Description:Many parish churches were founded in the early Middle Ages by lords of estates who felt they remained in some sense their property which they could give to a monastery if they wished. Such a gift was not purely altruistic as the monks were expected to pray for the founder, his family, ancestors and descendants.
By the later 13th century kings were concerned at the amount of land which was being given to religious houses as they were then generally exempted from the usual feudal obligations. Therefore, in 1279 Edward I introduced the Statute of Mortmain which prohibited giving land to monasteries without a licence that had to be bought from the king. Augustinian houses such as Lilleshall, being an order in which the members were ordained priests, were particularly favoured with gifts of churches and came to derive much of their income from them. The profits of parish churches were a significant economic asset to monasteries and other religious houses.
The Church as well as the king was concerned at the numbers of parish churches being taken over, appropriated, by religious houses because of this loss of income at the parish level, and at the Lateran Council of 1215 the pope ordered that a sufficient portion of the glebe, tithes and fees of the church should be assigned to the priest in the parish, the vicar, who actually served the cure. From this a differentiaion developed between different types of tithes. The religious house usually kept the ‘great tithes’ those levied on corn and hay, while the vicar had the glebe, the ‘small tithes’, a tenth of any other crops grown or animals raised, and the ‘personal tithes’, a nominal tenth of the value of the work of an individual. Sometimes the monastery kept all the glebe and tithes and installed a curate in the parish who had only a small money stipend.
When appropriations became common in the 13th century to gain papal approval it was necessary for the religious house to arrange for the appropriated church to be served by a clerk who was responsible to the bishop for the cure of souls. Originally this cure of souls was often undertaken by one of the monks but later monks were not allowed to personally undertake the cure of souls but were obliged to appoint a vicar or curate with a stipend. This was abused so bishops insisted that there must be a vicar with an endowment of the glebe and at least part of the tithes. This was reinforced by statute in 1403 (4 Hen.IV c.12) which said that there had to be a vicar in every church appropriated canonically instituted and inducted and no monk was to be a vicar.
This appropriation was of long-lasting influence as after the monasteries and other religious houses were dissolved by Henry VIII, the rights to the great tithes and the advowson (the right to present the next vicar) were sold by the crown to a lay person. Curates suffered particularly badly as although the lay purchaser was obliged to continue paying their stipends, the value of a money income depreciated rapidly in the inflationary years of the late 16th century and early 17th century.
This particular appropriation of North Molton is interesting because the income from the church was earmarked for a particular purpose – to provide pittances. Pittances were extra dishes of fish, eggs or wine allowed for the canons on special occasions.
To learn more about Medieval life in Shropshire, follow the link below to the article 'Aspects of Medieval Life: The Lilleshall Collection' written by Dr. Sylvia Watts and Robert Cromarty.
The transcripts and translations of Medieval deeds in the Lilleshall Collection and the stories written about Medieval life were produced by Dr. Sylvia Watts and Robert Cromarty at Shropshire Archives.