The nobility and landed gentry were not slow in fully appreciating the advantages of resident over itinerant priests. Some of the princes, in changing from place to place, selected certain of the clergy to accompany them for the performance of divine service for their families. The Thanes followed their example and appointed chaplains, for they felt the great inconvenience, especially in winter, in attending services at the mother-church, which might have been at a very considerable distance from their residences. The villagers were even in a worse condition. To remedy these inconveniences, the landowners commenced slowly to erect churches on their estates about A.D. 686, but more actively about A.D. 700. The limits of these were conterminous with the extent of their properties. Hence we find some of the old parishes of very unequal extent. It is impossible to state exactly, in the absence of documentary evidence, the origin of the modern parish churches and much less their endowments. “At the original endowment,” Blackstone says, “of parish churches, the freehold of the church, the churchyard, the parsonage house, the glebe, and the tithes of the parish were vested in the then parson by the bounty of the donor.” Blackstone states here the parson’s common law right to the tithes, but after he receives them the same common law right obliges him to share them according to the usage and canons of the Church. The bishop was originally the recipient and distributor of all Church revenues. The parochial incumbents had taken his place and were bound to distribute them according to the original custom. It would never suit for the poor to collect their own share of the tithes. As Bishop Kennett says, _the parish priest was the bank_.