33o THE CHURCH
undesirable nature. For example, they were forced to enter into
open competition for the sale of surplus stock and crops, and to
indulge in buying and selling, although this was against Church
law, which a long series of admonitions tried in vain to enforce.
And with all this went other scandals. Priests found them-
selves haled before Manor Courts; accused of various manorial
offences; fined, admonished, and treated in many ways like their
peasant flock to the detriment of their position. Not only this,
the priest constantly found his worldly ends conflicting with
those of his parishioners, who were his rivals at a fair, or were his
competitors for some piece of assart, or favoured close, which each
wished to control. The claims of strict business and those of true
religion marched ill together, and hot blood engendered in the
market-place was not easily cooled elsewhere, so that the priest
and a number of his flock were liable to find themselves at
loggerheads, almost despite themselves, as a consequence of the
system which controlled them both.
In addition to the difficulties which arose in these ways, there
was the ever-present difficulty of tithe. Then, as now, men paid
tithes very reluctantly, and with many a curse against the Church
(and sometimes its agents) which extracted them. Tithe seemed
unreasonable to many, since to their way of thinking it took part
of their small property and bestowed it upon a man, certainly no
worse off than themselves for the most part, and frequently
man who was comparatively well-to-do. The Church, moreover,
did not help matters by the severity with which she had laid
down what things were tithable, and by the rigour with which
she insisted on their due payment. In addition to the great
tithes, which were principally taken on corn, there were the
lesser tithes, and these were wellnigh all-embracing.
The tithes constituted a land tax, income tax and death duty far
more onerous than any known in modern times, and proportionately
unpopular. The farmers [were] bound to render a strict tenth of all
their produce—theoretically, at least, down to the very pot-herbs of
their gardens----Moreover, the law was pitiless to the peasant. Tithes
of wool were held to include even the down of his geese; the very
grass he cut by the road side was to pay its due toll; the farmer who
deducted working expenses before tithing his crops damned him-
self thereby to hell----We need scarcely wonder that the laity, thus^
situated, excogitated many subterfuges of "excessive malice.. .to the