If we examine the charters which appropriated tithes to monasteries, we shall find that the tithes are stated therein to be given as _alms in perpetuity_. As regards tithes given to rectors and vicars of parishes, the usual style of the grant ran thus: “The tithes were granted as _free, pure, and perpetual alms for ever_.” The words in italics are most remarkable. Richard de Clare, Earl of Herts, gave the rectorial tithes of Brenchley and Yalding, in Kent, to Tunbridge Priory _in pure and perpetual alms_. Robert de Crevequer, founder of Leeds Abbey about 1137, gave the canons there _in free and perpetual alms_, all the churches on his estates, with their glebe lands, tithes, and advowsons. King John had appropriated the rectory of Bapchild, in Kent, to the Dean and Chapter of Chichester, on the recommendation of the Bishop of Chichester, to be held _in free, pure, and perpetual alms_. The chapter received £437 a year tithe-rent charge; vicar, £167. William de Auberville, in 1192, gave to the priory of West Langdon the rectories of Oxney and of St. Mary’s, Liddon, _in pure and perpetual alms_.[272] I have given here only a few examples to show how the tithes had been granted by the owners to parishes and monasteries. Yet in the face of these grants, episcopal, cathedral and parochial, incumbents claim the tithes as their own exclusive property. But Wickliffe and the friars were much better judges of the facts than church defenders at the present time. They truly asserted that the tithes were by custom originally given as alms or free-will offerings without any compulsion whatsoever; and Wickliffe gave some additional information, viz., that they were given only to good and godly men who were able to preach the gospel. The fact that the landowners had given their tithes for any religious use to monks who were mostly laymen, to nuns, to the religious military orders, to foreign monasteries, I say that this proves to demonstration that tithes were not due by divine or legal right to the evangelical priesthood; that tithes were property which could have been and were disposed of, like any other kind of property, to whatever use the benefactor or owner wished. But by clerical pressure at home, by threats of anathemas and excommunications, by the power of the confessional box, and by ecclesiastical pressure from Rome, the English landowners, and also those who paid personal tithes, had slowly come round to the practice of paying them to the parochial clergy not as their exclusive income, but as trustees reserving an adequate portion of the tithes for their own personal use, and dividing the remainder among the poor and stranger, and for repairing the church. But the trustees appropriated all the tithes to their own personal use, and relieved the poor and repaired the church out of alms and contributions of the parishioners. These are the real facts of this disgraceful case of clerical trustees misappropriating the tithes to