Tithe commutation was a 19th-century reform of

land tenure In common law systems, land tenure, from the French verb "tenir" means "to hold", is the legal regime in which land owned by an individual is possessed by someone else who is said to "hold" the land, based on an agreement between both individual ...

in Great Britain and Ireland, which implemented an exchange of the payment of a

tithe A tithe (; from Old English: ''teogoþa'' "tenth") is a one-tenth part of something, paid as a contribution to a religious organization or compulsory tax to government. Today, tithes are normally voluntary and paid in cash or cheques or more r ...

to the clergy of the

established church A state religion (also called religious state or official religion) is a religion or creed officially endorsed by a sovereign state. A state with an official religion (also known as confessional state), while not secular, is not necessarily a t ...

, which were traditionally paid

in kind The term in kind (or in-kind) generally refers to goods, services, and transactions not involving money or not measured in monetary terms. It is a part of many spheres, mainly economics, finance, but also politics, work career, food, health and othe ...

, to a system based in an annual cash payment, or once-for-all payment. The system had become complex, with lay owners by

impropriation Impropriation, a term from English ecclesiastical law, was the destination of the income from tithes of an ecclesiastical benefice to a layman. With the establishment of the parish system in England, it was necessary for the properties to have an ...

entitled to some tithes, which were of a number of kinds.

History

In Scotland, a form of commutation of

teind In Scotland a teind () was a tithe derived from the produce of the land for the maintenance of the clergy. It is also an old lowland term for a tribute due to be paid by the fairies to the devil every seven years. Found in the story of Tam Lin as ...

s applied from 1633. A full reform was carried out in the 1930s. Commutation of tithes occurred in England before the 19th century major reform, since it was an aspect of

enclosure Enclosure or Inclosure is a term, used in English landownership, that refers to the appropriation of "waste" or " common land" enclosing it and by doing so depriving commoners of their rights of access and privilege. Agreements to enclose land ...

, a legal process under which rights to

common land Common land is land owned by a person or collectively by a number of persons, over which other persons have certain common rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect Wood fuel, wood, or to cut turf for fuel. A person ...

were modified by

act of parliament Acts of Parliament, sometimes referred to as primary legislation, are texts of law passed by the Legislature, legislative body of a jurisdiction (often a parliament or council). In most countries with a parliamentary system of government, acts of ...

. An estimate places 60% of enclosure acts as involving tithe commutation. In such cases, commissioners who dealt with the detail of enclosure acts handled tithes by allocation of land, as part of the division of ownership. By this mechanism, in the period 1750 to 1830,

glebe Glebe (; also known as church furlong, rectory manor or parson's close(s))McGurk 1970, p. 17 is an area of land within an ecclesiastical parish used to support a parish priest. The land may be owned by the church, or its profits may be reserved ...

land increased, and clerics in some places became active farmers. From the 17th century tithe commutation became seen as part of

agricultural improvement Agronomy is the science and technology of producing and using plants by agriculture for food, fuel, fiber, chemicals, recreation, or land conservation. Agronomy has come to include research of plant genetics, plant physiology, meteorology, and so ...

, and by the later 18th century tithes were seen as a major obstacle to improvement, for example by

Adam Smith Adam Smith (baptized 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the thinking of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Seen by some as "The Father of Economics"——— ...

. and the Board of Agriculture. In England and Wales existing tithe payments were abolished by the

Tithe Commutation Act 1836 The Tithe Act 1836 (6 & 7 Will 4 c 71), sometimes called the Tithe Commutation Act 1836, is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is one of the Tithe Acts 1836 to 1891. It replaced the ancient system of payment of tithes in kind wi ...

. It introduced in their place a cash payment, the "corn rent". The legislation was shaped by the parliamentary contribution of

William Blamire William Blamire (13 April 1790 – 12 January 1862) was a British landowner, civil servant, and Whig politician. Background and education Blamire was born at The Oaks, Dalston, England, to a family that originated in Cumberland. He was the el ...

, a farmer and self-styled "practical man", who became a tithe commissioner.

Tithe maps

Implementation of the Commutation Act for England and Wales required detailed maps.

Robert Kearsley Dawson Colonel Robert Kearsley Dawson (1798 – 1861) was an English surveyor and cartographer of the Corps of Royal Engineers. Early life Robert K. Dawson was born in 1798 in Dover. His father was Robert Dawson, a surveyor. He studied at the Royal ...

took the opportunity to press for a substantive

cadastral survey Cadastral surveying is the sub-field of cadastre and surveying that specialises in the establishment and re-establishment of real property boundaries. It involves the physical delineation of property boundaries and determination of dimensions, a ...

Notes

{{reflist History of the Church of England Land tenure History of the Church of Scotland

Commutation Commute, commutation or commutative may refer to: * Commuting, the process of travelling between a place of residence and a place of work Mathematics * Commutative property, a property of a mathematical operation whose result is insensitive to th ...