Tithing

In Western ecclesiastical law, the act of paying a percentage of one's income to further religious purposes. One of the political subdivisions of England that was composed of ten families who held freehold estates.

Residents of a tithing were joined in a society and bound to the king to maintain peaceful relations with each other. The person responsible for the administration of the tithing was called the tithing-man; he was a forerunner of the constable.

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TITHING, Eng. law. Formerly a district containing ten men with their families. In each tithing there was a tithing man whose duty it was to keep the peace, as a constable now is bound to do. St. Armand, in his Historical Essay on the Legislative Power of England, p. 70, expresses, an opinion that the tithing was composed not of ten common families, but of ten families of lords of a manor.