Its first duty was the settlement of the revenue. This had hitherto been chiefly collected under Acts passed for short terms only. It was now put on a permanent basis. The hereditary revenues, consisting of the rents of royal domains, fees and fines, post office and ecclesiastical dues, together with that portion of the excise which had been paid to Charles II. as the price for the abolition of feudal services, were given to William and Mary. These revenues amounted to about £400,000 or £500,000 a year. The King had hoped to obtain a grant for life of the other excise and custom duties which had been granted to James, and had amounted to £900,000 a year; but the Tory majority felt as distinctly as their opponents that an income which set the Crown free from the necessity of consulting Parliament might prove a source of evils similar to those of the last reign. They therefore gave William for life only £300,000 a year from the excise, the remaining £600,000, which arose from customs, they granted for four years only. [Sidenote: Act of Grace, May 20.] On other points the Parliament now acted more in accordance with the King's wishes, although the Whigs produced several embarrassing measures, and attempted to compel all place-holders to take an oath abjuring King James. But William was determined to check the course of vengeance; the known wish of the King enabled the Tories to throw out the obnoxious measure, and the revenge of the Whigs was finally balked by an Act of Grace from the Crown, which took the place of the unfinished Bill of Indemnity. This declared a perfect oblivion for all political offences up to that moment, excepting from the benefits of the Act only such of the regicides as were still alive, and about thirty others; of whom some were either dead or in safety abroad, while the rest, though in England, were suffered to live unharmed. It is a noble addition to the glory of William that, through his firmness and generosity, no blood was shed at the Great Revolution. [Sidenote: Preparation for war.] [Sidenote: Jacobite plot discovered.]