasian Professor of Mathematics in the same university. He died in 1871.

JAMES ARTHUR BALFOUR was born in 1848, and educated at

secretary to his uncle Lord Salisbury when Foreign Minister. 1886 he was Secretary for Scotland.

In

SHUTE BARRINGTON, Bishop of Durham, was the sixth son of John Shute, Lord Barrington, a Presbyterian who defended and practised occasional conformity and was a zealous advocate of the rights of Nonconformists during the reign of Queen Anne. John Shute's mother was a daughter of Joseph Caryll, who in 1662 was ejected from St Magnus. He was the author of a ponderous commentary on the Book of Job. His father, Benjamin Shute, was a silk merchant in Ludgate Hill, whose sister married Francis Barrington, through whom John Shute inherited the property and took the title and arms of the Barringtons. The Bishop was born in 1734, seven months before his father's death. He was educated at Eton and at Merton College, Oxford, and ordained in 1756 by Secker. On the accession of George III he was made one of the chaplains-inordinary, and in 1761 Canon of Christ Church. This was followed in 1768 by a canonry in St Paul's, and in the year following he was consecrated Bishop of Llandaff. It was as Bishop of Llandaff that he opposed the petition for the abolition of subscription to the Articles of Religion. His biographer defended him as not wanting in allegiance to the tolerant principles of his father, but as simply preventing the preferments of the Church being left open to Arians, Socinians, or indefinite Christians of any kind. In 1781 Barrington was translated to Salisbury. He immediately restored the Cathedral. In 1791 he was translated to Durham. In 1801 he delivered a Charge on the French Revolution, and the connection between infidelity and Romanism. The Bishop, though a strong Protestant, was a bountiful friend to the French clergy driven from their country by the Revolution. He died in 1826.1

HENRY BATHURST was born 1744. He was the seventh son of the first Earl Bathurst, and was educated at Winchester and at New College, Oxford. In 1775 he was made a Canon of Christ Church, in 1795 Prebendary of Durham. In 1805 he was consecrated Bishop of Norwich. He is said to have been the only liberal Bishop in the House of Lords. Died 1837.

THOMAS BELSHAM was born at Bedford in 1756. For three years he was pastor of a congregation of Protestant Dissenters in

Worcester. In 1781 he was appointed Principal of the Academy at Daventry where he had been educated. This office he relinquished on giving up the Calvinistic faith for that of the Unitarians, and was placed at the head of their new college at Hackney. He succeeded Priestley as preacher to the Gravel Pit congregation. He was afterwards minister of Essex Street. He died in 1819.

JEREMY BENTHAM was born in 1748 and educated at Queen's College, Oxford. He studied for the law but abandoned that as a profession. He wrote much on politics and jurisprudence. His system of morals was Utilitarian. He had no religious element in his constitution. Died in 1832.

CHRISTOPHER BETHELL was born in 1773, and educated at King's College Cambridge. In 1814 he was made Dean of Chichester, in 1820 Prebendary of Exeter, in 1824 Bishop of Gloucester, transferred to Exeter in 1830 and in the same year to Bangor. He died in 1859.

THOMAS RAWSON BIRKS was born in 1810. He was a Fellow of Trinity, Cambridge. In 1844 Rector of Kelshall, in 1866 Incumbent of Trinity Church, Cambridge, in 1871 Canon of Ely, and in 1872 succeeded Maurice as Professor of Moral Philosophy in Cambridge. He might have been mentioned with those who wrote against Essays and Reviews,'' Supernatural Religion,' and such books, but his arguments are all of the most orthodox kind with which most people are quite familiar. He died in 1883.

EDWARD HAROLD BROWNE was born in 1811 and educated at Eton and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He was Fellow of his College and in 1841 Rector of St Sidwell's, Exeter. From 1843 to 1849 he was Vice-Principal and Professor of Hebrew in Lampeter College. Then Norrisian Professor of Divinity in Cambridge, in 1864 Bishop of Ely, and in 1873 he was transferred to Winchester. Died in 1891.

WILLIAM BUCKLAND was born in 1784. In 1808, he was elected a Fellow of Corpus Christi, Oxford; in 1813 Professor of Mineralogy, in 1845 he was appointed Dean of Westminster. Died in 1856.