 See below for a fuller description and history, until the reforms of the 19th century, written by Sir William Blackstone and edited by other learned lawyers of the period.The system gradually ended with the Tithe Commutation Act 1836, whose long-lasting Tithe Commission replaced them with a commutation payment, land award and/or rentcharges to those paying the commutation payment and took the opportunity to map out (apportion) residual chancel repair liability where the rectory had been appropriated during the medieval period by a religious house or college.Its records give a snapshot of land ownership in most parishes, the Tithe Files, are a socio-economic history resource.