The sphere of work of the local clergy was the parish, which was by no means the same as the town, hamlet, or manor. According to an authority, in the thirteenth century the distinction was fully recognised. “For in one town there may be several parishes,” he says, “and in one parish several manors, and several hamlets may belong to one manor.” The parochial system, then, in the Middle Ages, had come to occupy three separate _functions_. It had acquired, in the first place, the notion of a well-defined group of families organised for the purposes of social order and the relief of needy brethren. Secondly, the word “parish,” applied to the same group, was regarded as a sub-unit of ecclesiastical administration, directly under the parish priest, indirectly under the bishop. Thirdly, it was the name of the foundation property or estate. From the earliest times in the Christian Church the duty of all to assist according to their means in the support of their poorer brethren was fully recognised. The peculiar method, however, of enforcing this duty by the regular payment of tithes was apparently insisted on in the West by the second Council of Macon in A.D. 585, and in the Council of Rouen in A.D. 650. In England, to speak only of it, by the middle of the tenth century the religious duty of paying tithe was enforceable at law, and this tax was commonly called “God’s portion,” “God’s consecrated property,” “the Lord’s Bread,” “the patrimony of Christ,” “the tribute of needy souls.” This was undoubtedly the view taken in pre-Reformation days of the duty of all to pay the tenth portion of their goods for the use of the Church. What that use was has frequently been entirely misrepresented and misunderstood. In the words of the author of the tract on the _Rise of the Parochial System in England_-- “it must be always remembered that in the view of the Church, tithes other than first fruits, and tithes of increase, were destined not to provide a maintenance for the clergy, but for the relief and support of the poor; and the rector, whether of a religious house or parochial incumbent, was supposed to administer them for these purposes, he being only a ruler or administrator of them.... During the whole of the time that the English Church was ruled as an integral part of the Western Patriarchate, this view of the destination of tithes, and of the rector’s or administrator’s duty in respect of them, was never lost sight of.”