The bounty was originally funded by the annates monies: "first fruits" and "tenths" – a tenth of the income in subsequent years traditionally paid by English clergy to the pope until the Reformation, and thereafter to the Crown. Henry VIII, on becoming the recipient of these monies had had them carefully valued and specified as sums of money. This valuation was never revised, and in 1920 the income from First Fruits and Tenths was between £15,000 and £16,000. The bounty money was to be used to increase the income of livings yielding less than £80 a year. It was not paid directly to incumbents, but instead used to purchase land, the income from which augmented the living. The livings to be augmented were selected by lot from those with an annual income less than £10, or those where augmentation by a third party was offered conditional upon augmentation by bounty funds. Parishes worth less than £20 a year were included in the ballot in 1747, those worth less than £30 a year in 1788, those under £50 in 1810.
Later developments
Augmented parishes came to find it more convenient to not actually purchase land, but to leave the purchase money deposited with the bounty, who paid a guaranteed but moderate rate of interest. The money held by the bounty was invested at higher rates of interest, the difference between interest paid the bounty on their investments, and that paid by the bounty to parishes going to meet the running costs of the bounty and to increase the funds available for augmentation. In 1829 the purchase money deposited with the bounty amounted to over £1m, which was invested in bank annuities ; by 1900 the bounty was holding over £7m credited to various augmented livings. The original income and that from interest rate differences on money on deposit with the bounty, had by 1815 allowed the allocation of nearly £1.5m of capital to augment the income of 3,300 livings. To accelerate augmentation, between 1809 and 1820 Parliament made annual grants to the bounty of £100,000; £1.1m in total. As a result, by 1824 all livings under £30 a year had been augmented and there were funds in hand to permit the augmentation of all livings worth under £50 a year. By 1841, it was estimated, the operations of the bounty had secured additional church income over ten times that of the first fruits and tenths. The Ecclesiastical Commission reported the following data on low-income livings:
Annual income of living
Less than £50
£50 - 100
£100 - £150
£150-£200
Number of livings
297
1,628
1,602
1,354
After 1836, bounty augmentations were generally to match third party benefactions to livings worth less than £200 a year. In 1890, the total amount distributed was £176,896. On 2 April 1947, by the Church Commissioners Measure 1947, the functions and assets of Queen Anne's Bounty were merged with the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to form the Church Commissioners. The archives of Queen Anne's Bounty are now held by the Church of England Record Centre; specific documents may be consulted by appointment.
