The alleged donation may be spurious, the documents relating to it may be forgeries, but there is [p115] nothing impossible or unlikely in the thing itself. And the very fact of the forgery of such a grant is evidence of its intrinsic possibility. And, whatever may be said as to the donation of Ethelwulf, whether it be spurious or not, there are other proofs that something of the kind was afterwards effected. «Priests often have yard-lands.» In No. XXV.[139] of the 'Excerptiones' of Archbishop Egbert (A.D. 735–766) it is ordained that 'to every church shall be allotted one complete holding (mansa), and that this shall be free from all but ecclesiastical services.' This was simply putting the priest in the position of a recognised village official, like the _præpositus_ or the _faber_. They held their virgates free of service, and perhaps their strips were ploughed by the common ploughs in return for their services without their contributing oxen to the manorial plough team. The Domesday Survey proves that, in a great number of instances at least, room had in fact been made in the village community for the priest and his _virgate_.[140] «Tithe taken in acres, _i.e. every tenth strip_.» The following passages in the Saxon laws also show that for some time, at all events, the tithes were actually taken, not in the shape of every tenth sheaf, but exactly in accordance with the plan suggested by the spurious grant of Ethelwulf, by every tenth strip being set aside for the Church in the ploughing. In the laws of King Ethelred[141] (A.D. 978–1016) [p116] there is a command that every Christian man shall 'pay his tithe justly, _always as the plough traverses the tenth "æcer."_' VII. And pite cristenra manna gehpilc. ꝥ he his Drihtene his teoðunge. á spa seo sulh þone teoðan æcer gegá. rihtlice gelǽste. be Godes miltse.[142] And be it known to every Christian man that he pay to his lord his tithe rightly always _as the plough traverses the tenth acre_, on peril of God's mercy. Further, in a Latin law of King Ethelred there is the following direction:- Et præcipimus, ut omnis homo . . . det cyricsceattum, et rectam decimam suam, . . . hoc est, sicut aratrum peragrabit decimam acram.[143] And we command, that every man . . . give his _churchshot_, and just _tithe_, . . . that is, _as the plough traverses the tenth acre_. And that this applied to land in villenage as well as to land in demesne is clear from a still earlier law of King Edgar (A.D. 959, 975): 'That every tithe be rendered to the old minster to which the district belongs, and that it be then so paid both from a _thane's in-land and from geneat-land, so as the plough traverses it_.' 1. Dæt syndyon þonne ærest. ꝥ Godes cyrican syn ælces rihtes þyrðe. ⁊ man agífe ælce teoðunge to þam ealdan mynstre þe seo hyrnes to-hyrð. ⁊ ꝥ sy þonne spa gelæst. ægðer ge of þegnes in-lande ge of geneatlande. spa spa hit seo sulh gegange.[144]