Rector

A rector, in traditional Church of England usage, was the incumbent of a parish entitled to receive its full tithes, the traditional tenth of parish produce and income owed to support the local church, in contrast to a vicar, whose benefice historically carried only a portion of those tithes, the remainder, called the great tithes, having been appropriated to a monastery, cathedral or other institution before the Reformation and, after the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, often passing into lay hands as a form of property right entirely separate from the parish clergy's own income.

Tithe payment in this historical form was abolished in England by legislation completed in the 1930s, and modern Church of England clergy of both titles, rector and vicar, are supported through the Church's own centralized stipend system rather than through parish tithes at all, leaving the rector-vicar distinction today a matter of historical and ceremonial usage, still recorded in a parish's official name and its incumbent's formal title, rather than one carrying any remaining practical difference in income, authority or duties between the two.

A small number of parishes retain the title rectory rather than vicarage for their incumbent's residence and the parish's formal designation, a naming choice generally reflecting the historical pre-Reformation arrangement of that specific benefice rather than any current difference in the priest's duties, stipend or standing; both rectors and vicars today hold the same legal and canonical status as parish incumbents within the Church of England.

The historical gap between rector and vicar traces back to how medieval English parishes were funded through tithes, a tenth of parish produce owed to support the church. Where a monastery, cathedral chapter, or other corporate body had appropriated a parish's great tithes, the larger share drawn from grain and other major crops, it would install a vicar, literally standing in the rector's place, to actually serve the parish on only the lesser tithes, while the appropriating body kept the greater income; a rector, by contrast, held the parish's full tithe income directly and often did not personally serve it at all in the medieval period, employing a vicar or curate to do so. The whole tithe system that produced this distinction was abolished in England by legislation in the twentieth century that converted remaining tithe obligations into fixed cash payments and then extinguished them entirely, and the Church of England's more recent Common Tenure reforms replaced the old freehold that both rectors and vicars once held with a licensed, more accountable form of tenure for parish clergy generally. The titles rector and vicar persist today chiefly as a historical label attached to a particular parish rather than as any live difference in a priest's actual income, duties, or security of tenure.