Letters patent 15 Edward 3 as recorded in Rymer’s Foedera, 1st ed vol 2 part 2 p 1157; 2nd ed vol V p 246; 3rd ed vol 2 part 4 p 98. Copy with English and French translations here: https://earlycharitylawsources.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/13410501LP_LondonGoldsmithsCharity.pdf
This is an interesting example of a mortmain licence.
The guild of goldsmiths of London needed to
- set up a home to take care of their brethren rendered disabled from breathing the fumes of hot mercury (called “quicksilver” then), and
- hire a chaplain to come and pray for the victims regularly—the only form of remedy they could conceive of in the absence of modern medicine.
The method they were using to extract gold involved soaking gold ore in liquid mercury. The gold in the ore combines with the mercury forming an amalgam. The amalgam is then heated to high temperature. The mercury vaporizes into the air leaving pure gold. Doing this is incredibly dangerous, to put it mildly. Mercury in its elemental and other chemical forms, whether breathed in or otherwise ingested, essentially ruins the nervous system. This is not how modern industry refines gold, but it has been going on for upwards of 3,000 years. Sadly, many small operators do this in poor countries around the world even today.
At any one time, the goldsmiths of London might have had several of their members showing serious physical disability and mental problems such as discoordination, numbness, paralysis, blindness, perplexity, incompetence, stupor or derangement. In seeking to set up this home, the goldsmiths appeared to recognize that using mercury in this manner was indeed the cause of their members’ affliction.
The only way in those days to fund a project like this was for the group intending to carry it out to become landlords. They would acquire properties, rent them to tenants and receive rental revenue that would be dedicated to operating the home. But owning land collectively in this way meant that the main feudal taxes on property (“reliefs” and “aids”) would never become due. Under feudalism, the principal tax (“relief”) was, in effect, an inheritance tax which became payable (to the overlord) only when a feudal property owner died. In the case of a group or collectivity of owners such as a guild, individual members of the group would, of course, from time to time, die or leave; but the remaining members could replace them with new members; so the group as a whole would never die but continue to own the property (a legal feature later known as “perpetual succession”)—without paying the feudal tax. Acts were passed called the “mortmain laws” which forbade this type of immortal tax-free land ownership, first by the church, then by other collective entities such as guilds or corporations, unless a licence to do so was obtained from the superior landlords in the feudal hierarchy—mainly the King. So it was that the goldsmiths’ guild needed to obtain this mortmain licence from the King in order to be allowed to acquire (by donation) the properties in London that would fund their project.
This 1341 mortmain licence was not the end of the story. See The Register of the Goldsmiths’ Company: Deeds and Documents c. 1190 to c. 1666, vol. II and III, edited and translated by Lisa Jefferson (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2022), pp 7-9. A subsequent royal charter was issued in 1393. It recited that the 1341 arrangement had not been put into operation. The reason given was that “no capable person” had been named in 1341—meaning probably that the goldsmiths were still an unincorporated group of people incapable of owning property collectively. But no doubt the disaster of the Black Death pandemic just a few years later (1346-1353) also played a key role in stalling the plan. The 1393 royal charter belatedly incorporated the goldsmiths as a company, and re-enacted the 1341 mortmain licence: https://earlycharitylawsources.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/13930206LP_GoldsmithsCompanyMortmain.pdf
Subsequent mortmain licences for additional property were issued later in 1393 and then in 1402.
Note that the word “charitable” was not used, though clearly this constitutes an early example of what would later be recognized as a charitable purpose trust to relieve the disabled. The church was not mentioned either and does not appear to have been part of the plan (though the eventual chaplain would have had to be an ordained person).