Reference
FR13/5/5/1
Title
Charity Documents
Date free text
26 Feb 1908
Production date
From: 1786 To: 1908
Scope and Content
Letter from Edward Marsh of Luton, solicitor to E. Josephine Glaisyer of Leighton Buzzard enclosing FR/13/5/5/2:
“It forms a stiff bit of composition, revealing the intentions of the founder of the Trust as much by what it does not say as by any direct statement that it does make”.
“I gather from it that Hannah Grant designed the income of the Trust to be applied to the upkeep of the Tenements, Meeting House and Burial Ground as far as it would go; that she did not contemplate or desire the possibility of any accumulation of surplus income, and consequently that she left no specific directions as to the application of such surplus, whether towards the relief of Poor Friends, the Education of Children, the Apprenticeship of young people, or anything else”.
“I question whether the lawyer who drafted the Trust Deed possessed any adequate understanding of the mutual relationship but diverse functions of Leighton Particular Meeting and Leighton Monthly Meeting in 1844. He seems to have been impressed by the fact that all the local Friends known to him were members of both bodies, and to have decided in his own mind that it was useless to make a distinction where there was no difference. Up to the last word on the thirteenth line of my typewritten extract, the reader expects that Leighton Particular Meeting is going to be invested with large powers. But then we find the word “Monthly” inserted, just as if the Particular Meeting had no Clerk or Minute-book of its own”.
“When the Trust was renewed at the end of 1880, the new Deed was engrossed upon the back of the parchment of 1844 and the terms of the Trust were not varied in any way, notwithstanding the merging of Leighton Monthly Meeting within the much greater area of Luton & Leighton M. M. at the end of 1865”.
“If we live to see the next renewal of the Trust it would be as well to make it clear that the management of the Trust Property is vested in Leighton Particular Meeting, while the monthly meeting appoints new Trustees and would sell, mortgage, assign etc. the property if it should become necessary at any time to do so”.
“I wonder whether the archives of the Dawson family can show when the three Tenements were re-built, or who found the money for such rebuilding. I should guess it would be about 1850, when white bricks first came into fashion. Possibly it may have been a benefaction by John Dollin Bassett, who would seem to have had a liking for that sort of building material, which was used for “The Cedars”, the other houses in Church Square between “The Cedars” and the churchyard, and perhaps the Temperance Hall also. The three tenements mentioned in the Trust Deed of 1844 were those that John Grant had bought in 1786 & which were still in being”.
Level of description
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