In ancient Rome a benefice was a gift of land (precaria) for life as a reward for services rendered, originally, to the state.

In the 8th century, using their position as Mayor of the Palace, Charles Martel, Carloman I and Pepin III usurped a large number of church benefices for distribution to vassals, and later Carolingians continued this practice as emperors.

[1] Charlemagne (emperor 800–814) continued the late Roman concept of granting benefices in return for military and administrative service to his empire.

[4] This act caused great turmoil for future generations, who would afterward argue that the emperor thereby received his position as a benefice from the papacy.

This declaration inflamed Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV and furthered the friction caused in the Investiture Conflict.

The church's revenue streams came from, amongst other things, rents and profits arising from assets gifted to the church, its endowment, given by believers, be they monarch, lord of the manor or vassal, and later also upon tithes calculated on the sale of the product of the people's personal labour in the entire parish such as cloth or shoes and the people's profits from specific forms of likewise God-given, natural increase such as crops and in livestock.

The community provided for the priest as necessary, later, as organisation improved, by tithe (which could be partially or wholly lost to a temporal lord or patron but relief for that oppression could be found under canon law).

[6] The holder of more than one benefice, later known as a pluralist, could keep the revenue to which he was entitled and pay lesser sums to deputies to carry out the corresponding duties.

[7] The French Revolution replaced France's system by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy following debates and a report headed by Louis-Simon Martineau in 1790, confiscating all endowments of the church, which was until then the highest order (premier ordre) of the Ancien Régime; instead, the state awarded a salary to the formerly endowment-dependent clergy, and abolished canons, prebendaries and chaplains.

In other words, the gift of the glebe (a rectory manor or church furlong) was only ever granted subject to receiving an incorporeal hereditament (inheritable and transferable right) for the original donor.

[11] Upon the bishop having satisfied himself of the sufficiency of the clerk, he proceeded to institute him to the spiritual office to which the benefice is annexed, but before such institution could take place, the clerk had to make the declaration of assent, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion and the Book of Common Prayer, take the oaths of allegiance and canonical obedience and make a declaration against simony.

This form of induction is required to give the clerk a legal title to his beneficium,[n 3] although his admission to the office by institution is sufficient to vacate any other benefice which he may already possess.

The system of pluralities carried with it, as a direct consequence, systematic non-residence on the part of many incumbents, and delegation of their spiritual duties in respect of their cures of souls to assistant curates.

By this statute the term "benefice" is defined to mean "benefice with cure of souls" and no other, and therein to comprehend all parishes, perpetual curacies, donatives, endowed public chapels, parochial chapelries and chapelries or districts belonging or reputed to belong, or annexed or reputed to be annexed, to any church or chapel.

c. 54) superseded these and enacted that by dispensation from the Archbishop of Canterbury, two benefices can be held together, the churches of which are within 4 miles (6.4 km) of each other, and the annual value of one of which does not exceed £200.

To comply with European Regulations on atypical workers, the parson's freehold is being phased out in favour of new conditions of service called "common tenure".