When we come to the Act for the relief of the Poor, (43 Eliz. c. ii.) it provides for the taxation of every occupier of lands, houses, tithes impropriate, propriation of tithes, coal mines and underwoods. But it does not take any portion of the tithes for the support of the poor; hence it is argued that the poor had no claim to any portion of the tithes. The fact is, that previously there was no machinery by which their claims could have been carried out. The parochial incumbents were trustees of their property, and as such had many claims on their incomes, the poor had to put up with whatever the trustees wished to give them. And finally the trustees _closed upon all the tithes_ as their own. There is a remarkable instance on record, in which certain parochial rectors _closed upon all the tithes_ of their parishes. Henry de Blois, Bishop of Winchester, founded the Hospital of St. Cross, near Winchester, by his charter dated A.D. 1137, in which he named sixteen churches, with their appurtenances and appendages, with which he endowed the Hospital. The commuted value of the tithes of these sixteen parish churches is £12,006 per annum. Now, the Hospital has only the tithe-rent charges, amounting to £3,462 per annum, of four out of the sixteen. The Hospital lost all the tithes of twelve parishes, and the twelve rectors are now in possession of them, giving in lieu the insignificant sum of £44 per annum, in the aggregate, as pensions. Now, when did these twelve rectors close upon all the tithes? It was before the Reformation, because in the reign of Henry VIII. the Hospital had only the four churches. It is highly probable that the twelve rectors closed upon all the tithes during the period of the protracted quarrels between the Bishops of Winchester and the Priors of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, as to who should have the appointment of the master of the Hospital.[244] The parochial incumbents commenced about the beginning of the fourteenth century to close upon all the tithes, and to ignore the claims of poor or church fabric upon these revenues. So at the period of the Reformation, the incumbents claimed to have a prescriptive right to _all the tithes_.[245] CHAPTER XII. _CANONS FOR PAYMENT OF TITHES._