Note 601 — Chapter XXII

In September, 1647, the certificate of certain Cheshire justices touching a refusal to pay tithes to a Puritan, Mr. Smith, of Tattenhall, came before the committee. Some Royalist Episcopalians took encouragement, in their refusal, from two petitions of the sequestered clergy to the King and Sir Thomas Fairfax. It is certified, "from the said justices, that they conceive the ordinance of Parliament for payment of tithes cannot be put by them into execution without bloodshed." The Serjeant-at-Arms is commissioned to bring these delinquents "in safe custody to answer their said contempt."—Nonconformity in Cheshire, 472.

The objections to paying tithes at that period went much further than such objections as are urged by Paley.—Moral and Political Philosophy, book vi., iii. A corn-rent, as he suggests, or such commutation of tithes as is now adopted, would not have met the objections. A fixed and uniform stipend paid by the State was widely desired.