DEFINITION OF TITHE. Tithe was the tenth part of the increase yearly arising and renewing from the profits of lands, the stock upon lands and the personal industry of the inhabitants.[144] Tithes were (1) Predial, (2) Mixed, and (3) Personal. (1) Predial tithes were the crops and wood which grew and issued from the ground. (2) Mixed tithes were wool, sheep, cattle, pigs and milk. They were called _mixed_ because they were predial in respect of the ground on which the animals were fed, and personal from the care they required. (3) Personal tithes were the tenth part of the clear gain after charges were deducted; in other words, on net profits of artificers, merchants, carpenters, smiths, masons, and all other workmen. Even the servant-girls paid a tenth of their wages. The Scriptural passage quoted in support of personal tithes is Deuteronomy xii. 6. “And thither ye shall bring your tithes and heave offerings of your hand.” By 2nd and 3rd Edward VI., c. xiii. s. 7, “Every person exercising merchandizes, bargaining and selling clothing, handicraft, or other art or faculty, by such kind of persons and in such places as heretofore within these forty years have accustomably used to pay such personal tithes, or of right ought to pay, other than such as be common day labourers, shall yearly, before the feast of Easter, pay for his personal tithe the tenth part of his clear gains, his charges and his expenses, according to his estate, condition or degree, to be therein abated, allowed and deducted.” Sec. 9. “And if any person refuse to pay his personal tithes in form aforesaid, that then it shall be lawful to the ordinary of the diocese, where the party that ought to pay the said tithes is dwelling, to call the same party before him, and by his discretion to examine him by all lawful and reasonable means otherwise than by the party’s own corporal oath, concerning the true payment of the said personal tithes.” Sec. 12. “Except the inhabitants of the city of London, Canterbury, and the suburbs of the same, and also those of any other town or place that used to pay their tithes by their houses, otherwise than they ought or should have done before the making of this Act.” THE LAWS OF KING EDMUND. He succeeded his brother Athelstan A.D. 940. The Laws Ecclesiastical. “King Edmund assembled a great synod at London, during the Holy Easter-tide (about A.D. 994), as well of ecclesiastical as of secular degree,” etc. “Of Tithes and Church-Scots.” Act 2. “A tithe we enjoin to every Christian man by his Christendom, and Church-scot and Rome-feoh, and plough-alms. And if any one will not so do, let him be excommunicated.” Act 5. “We have also ordained that every bishop repair the houses of God in his own [district], and also remind the king that all God’s churches be well conditioned as is very needful for us.”[145]