none, but to such spiritual corporation, as is also the patron of the church; the whole being indeed nothing else, but an allowance for the patrons to retain the tithes and glebe in their own hands, without presenting any clerk, they themselves undertaking to provide for the service of the church.” {118} The great modern historian of our ancestors—Mr. Kemble—also informs us that the tithe—that property which cunning and selfish individuals in the course of time, and little by little, appropriated to their own uses—was originally divided into three portions: one for the reparation of the church; a second to the servants of God; “and a third to God’s poor and needy men in thraldom.” And Mr. Kemble further states that when the accidental oblations were replaced by settled payments, whether land or not, they were directed to be applied in definite proportions to these objects. So that the maintenance of the place of religious worship was as much provided for as the clergy who were to do duty therein; the poor, too, were equally taken care of, at the same time and by the same means; for to use the emphatic words of this great historian, “the state had a poor-law and the clergy were the relieving officers.” Mr. Barnes, the registrar of the diocese of Exeter, in his examination before the select committee of the House of Commons, on the fourth of July, 1851, {119a} says, that he believes Blackstone was mistaken in attributing the charge of the repair of the church to the tithe; but I think Mr. Kemble has fully established the truth of the position taken up by that learned Judge. And this was not all, the bishops, and clergy, were to feed the poor out of their own incomes. A parson who possessed a superfluity and did not distribute it to the poor was to be excommunicated. And the clergy were to practice handicrafts, “not only to keep them out of mischief, but to help to feed their poor brethren.” Many of them were masons; and Mr. Kemble is of opinion that more churches existed in the tenth century than at the present time. Before that time there appears to have been “a tendency to speculate in church-building;” for the sake of obtaining “the oblations of the faithful;” the builders claiming for themselves that portion of the church—_the altare_—on which the offerings were laid. To ensure the support of the churches so built on speculation, the bishops found it necessary “to insist that every church should be endowed with a sufficient glebe or estate in land: the amount fixed was one hide, equivalent to the estate of a single family. Which, properly managed, would support the presbyter and his attendant clerks.” And this glebe-land the bishop could not afterwards interfere with, or alienate from the church to which it was given.