In reference to making canons at synodical meetings, it was both profitable and pleasant work for ecclesiastics. The laymen who had to pay were not permitted to be present to express an opinion in the matter. The tithe system was a very elastic band. It was stretched as population and agriculture increased. We have the principle of development exhibited in a remarkable degree in the tithe question. As the power and influence of the bishops of Rome increased in the dark and middle ages, so did tithes. Yet we are unblushingly told that tithes were the free voluntary offerings of private individuals. I admit this to a limited extent. The question is, Did all the landowners freely and voluntarily grant tithes of the produce of their lands to the rectors of parishes? The synodical meetings to which I have referred, prove that they were not so given, but were arbitrarily exacted by the anathemas of the Church, and by ecclesiastical and civil courts. Things became tithable by the canons of 1295 and 1343, which were not thought of in the days of Kings Offa and Ethelwulf. Provincial synodical canons of the dark and middle ages had a pretending binding force upon the people. But those ecclesiastics had put the last straw upon the donkey’s (people’s) back in their synod of 1343. The young British House of Commons, then only seventy-eight years old, was roused to opposition. In 1343, 1344, 1347, and 1351, the House petitioned Edward III. against the canon of 1343, but the petitions led to no satisfactory result.[248] The Commons succeeded, however, in 1371, in limiting the power of the canon. It was enacted[249] that trees of twenty years’ growth and upward should not be tithable, and that if a suit should be commenced in any spiritual court for the payment of such tithes, a prohibition should issue. This was the first victory gained by the House of Commons as regards tithes. The failures in the above years were caused by ecclesiastical influence exercised over the King. There had been previous Acts on Church questions, such as the Mortmain Act of 1297, which was a much bolder step than that of 1372, but it was rather the production of King Edward I. himself than any action of the House of Commons, owing to the nervous state of feeling among the lay nobility to check the extensive alienation of property to the monasteries which deprived the King of help towards the defence of the country. The nobility were also becoming extremely jealous of the growing power and luxurious living of the monastic bodies, and also of the Church dignitaries.