Note 45 — Chapter III · THE POSSESSIONS OF THE CHURCH, THE CROWN, & THE PEOPLE.

Henry the VIII, finding that the clergy readily paid the first fruits of their livings to the Pope, and that £160,000 had been transmitted to Rome, on account of this claim, since the second year of Henry the seventh, thought, very naturally, as he had been proclaimed “The supreme head of the church and clergy of England, in so far as is permitted by the law of Christ,” that he ought to stand in the Popes’s shoes in this particular also; and that the annates, or first fruits, ought to be paid to the Crown of England, instead of going to enrich a Foreign Potentate. He first reduced the payment to five per cent. “the better to keep the Pope in awe,” but finding that remedy unsuccessful took the whole to himself.—Vide Hume’s History of England.