Impropriation, a term from English Ecclesiastical Law, refers to taking the profits from the sale of church property and placing them in the care of a layman or lay corporation for care and distribution. The institution was primarily used in the Church of England before the English Civil War and usually entailed buying the right to appoint the minister in a certain region.
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Impropriations were deeply controversial because they were a form of simony. Impropriations could be purchased to increase the influence of one's favored interpretation of the Protestant movement. This was problematic because churchgoers had little alternative to the official church and impropriations were used primarily during a religiously formative period in English history when power balance between Protestant (primarily between Established and Puritan) sects was of great moment. It was also criticized because, when used to increase a minister's power, the policy exacerbated the habit of "pluralism," where one minister would serve several churches, usually inadequately.
Impropriations came under attack from the Puritans at the Hampton Court Conference of 1604. James I of England agreed to abolish them, but the reform was never acted on. An underground organization of radical Puritans known as the Feoffees for the Purchase of Impropriations responded by raising funds collectively to appoint known Puritans as ministers in the Church of England. The Feoffees would be subject to suppression by the establishment High Church Party.
A particular manifestation of the controversy brought about through Impropriation concerned the collecting of Tithes in the seventeenth century, of which the refusal to pay was an article of faith tenaciously held by the Quakers, especially in the period from 1652 to 1700.
For further reading on the Quakers, impropriation and the tithe see: