III - The Statutes of Charitable Uses: 39 Elizabeth I c. 6 and 43 Elizabeth I c. 4

Summary

The common law background

Though after the Reformation the objects of men's bounty are more secular, frequently the poor of a village or the scholars of the local grammar school, the nature of the petitioners' complaints does not change. The parson and church-war dens of St Mary Maudlin in Milke Street, London, complain to Lord Keeper Sir Nicholas Bacon that Thomas Altham and William Gray have omitted to

distribute, yeld and deliver unto the poore sicke and nedye paryshy oners of the said poore paryshes and in and amongste the poore prysoners in Newgate … eight shillings, … to be bestowed in good newe and sweete breade.

The churchwardens of Whitchurch assert that their vicar had failed to maintain their parish church from the revenues of certain lands which had been conveyed to him for such a purpose; he had cut off the seal of the conveyance and the ‘same did embeasell’, and had expelled them from the land, ‘not suffering them to enjoy the profits thereof’. Consequently ‘your said Orators cannot have anie remedye by the order of the common lawes of this realme and so are like to be remedyless for recovery of the said land to their grete hinderaunce and to the utter subvercion of such charitable dedes and workes wich were usually done with the profittes thereof.’