In the 43rd Report (1891) of the Commissioners, the following statement appears: “During a period of fifty years, from 1840 (when the Common Fund was first created) to 31st October, 1890, the Commissioners have augmented and endowed upwards of 5,700 benefices with annual payments charged on the fund, or by the annexations of lands, tithes, etc., or by the grant of capital sums for the erection of parsonage houses, etc., to the value of about £781,400 per annum, in perpetuity, equivalent to a capital sum of about £23,469,000. The value of benefactions from private sources, of lands, tithes, stock, cash, etc., secured to various benefices, and met for the most part by grants from the Commissioners, exceeds £164,340 per annum in perpetuity, equivalent to a permanent increase of endowment of say £4,930,000, apart from a sum of about £26,000 per annum, contributed by benefactors to meet the Commissioners’ grants for curates in mining districts. Thus the total increase in the incomes of benefices made by the Commissioners or resulting from the benefactions accepted, and met by them, exceeds £971,700 per annum, and may be taken to represent a capital sum of about £29,179,000.”[270] The foregoing statement is the best proof as to the absurd and short-sighted remarks of Sir. R. Inglis and his followers in 1840. The net income of the Common Fund is now over one million per annum. It has taken more than 125 Acts of Parliament directly and indirectly relating to the Church, and some thousands of Orders in Council to drag the State Church out of the sink of abuses in which it was found in 1832 when the first Reform Act was passed. There were also grave and serious abuses in the Church in Wickliffe’s days. He was as hostile to the Pope’s supremacy as he was to the compulsory payment of tithes. He held that kings were superior to popes, and therefore that appeals from spiritual to temporal tribunals were just, right, and lawful. Time proved that his opinion on this point was correct. He must have been a man of great boldness to question in those days the supremacy of the popes. We, living in the end of the nineteenth century, can take a historical survey of the various changes and struggles which occurred, as regards the popes’ supremacy, since Wickliffe’s time. He utterly detested the monks for their luxurious and worldly habits. The parochial clergy also did not escape his lash. He preferred the good old custom of one paying one’s tithes, according to one’s own free-will, to good and godly men, who were able to preach the gospel; and he condemned in his complaint to King Richard II. and his Parliament, the practice of compelling people to pay tithes.[271]