The bounty was originally funded by the annates monies: 'first fruits' (the first year's income of a cleric newly appointed to a benefice)[1] 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.

Known as the Gilbert Act, it enabled the lending of up to three years' income of all benefices for the building or repair of a parsonage house.

By 1841, it was estimated, the operations of the bounty (discounting the effects of the Parliamentary grants of 1809-20) had secured additional church income over ten times that of the first fruits and tenths.

[5] The archives of Queen Anne's Bounty are now held by the Church of England Record Centre; specific documents may be consulted by appointment.

On 16 June 2022 the Church Commissioners published an interim report on research into links between Queen Anne's Bounty and the Atlantic slave trade.

The report said that Queen Anne's Bounty had invested significant sums in the South Sea Company, which transported 34,000 slaves to the Spanish Americas in the 18th century, and had received benefactions from people with links to slavery, including Edward Colston.

[6][7] In January 2023 the Church Commissioners announced that they were setting up a fund of £100 million to be spent over the next nine years on addressing historic links with slavery,[8] a figure increased to £1B in March 2024 following a report commissioned by the Church Commissioners[9] The Queen Anne's Bounty Acts 1706 to 1870 is the collective title of the following Acts:[10]