Why Did Farmers Owe a Tenth of Everything? A Tax in Kind

The obligation was a tenth of annual increase, which meant the produce of the land and the young of animals rather than a tenth of accumulated wealth. It was collected in kind, so a farmer handed over actual sheaves, lambs, wool, cheese, piglets and eggs, which the recipient then had to store, process and sell. Distinctions were drawn between the great tithes on the main crops of grain and hay, and the small tithes on garden produce, animals and everything else, and the two were frequently owed to different recipients. Personal tithes on the profits of trades and labour existed in theory and were collected far less consistently, since such income was harder to observe than a field of wheat.

Collecting a tenth of a countryside in perishable goods required real machinery:

• •Large barns were built specifically to store the collected produce
• •Assessment happened in the field, with the collector taking every tenth sheaf
• •Disputes over what counted as tithable filled the church courts continuously
• •Rights were frequently granted away to monasteries or to lay owners
• •Collection was often leased to a contractor for a fixed sum paid in advance
• •Written records of these transactions are now a major source for agricultural history

The obligation generated more grievance than almost any other, for reasons beyond simply disliking a tax. It fell on gross output rather than on profit, so a farmer had the same liability in a bad year as a good one, and the burden was heaviest on the smallest producers. It was frequently owed to somebody with no local connection at all, since rights had been transferred to distant monasteries or, after the dissolution of monasteries in England, to lay landowners who provided nothing in return and were still collecting into the nineteenth century. Improvements were discouraged, since a tenth of any increase went to the collector. And people of other denominations were obliged to support a church they did not attend, which was a persistent source of conflict.

Setting aside a fixed proportion for religious purposes is far older and far more widespread than the medieval European arrangement. Jewish law sets out obligations on agricultural produce with several distinct portions owed to different recipients, and these are the direct ancestor of the Christian practice. Islamic obligatory almsgiving is calculated on accumulated wealth held for a year rather than on annual produce, at a lower rate, and is one of the five pillars, with modern states collecting it in some cases and leaving it to conscience in others. Several Hindu and Sikh traditions specify proportional giving. Mesopotamian temples collected fixed shares of harvests two thousand years before any of this. The recurring logic is that a proportion is easier to enforce and to justify than a fixed sum.

The abolition came differently in different places and the pattern is instructive. France abolished it outright in 1789 during the dismantling of feudal obligations, without compensation, which was among the most popular acts of the revolution. England converted it into a fixed money payment in 1836, calculated from average grain prices and attached to the land, which removed the collection in kind while preserving the burden, and those charges were finally extinguished by a process that ran until 1996. Other countries substituted a church tax collected by the state, which several still operate, with members of registered denominations paying a percentage of income that the state passes on. The word survives in modern voluntary giving, which is a different thing entirely.

A tenth of annual agricultural increase was owed in actual produce, requiring barns, assessors and a permanent apparatus for collection. It fell on gross output rather than profit, was often owed to a distant or lay recipient, and discouraged improvement, which made it exceptionally resented. France abolished it in 1789, England converted it to a fixed charge in 1836, and several countries replaced it with a state-collected church tax.