When I first learned something about the difference between rectors and vicars, I accepted the  definition as rectors received the greater tithes, vicars received the smaller tithes, and curates received wages. I used this concept in previous stories. For example, in writing myAusten-inspired tale, Amending the Shades of Pemberley, I created a character related to the Bennets’ Aunt Gardiner, a younger brother who is a clergyman and Mary’s “love” interest in the tale. I originally thought to make him a rector, so he might be richer, but then I chose to make him a vicar, where he would receive part of the tithes, but not all of them.

A fortunate chance had recommended him [Mr. Collins] to Lady Catherine de Bourgh when the living of Hunsford was vacant; and the respect which he felt for her high rank, and his veneration for her as his patroness, mingling with a very good opinion of himself, of his authority as a clergyman, and his right as a rector, made him altogether a mixture of pride and obsequiousness, self-importance and humility.—Pride and Prejudice, chapter 15

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In my new series from Dragonblade Publishing, the heroine’s Uncle Philip is a vicar on an estate in Kent, close to where Lord Benjamin Thompson lives. Lady Freya Cunningham means to place herself purposely in the way of Lord Aaran Graham, a Scottish lord who her father despises, but that is another facet of the tale. From book 4 of the series, Lost in the Lyon’s Garden, we learn that Miss Victoria Whitchurch’s father was also a vicar, but what was the benefit of being a curate, a vicar, or a rector in the Regency?

A church living was accepted to be a respectable occupation among the gentry and the aristocracy. It was a “job” which came with an income, house, and, often, farmland. It was not an occupation, such as than of a surgeon, where the man actually collected his wages for his services. Generally speaking, in a country parish, those living within the parish were required by law to pay the clergyman 10% of their income. Those “tithes” were not often paid in cash. The man might receive a percentage of the crops, the eggs, the animals, etc. The clergyman could “earn” fees for performing weddings, funerals, baptisms, etc.

In addition, there was something called “glebe,” not a word we often hear nowadays, but part of the everyday language in Jane Austen’s England. Glebe referred to a piece of land serving as part of a clergyman’s benefice and providing income.

In Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, Colonel Brandon offers a rectory to Edward Ferrars. “It is a rectory, but a small one”—Sense and Sensibility, chapter 39

An essay in Persuasion 16 of Jane Austen Society of North America, it says often the documents setting up each living set out who received what. Of course, a living in Kent, where Lady Catherine resided, would have different produce and tithable products from those in Derbyshire, where Mr. Darcy lived.

“The tenth part of all profits or fruits, both praedial, personal, and mixed, allotted to the clergy for their maintenance. Of tithes there are three kinds, viz., personal, predial, and mixed. Personal tithes are those duo or accruing from the profits of labour, art, trade, navigation, and industry of man. Pradial tithes, those which arise either from the fruits of the ground, as corn, hay, underwood, flax, hemp, &c.; or from the fruits of trees, as apples, pears, plums, cherries ; or from the produce of the garden. Mixed tithes arc such as arise from beasts, and other animals fed with the fruits of the earth, as cheese, milk, wool, lambs, calves, fowls, &c . Preadial tithes, again, are either great or small. Great tithes are those of corn, hay, and wood. Small tithes are those of flax, &c., which are prsedial; and those of wool, milk, cheese, lambs, ferrets, &c., which are mixed . The tithes of grounds newly broken up and cultivated are called decimce novates, and always belong to the vicar, as well as the small tithes. ”  Dictionary of the English Church Ancient and Modern.

A Companion to the English Parish Church says of tithes: There are three types of tithes: praedial tithes (calculated on income produce), mixed tithes (calculated on income from stock and labour) and personal tithes (based on income derived entirely from labour).

Where a rector was not the incumbent, the tithes were divided between the rector and the vicar. They were the Great or Rectorial and small or Vicarial tithes. Vicarial tithes were generally those raised from labour and minor produce and as such were most difficult to raise.

“He [Mr. Elton] had a comfortable home for her [Harriet], and Emma imagined a very sufficient income; for though the vicarage of Highbury was not large, he was known to have some independent property”—Emma, chapter 4

Greater tithes:

1. corn and other grain as beans, pease, tares, vetches. These are to be put into shocks.

2. hay and other herbs and feeds like clover, rape, woad, broom, heath, furze– and even grass.

3. Wood

Wood included hazel, birch, willow, whitethorn, holly, alder, maple, hornbeam.

Note:Trees such as oak which are used for timber are wood if less than twenty years old. Over twenty years of age, they are timber and not subject to the tithe. An exception was made of cherry wood in Buckinghamshire and the willows in Southampton.

Lesser tithes:

pasturage for sheep or cattle

flax

hemp

madder (a scrambling or prostrate Eurasian plant of the bedstraw family)

hops

potatoes

turnips

cabbage

parsley

fruit of trees including acorns

calves, colts, kids, sucklings

wool and lamb

milk

cheese

fowl

bees— no tithe on bees but tithe on beeswax and honey

Nothing that comes from a mine or a quarry is tithed. No new stone or lead grows.

You might also find my piece on What Exactly Did It Mean for a Clergyman To Have a Living Bestowed on Him useful.