Modern charity law is dominated, of course, by decisions of the courts. These originate in history with the High Court of Chancery once it evolved into the prime decision-maker for charities. That original court, and the modern courts that succeeded it, slowly produced a trickle of legal precedents, as many as a couple of dozen a year but in recent decades no more than one or two a year. These accumulated over about three centuries so that there is now an ample but somewhat intractable jurisprudence of several thousand judgments. Most of them are old and seriously difficult to understand. There are a number of very thick legal textbooks that go through all of this, which lawyers, tax officials and charity people can acquire at great expense. It is not the purpose of this website to duplicate these surveys of modern charity law.
The aim of this website is to delve into the roots of modern charity law. We ask: what generated or influenced the courts’ concept of charity apart from the arcane precedents in their own jurisprudence? Who outside Chancery made charity-related decisions, enactments, announcements? In short, who or what was telling the courts what to think? This website gives a sampling of example documents that offer answers to these questions.
For those who want to explore and find their own examples, the following reference works are catalogues of several types of records of non-jurisprudential nature, yet of charitable importance. Enthusiasts will find all sorts of old charity stuff using these tools:
- Charitable uses commissioners’ proceedings
- Church briefs
- Lay taxes
- Royal proclamations
- Private acts of parliament