Lady Hewley’s Charity. The Attorney General against Wilson Esqre and others. Brief and Documents, Part I, delivered to James Bacon Esqre of Counsel for the Relators. Scotch Claims. [ca. 1850]. Approximately 310 manuscript leaves in several hands, large folio (16 x 13 inches). Sewn and intact, with a couple of vellum leaves separating sections, which are numbered in three sequences, apparently once in a binding, but the covers now missing.Lady Hewley’s charity remains active. Its disbursements were the cause of significant controversy in the nineteenth century, recently summarized in Richard Potts, Dame Sarah’s Legacy: A History of the Lady Hewley Trust (2005). The charity was begun in Yorkshire in the early eighteenth century by Lady Sarah Hewley to provide aid to poor Presbyterian, Congregationalist and Baptist ministers. The litigation summarized in the present manuscript volume seems to have originated in multiple claims by different interests, especially the Scotch Presbyterians, on the sums available to the Charity, which now, more than three hundred years after its founding, still owns significant assets and distributes some £300,000 per year. George Hadfield was M.P. from Sheffield, and a prominent historian and supporter of the charity. What appears to be his signature appears at various places in the manuscript. As voluminous as the present manuscript is, it is labelled “Part I,” so it seems likely there was once even more to it.

Disbound. Contents clean overall with some occasional light foxing or minor soiling. As-is.