QUEEN ANNE’S BOUNTY; FIRST FRUITS AND TENTHS.—From the earliest periods every bishop and clergyman has been required to pay the amount of his first year’s incumbency into a fund, and every succeeding year one tenth. These first fruits and tenths were formerly collected at their full value, and applied to the use of the pope, as early as the time of Pope Nicholas (A.D. 1200). For this purpose a valuation was made of all the livings in England, which is still preserved in the Remembrancer’s office, and designated, “Valor of Pope Nicholas IV.” At the time of the Reformation, King Henry VIII. passed a law, with the sanction of Parliament, declaring that the first fruits and tenths should be appropriated to the use of the state; and he caused an accurate and full valuation to be made of all the ecclesiastical livings in England and Wales, which were accordingly paid into the public exchequer, till the reign of Queen Anne, with the exception of a short period in the reign of Philip and Mary. Queen Anne, deploring the wretched condition in which many of the clergy were placed, owing to the insufficiency of their livings, came to the determination that the first fruits and tenths should be paid into a fund, called _Queen Anne’s Bounty_, and that the amount should be appropriated to the livings of the poor clergy. No fresh valuation has been made since 1535, and registered in what is now called the _King’s Book_, till that made by order of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, in 1835, on which the payments are now regulated. That the payments might not operate oppressively, the first year’s income was to be paid in four annual instalments; and livings of small value were entirely exempt, and hence, called “_Discharged livings_.” During the time of Popery, a large portion of the tithes had been alienated from the parishes, for the endowment of religious houses, or for chantries, to say masses for the dead. These endowments, at the Reformation, being seized by Henry VIII., left the greater part of the parochial livings very poor. The governors of Queen Anne’s Bounty, sometimes aided by benefactions, and at others by Parliamentary grants, for the endowment of churches, have been able to augment many of the poorest livings, and now the resources at the command of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, by various reductions in cathedral and collegiate churches, will cause the church livings, in a few years, to be considerably equalized: The receipts for the year 1846, amounted to £206,502.