Tenths

Tenths and fifteenths were temporary aids issuing out of personal Sroperty, and granted to the king by pararaent. They were formerly the real or actual tenth or fifteenth part of all the very different and mui:h less considerable thing than they are at present. Ecclesiastical tenths were of a somewhat different nature, being the tenth part of the annual profit of each living, which, with the firstfruits (or the first year's profit of the living), was claimed by the Holy See from the clergy of the English church, under the supposed authority of a precept of the Levitical law. At the time of the reformation, the clergy continued to pay the same tax, but then paid it to the king, who had become head of the church; but upon the accession of Queen Anne, that queen abandoned this source of revenue, and allotted it to trustees, for the purpose of augmenting poor hvings.

Brawn.