{1670.} When the parliament met after the prorogation, they entered anew upon the business of supply, and granted the king an additional duty, during eight years, of twelve pounds on each tun of Spanish wine imported, eight on each tun of French. A law also passed, empowering him to sell the fee-farm rents; the last remains of the demesnes, by which the ancient kings of England had been supported. By this expedient, he obtained some supply for his present necessities, but left the crown, if possible, still more dependent than before. How much money might be raised by these sales is uncertain; but it could not be near one million eight hundred thousand pounds, the sum assigned by some writers.[*] * Mr. Carte, in his vindication of the Answer to the Bystander, (p 99,) says, that the sale of the fee-farm rents would not yield above one hundred thousand pounds; and his reasons appear well founded with regard to the interpretation of any part of the act. The act against conventicles passed, and received the royal assent. It bears the appearance of mitigating the former persecuting laws; but if we may judge by the spirit which had broken out almost every session during this parliament, it was not intended as any favor to the nonconformists. Experience probably had taught, that laws over rigid and severe could not be executed. By this act, the hearer in a conventicle (that is, in a dissenting assembly, where more than five were present, besides the family) was fined five shillings for the first offence, ten for the second; the preacher, twenty pounds for the first offence, forty for the second. The person in whose house the conventicle met, was amerced a like sum with the preacher. One clause is remarkable; that if any dispute should arise the judges should always explain the doubt in the sense least favorable to conventicles, it being the intention of parliament entirely to suppress them. Such was the zeal of the commons, that they violated the plainest and most established maxims of civil policy, which require that in all criminal prosecutions favor should always be given to the prisoner. The affair of Skinner still remained a ground of quarrel between the two houses; but the king prevailed with the peers to accept of the expedient proposed by the commons, that a general razure should be made of all the transactions with regard to that disputed question. Some attempts were made by the king to effect a union between England and Scotland; though they were too feeble to remove all the difficulties which obstructed that useful and important undertaking. Commissioners were appointed to meet, in order to regulate the conditions: but the design, chiefly by the intrigues of Lauderdale, soon after came to nothing.