As to the purchasers, they will probably be tenants to the see, who are already in possession, and can afford to give more than any other bidders.

I will further explain myself.  If a person already a bishop, be removed into a richer see, he must be content with the bare revenues, without any fines, and so must he who comes into a bishopric vacant by death:  And this will bring the matter sooner to bear; which if the Crown shall think fit to countenance, will soon change the present set of bishops, and consequently encourage purchasers of their lands.  For example, If a Primate should die, and the gradation be wisely made, almost the whole set of bishops might be changed in a month, each to his great advantage, although no fines were to be got, and thereby save a great part of that sum which I have appropriated towards supplying the deficiency of fines.

I have valued the bishops’ lands two years’ purchase above the usual computed rate, because those lands will have a sanction from the King and Council in England, and be confirmed by an Act of Parliament here; besides, it is well known, that higher prices are given every day, for worse lands, at the remotest distances, and at rack rents, which I take to be occasioned by want of trade, when there are few borrowers, and the little money in private hands lying dead, there is no other way to dispose of it but in buying of land, which consequently makes the owners hold it so high.

Besides paying the nation’s debts, the sale of these lands would have many other good effects upon the nation; it will considerably increase the number of gentry, where the bishops’ tenants are not able or willing to purchase; for the lands will afford an hundred gentlemen a good revenue to each; several persons from England will probably be glad to come over hither, and be the buyers, rather than give thirty years’ purchase at home, under the loads of taxes for the public and the poor, as well as repairs, by which means much money may be brought among us, and probably some of the purchasers themselves may be content to live cheap in a worse country, rather than be at the charge of exchange and agencies, and perhaps of non-solvencies in absence, if they let their lands too high.

This proposal will also multiply farmers, when the purchasers will have lands in their own power, to give long and easy leases to industrious husbandmen.

I have allowed some bishoprics of equal income to be of more or less value to the purchaser, according as they are circumstanced.  For instance, The lands of the primacy and some other sees, are let so low, that they hardly pay a fifth penny of the real value to the bishop, and there the fines are the greater.  On the contrary, the sees of Meath and Clonfert, consisting, as I am told, much of tithes, those tithes are annually let to the tenants without any fines.  So the see of Dublin is said to have many fee-farms which pay no fines, and some leases for lives which pay very little, and not so soon nor so duly.