The next year a not very creditable job of the ministry led to the enactment of a statute of great importance to all holders of property which had ever belonged to the crown. In the twenty-first year of James I. a bill had been passed giving a secure tenure of their estates to all grantees of crown lands whose possession of them had lasted sixty years. The Houses had desired to make the enactment extend to all future as well as to all previous grants. But to this James had refused to consent; and, telling the Houses that "beggars must not be choosers," he had compelled them to content themselves with a retrospective statute. Since his time, and especially in the reigns of Charles II. and William III., the crown had been more lavish and unscrupulous than at any former period in granting away its lands and estates to favorites. And no one had been so largely enriched by its prodigality as the most grasping of William's Dutch followers, Bentinck, the founder of the English house of Portland. Among the estates which he had obtained from his royal master's favor was one which went by the name of the Honor of Penrith. Subsequent administrations had augmented the dignities and importance of his family. Their Earldom had been exchanged for a Dukedom; but the existing Duke was an opponent of the present ministry, who, to punish him, suggested to Sir James Lowther, a baronet of ancient family, and of large property in the North of England, the idea of applying to the crown for a grant of the forest of Inglewood, and of the manor of Carlisle, which hitherto had been held by Portland as belonging to the Honor of Penrith, but which, not having been expressly mentioned in the original grant by William III., it was now said had been regarded as included in the honor only by mistake. It was not denied that Portland had enjoyed the ownership of these lands for upward of seventy years without dispute; and, had the statute of James been one of continual operation, it would have been impossible to deprive him of them. But, as matters stood, the Lords of the Treasury willingly listened to the application of Sir James Lowther; they even refused permission to the Duke to examine the original deed and the other documents in the office of the surveyor, on which he professed to rely for the establishment of his right; and they granted to Sir James the lands he prayed for at a rent which could only be regarded as nominal. The injustice of the proceeding was so flagrant, that in the beginning of 1768 Sir George Savile brought in a bill to prevent any repetition of such an act by making the statute of James I. perpetual, so that for the future a possession for sixty years should confer an indisputable and indefeasible title. The ministers opposed it with great vehemence, even taking some credit to themselves for their moderation in not requiring from the Duke a repayment of the proceeds of the lands in question for the seventy years during which he had held them.