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.