[2] By the Gregorian reforms of the 11th century, almost all these rights were extinguished for lay patrons, who were able to retain the sole residual power to nominate the rector to a benefice, and many lay notables thereupon gave up parish churches into the ownership of religious houses, which were less inhibited by canon law from extracting fees and rents from rectors, and which could moreover petition for exemption from most such laws by papal dispensation.

Initially it had not been unusual for religious houses in possession of rectories also to assume the capability to collect tithe and glebe income for themselves, but this practice was banned by the decrees of the Lateran Council of 1215.

Thereafter, over the medieval period, monasteries and priories continually sought papal exemption from the Council's decrees, so as to be able to appropriate the income of rectoral benefices to their own use.

From the mid-14th century onwards, the canons were able to exploit their hybrid status to justify petitions for papal privileges of appropriation, allowing them to fill vicarages in their possession either from among their own number, or from secular stipendiary priests removable at will, arrangements which corresponded to those for their chapels of ease.

For monastic vicarages, the right to the greater tithes and to nominate a vicar also generally passed into the hands of lay owners, known as impropriators.

These received no tithe income, and originally impropriators were required to provide a fixed stipend, although generally the function of paymaster was eventually taken over by the diocese.

Otherwise the main components of the small tithe, apart from wool, were milk, eggs, dairy produce and the young of animals raised as food: lambs, piglets, calves, goslings.

Since animal young rarely arrived in exact multiples of ten, local custom commonly established cash adjustments to round the tithe value up or down.

An Act of Parliament of 1868 permitted perpetual curates to style themselves vicars and the term parson rapidly lost popularity.

In Wales prior to Disestablishment, most parishes in the southern dioceses (St. Davids and Llandaff) were vicarages subject to lay patronage, whereas in the north rectors predominated, largely nominated by the bishops of Bangor and St Asaph.

In the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, a vicar is a priest in charge of a mission, meaning a congregation supported by its diocese instead of being a self-sustaining parish which is headed by a rector.

In places where there was no parson, the erenagh continued to receive two thirds of the income in kind from the church lands, and delivered the balance, after defraying maintenance, to the bishop in cash as a yearly rental.

The division of responsibilities between vicar and parson seems to derive from a much earlier precedent established in the old Celtic Church of St Columcille.