Thus they became transferable to laymen and saleable like ordinary property, in spite of the injunctions of the third Lateran Council, and they became payable out of sources of income which were not originally tithable.
The tithes of tithable cattle pasturing in any waste or common ground, whereof the parish is not certainly known, were made payable to the parson of the parish where the cattle dwell by a statute of Edward VI.
When the religious houses were dissolved by Henry VIII., in the case of the greater abbeys and priories the exemptions from payment of tithes enjoyed by them passed to the Crown or the persons to whom the Crown assigned them, and thus any lands which might have been thus exempted, whether they had been actually so or not, were presumed to be exempt; and a further exemption was created by parsonages coming into the same hands as tithable lands, which lasted so long as such union continued.
A custom also sprang up, and was common at the time of the Commutation Acts, for a tithe-owner to accept a fixed sum of money or fixed quantity of the goods tithable in place of the actual tithes, known as a modus decimandi, whether in respect of a whole parish or only of particular lands within it; and this could be sued for in the ecclesiastical courts.
As already seen, fish being ferae naturae are only tithable by custom; but fish taken in the sea by the custom of the realm are tithable as a personal tithe, i.e.