Early Charity Law Sources

Research tools

Modern charity law is a complex mixture of court decisions and legislation.

The aim of this website is to delve into the roots of this mixture. We ask: what generated or influenced the courts’ concept of charity apart from the arcane precedents in their own jurisprudence? Who outside the courts made charity-related decisions, enactments, announcements? In short, who or what was telling the courts what to think? The answer is, legislation, but in many different forms. This website is heavily preoccupied with old legislation. It offers a sampling of primarily original legislative and similar documents relating to charity, plus others that show how they ended up in today’s complex mixture.

Court decisions on charity are of a type that originated in history with the High Court of Chancery once it evolved into the prime judicial decision-maker for charities. That court, and the modern courts having jurisdiction in equity 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 staff can acquire at great expense. This website won’t duplicate these surveys of modern charity caselaw, although some court cases will necessarily be included.

Many analysts assume that the legislation affecting charities is much simpler than the caselaw, that it consists mainly of an Elizabethan statute of 1601 which kickstarted the series of court decisions, plus subsequent acts that merely amplified or supplemented the story. The ensuing caselaw, they think, was really where the charity action happened. That turns out to be not so, and I hope this website will serve to show that the history of charity law has been heavily dominated by legislation and the caselaw is, in essence, derived from the legislation. The documents here will show that:

  • a) key charitable concepts originated in mediaeval times, including religion, as well as poverty relief and education by church institutions; money donations by the wealthy through “uses” (trusts); limits on tax-avoiding donations of land under “mortmain” legislation; and taxation legislation that granted exemptions to certain charities;
  • b) the church’s predominant role in charity was heavily reduced in the Reformation and replaced by legislation that increased the ability of the wealthy to found and support poverty relief and educational institutions by will; converted what had been monastic poverty-relief institutions to secular control; and greatly extended the scope of charity (in 1601) to include public works and programs so that donations to such would reduce the local tax burden;
  • c) the established church’s monopoly over religion was diluted in stages by a series of toleration acts to include other denominations and religions and their charities;
  • d) legislation in the form of a series of royal proclamations to encourage and enforce morality led to voluntary associations to induce social and moral reforms including, eventually, seeking to abolish slavery, child labour and cruelty to animals;
  • e) legislation established the medical hospitals of the voluntary hospital movement resulting in modern health care systems;
  • f) royal charters and other legislation included libraries, scientific research organizations, parks and playgrounds within the scope of charity; and
  • g) the advent of income tax legislation not only extended the tax exemption for all these charities but also reduced income tax for their donors.

For those who want to explore and find their own examples of the roots of charity law, the following reference works are valuable research aids. Enthusiasts will find all sorts of old charity stuff using these tools: