ABSTRACT
Tithe was a most irksome and unpopular tax. As fortunes from commerce and industry grew in the early eighteenth century, the inability of the tithe owner to extract his tenth from these quarters was the subject of much adverse comment from farmers and landowners. Tithe of garden produce had also been of little commercial value and liable to similar ancient agreements; but as the eighteenth century progressed certain areas flourished as market garden centres supplying the growing commercial and industrial centres. Moduses provided one large bone of contention between tithe owners and payers. An important distinction should be made between tithe normally collected in kind and exceptional demands made by a tithe owner wishing either to establish new claims or to prepare the way for increased compositions. James Loch believed that the sale of tithes was a solution to collection problems in Codsall.
