Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/275

Rh kindly sent me the following note on the custom there—communicated by F. W. Longe, Esq., of that town:

"The earliest record which we are aware of, referring to the tithe of fish, is an account of a valuation of the living in 1567 (10 Eliz.), in which it is stated that in the time of Henry VIII., before the dissolution of the monasteries, this tithe amounted to £14 being £1 received from each of the fourteen ships going to Iceland for the cod and ling fishing.

"It is stated in the same proceedings that these receipts had fallen to £1 in 1567, when the ships going to Iceland had been reduced to that number.

"In a private account of this tithe, written by the vicar (the Rev. J. Tanner) in 1785, it is stated that the fishery so declined after 1567 that no tithe of fish was claimed, and the income of the vicars was supplemented for many years by voluntary contributions, and thus when the fishing began to revive the vicars still abstained for some years from claiming the tithe from fear of checking the voluntary contributions.

"During the eighteenth century the fish-tithe was again received from the owners of ships employed in the herring and mackerel fishing. The vicar's claim, as supported by ancient custom both at Lowestoft and Yarmouth, was for a half-dole or half-share in the division of the produce of each fishing voyage; this claim as regards the herring fishery seems to have been privately compounded for by a payment of 10s. a year for each ship going to sea. The tithe from the mackerel fishing was still received as a half-dole, but it seems that the shipowners were in the habit of varying the number of doles or shares into which the produce was divided, so that the value of the vicar's half-dole was reduced to the three-hundredth part of the total sum divided.

"From a statement of the value of the living in 1831 by the then vicar, the amount received in that year for fish-tithe was £47 17s. 4½d. In 1845 the legality of the claim of tithe