Download or read book The Idea of Property in Seventeenth-century England written by Laura Brace and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Regarded by contemporaries as the chief dispute of our times, tithes were the subject of intense controversy in the 1650s. Ministers, reformers, radicals and sectarians all went into print to defend or destroy the clergy's right to a tenth of the produce of the land. Tithes pushed the limits of private property, and both their opponents and their defenders recognized their significance for ownership, the law, liberty and individuality.