The 32 Henry VIII. c. viii. gave the king power (1) to grant the properties to whom he wished; (2) that such persons should be free from the payment of tithes if such lands had been exempted previous to the dissolution; and (3) that the lay-owners of monastic lands could claim tithes from them. So, then, laymen who claimed tithes were called _impropriators_, because they were _improper_ persons to receive them. But the same may have been said of the lay-monks, nuns, military orders, etc., who had at one time been in the receipt of tithes. The total tithe-rent charge gross is £4,053,985; of this, lay impropriators receive £962,290, or a little less than one-fourth. Therefore we may take it as a general statement that laymen receive about one-fourth of the tithes. To this must be added the large estates which are tithe-free, and from which enhanced rents are received. EXEMPTION FROM PAYING TITHES BY RELIGIOUS HOUSES. All abbots, priors, and other heads of monasteries had originally paid tithes. But Pope Paschal II. exempted generally all the _religiosi_ from tithes on lands which were under their own management. About A.D. 1160, Pope Adrian IV. limited this exemption to the Templars, Hospitallers, and Cistercians, who alone were exempted from paying tithes for lands which were then, but not afterwards, acquired under their own immediate management. The privilege did not extend to lands let to farmers, but only to those which they occupied before the Council of Lateran A.D. 1215, which confirmed the above exemptions. A fourth order—the Premonstratensian—was added by Pope Innocent III. These were called the four privileged orders. After the passing of the Mortmain Act, which gave a terrible blow to the monastic bodies, the privileged order of Cistercians purchased bulls of exemption from paying tithes for their lands, tenements, and possessions let to farmers, and also for the lands which they acquired since 1215. These bulls had the force of law in the English canon law, and were allowed in actions for tithes. This objectionable mode of purchasing bulls of exemption was put a stop to in 1400 by 2 Henry IV. c. iv. which subjected the purchaser to premunire.[266] The Statute of Premunire was passed in 1393 (16 Richard II. c. v.) against “Procuring at Rome or elsewhere, any translations, processes, excommunications, bulls, instruments, or other things which touch the king, against him, his crown and realm, and all persons aiding or assisting therein shall be put out of the king’s protection, their lands and goods forfeited to the king’s use, and they shall be attached by their bodies to answer to the king and his council, or process _præmunire facias_ shall be made out against them, as in any other cases of provisors.”