One incident of a manor was the right to tithes which sometimes could be acquired by the lords by prescriptions. This incident, as the manors of New York were new, was of little value for no prescription could attach to a new manor. It is singular, however, that in the very first manor erected in Westchester County, that of Fordham, in 1671, provision was made for the payment of a parson when it should have inhabitants. Its Lord, John Archer, and his heirs, were granted the privilege of obliging the inhabitants, when there should be enough of them, to contribute to the maintenance of a minister.' Had this been done which it never was, the method of contribution would naturally have been by tithes. As tithes were not known in America, it is perhaps well to explain briefly what they really were. During the first ages of Christianity the clergy were supported by the voluntary offerings of their flocks. But this being a precarious subsistence then, as it is now, the ecclesiastics in every country in Europe, in imitation of the Jewish law, claimed, and in course of time established, a right to the tenth of all the produce of lands. This right appears to have been fully admitted in England before the Norman Conquest, and acquired the name of tithe from a Saxon word signifying tenth. " Dismes or Tithes are an Ecclesiastical inheritance, collateral to the estate of the land, and of their proper nature due only to Ecclesiastical persons by the ecclesiastical law.- They were merely a right to the tenth part of the produce of the soil, produce of live stock, and the personal industry of Ihe inhabitants, in return for the benefit the latter derived from the ministry of their spiritual