The Great Shelford Enclosure, like many others in the area, was not merely an enclosure, but also involved the Commutation of Tithes. Tithes were a form of taxation, and first came into being in Anglo-Saxon times. They were introduced as a way of supporting the parish church and its priest. In a society where farming was the main business, and crops the main source of income, the villagers were taxed, not in money (which was hard to come by) but on what they produced. The tithe was one-tenth of produce, and was levied on the corn and hay crops, livestock and wool, and any other crops. But over the centuries, the straightforward link between tithes and the parish priest was subverted. Most obviously this happened when the monasteries were dissolved, and the tithes became a commodity, passing with the monasteries' lands to new owners. However, the case in Great Shelford was slightly different.
In 1496 Bishop Alcock of Ely founded Jesus College. I’d like to say that it was entirely because of his charitable nature and love of learning, but the foundation of such institutions frequently also had a touch of hubris about it. Great lords and ladies, and great churchmen, founded such institutions as a statement of their power, influence and wealth, and also for the good of their souls. Such services to God – the colleges were, after all, religious foundations, and Jesus College was to train priests – would count in shortening one’s journey through Purgatory. They were, if you like, provision for one’s after-life, rather like pension provision for one’s soul. A new foundation was always provided with an endowment - a gift of property to provide an income. The bishop, however, died unexpectedly, and his untimely demise left the college short of the income it would need if it were to prosper.
The college needed a plan, and embarked on various schemes to raise money: buying land in instalments, or by creating a sort of pension plan for landowners. A landowner would gift his land to the college, and in return get a room and stabling in college, be paid an income, and, after his death, prayers for his soul would be offered to speed him on his journey through Purgatory. Another plank in the college's financial strategy was of particular concern to us in Great Shelford. Our then priest, John Ecclestone, was also Chancellor of the Diocese of Ely. He prevailed on Bishop Stanley to gift the village’s tithes and rectory estate (cumulatively known as the Rectory) to the college, and he himself moved on from Shelford to become master of the college.
The details of the appropriation, as it was called, laid down that the college was to pay 3s 4d per annum to the poor of Great Shelford. It would also pay 20 marks, or £13 6s 8d as stipend for a vicar for the parish, and build a “suitable and soundly built vicarage”. The college meanwhile received an annual income of £26 13s 4d. Setting up the appropriation had been an expensive business, and a donor had to be found to underwrite the costs. In return the donor, and John Ecclestone (our erstwhile priest) and sundry others would all receive prayers for their souls on 13th September annually. Dr Ecclestone was to receive the remainder of the profits of the rectory for his life (even though he was no longer serving as priest). After his death, succeeding masters would receive 10 marks (£6 13s 4d) from the rectory and the rest would go to the college. In effect Ecclestone had set himself up with a nice little job as college master, taking an income from Great Shelford with him.
So, from the 16th century onwards, the Great Shelford farmers paid their tithes to Jesus College. The tithes were paid in kind - one sheaf of wheat in ten, one lamb out of ten, and so on. And this paying in kind still prevailed in the 1830s.
Both farmers and landowners deeply resented paying tithes, and were very keen indeed to shed them. Agricultural improvement was very much the order of the day, but what was the point of improving your farm, they argued, when one tenth of the benefit went to Jesus College? But that wasn't all. The 1830s were a time of distress both for farmers and labourers. The population of England had been rising since the mid-eighteenth century, so that there were now more labourers than jobs for them, both here in Shelford and throughout most of the country. The parish was thus obliged to support the unemployed via the poor-rate. The parish had explored various options to try and reduce the level of the poor-rate demanded of householders, and the farmers had each agreed to employ extra men, to keep the rate down. Neither the tithe-owner nor the tithe-farmer (the college’s tenant at Rectory Farm) contributed to the poor-rate, nor did the latter employ his fair share of extra men. This caused further resentment.
The college was still paying its £13 6s 8d to the vicar. When this sum was fixed, in the early 17th century, no provision had been made for inflation. By the 19th century the sum was derisory. Through most of the 18th century it had been a struggle to get a vicar who wasn’t a college fellow, resident in his college, and only devoting the bare minimum to the parish. By the 1830s the incumbent was the rector of Little Shelford, who lived mostly in Cambridge, and was likewise considered to be less than assiduous in his parish duties. Lastly, by this time, the Baptist chapel was growing in size and attendance, and its members felt even more aggrieved at the notion of tithes, whether paid to the Anglican church or to an Anglican Cambridge college.
In 1831 the village submitted a petition to Parliament, praying, "That their Lordships will afford them Relief, by abolishing Tithe in Kind, and by appropriating a Part of the Church Property for the Maintenance of the Poor, as formerly." It wasn't as extreme as the petition from Little Shelford which prayed for "the removal of all taxes on the necessaries of life, the game-laws, the abolition of select vestries, the abolition of tithes, for reform of Parliament, and election by ballot". But that hardly mattered. Both petitions, having been read out, were ignored.
So, when Enclosure became an issue, as a springboard to agricultural improvement, dealing with the tithes was considered equally important. So much so that, unless the tithe issue was addressed, Enclosure wasn't worth it. The proposal was to convert the tithes into a one-off payment of land to Jesus College. Thereafter the parish would be completely tithe-free.
The formula which was agreed to in converting the tithes to land was by now a standard one. It had been established over the course of the many other enclosures-with-commutation which had taken place in the region. That formula was to grant one fifth of the arable land and one eighth of the meadow land in the parish to the college. It was a very generous settlement, considering that the tithe was one tenth of produce. Not that some tithe-owners didn’t try to push the ratios higher. In Trumpington, Trinity College had argued for two fifteenths of meadow (not much difference, you might think, but it would give the college 54 rather 50 acres of grassland and thus whittle down the size of allotments to the other landowners even more). That landowners accepted this standard formula is a measure of how very desperate they were to shed the burden. But it was a pretty outrageous settlement.
As a result of this commutation, the tithe-owner, Jesus College, received 386a 2r 34p of land in one block on the west side of the parish in lieu of the tithes. It became the biggest landowner in the parish on the back of it.
Now I've said that Jesus College was granted 386 acres in lieu of tithes. Notionally this meant that every landowner lost one fifth of their arable allotment and one eighth of their meadow. For a large landowner, such as farmer Peter Grain this would be no inconsiderable loss, but evidently worth it to shake off the yoke of paying tithes. For a smallholder, owning perhaps 5a, or even less, this would be much more significant, costing him a valuable acre of land.
However, the reality was even worse. If we say that 1500 acres of parish land was arable, pasture or meadow, then one fifth of this would represent a cheap and cheerful estimate of what the college should have received, viz. 300a (somewhat generous since it was only one eighth for meadow). But actually the college received 386a which appears to be roughly one seventeenth more than estimated. On examining the allotments given to landowners, I find that, in almost every case, the allotment is significantly smaller than would be expected. In the matter of tithe commutation, every landowner was a loser. I mentioned the politics of Enclosure, and the fact that many people regard it as a measure of great social injustice, unfairly impacting the small farmer. What is often ignored is the impact of the tithe commutation which added its own measure of social injustice.
You might think that the commutation marked a definitive end to the issue. But curiously enough, in 2013 it came back to haunt us.
Chancel repair liability (CRL)
In law the responsibility for maintaining the fabric of the church was divided. The nave - the people's part - was (and still is) the responsibility of the parishioners. The chancel - the priest's part - was the responsibility of the Rector. The rectory was the land with which the church had been endowed at its foundation to support the priest and the fabric, or at least the chancel part of it. Originally this rectory might have been the property of the priest, who also received the tithes, and in that case he was called the Rector. However, in many cases the rectory and tithes had been conveyed to other institutions for their support, such as the monasteries or Cambridge colleges (which were religious foundations). Where the priest was not in possession of the rectory, he was paid a pension by the Rector and called a vicar. At the Reformation, monastic property often passed into lay hands and thereby onto the open market. Over the centuries rectory lands inevitably changed hands and were divided. The law dictated that the chancel repair liability was attached to the land. When the land was subdivided, the liability for chancel repairs passed along with each and every piece, unless the conveyance specifically excluded the new owner from it.
The law further dictated that chancel repair liability was subject to "joint and several liability". This meant that any one possessor of a piece of rectory land could be held solely responsible for CRL. This was clearly an unsatisfactory situation, since a householder on a tiny plot of former Rectory land could notionally be landed with the cost of repairing the chancel. The then government passed a typical compromise Act which failed to resolve the problem satisfactorily. The legislation gave a deadline by which Parochial Church Councils must register anyone who had CRL. If they failed to do so, then the CRL on that land would lapse. This was singularly unfair, since it left the small owner just as vulnerable. And while PCCs recognized this unfairness, as trustees they had a legal obligation to do their best for the institution of which they were trustees, viz. the church. This caused a major flurry of agitation up and down the country as PCCs tried to establish who had CRL, and landowners and householders tried to establish their liability or - preferably - otherwise. Fortunately, in Great Shelford Jesus College accepted that, by virtue of the fact that they had been granted the rectory and tithes of Great Shelford church in the 17th century, they held CRL. But the lesson here is that history can always come back to haunt you.
v1 © Helen Harwood, uploaded March 2025