Kentish Tithe Warriors, 1881-1936

This talk was delivered at a meeting organised by Kent Archives in July 2022. 

After giving some background about the Tithe Wars of the nineteenth and twentieth century, it focuses on two leading protagonists:

• Edward Peterson whose support of the tithe began in 1886 after he served an order to seize sheep from a farm in Smarden that led to the imprisonment of a local farmer, and 
• Frank Allen, the tithe collector at Canterbury Cathedral who became the main organiser of the National Tithe Payers’ Association, which animated the fight against the tithe in the 1930s.