“The collection of tithes was regulated by compulsory statutes; the clergy took note of all who paid or refused to pay; four or eight, or more, jurymen were summoned from each parish as witnesses for the claims disputed; the contumacious were three times summoned; if still obstinate, they were excluded from the Church; if they still refused to pay, they were fined over and above the whole tithe, six solidi; if further contumacious, the recusant’s house was shut up; if he attempted to enter it, he was cast into prison to await the judgment of the next plea of the Crown. The tithe was due on all produce, even on animals. The tithe was usually divided into three portions, one for the maintenance of the Church, the second for the poor, the third for the clergy; the bishop sometimes claimed a fourth. He was the arbiter of the distribution; he assigned the necessary portion for the Church, and appointed that of the clergy. This tithe was by no means a spontaneous votive offering of the whole Christian people. _It was a tax imposed by imperial authority and enforced by imperial power._ It had caused one, if not more than one, sanguinary insurrection among the Saxons. It was submitted to in other parts of the empire, not without strong reluctance. Even Alcuin ventured to suggest that if the apostles of Christ had demanded tithes, they would not have been so successful in the propagation of the Gospel.”[51] PAPAL LEGATES IN ENGLAND, A.D. 787. For 190 years no papal legate appeared in England since Augustine landed on our shores in 597. When Pope Gregory sent his missionaries to England, he thought the whole country was inhabited by English, and so ordered that there should be two provinces, each containing twelve Episcopal sees and governed by two Metropolitans, one at London and the other at York.[52] Still Gregory must have been aware of the existence of a British Church in the island, for British bishops were present at the Synods of Arles, A.D. 314; Sardica, 347; and Rimini, 359.