Knightsbridge Living
Henry Smith and his charity
Henry Smith was born in Wandsworth in 1548, when Elizabeth I was on the throne. It seems that Henry Smith was the grandson of Thomas Smith a wealthy landowner of Camden. Thomas Smith had two sons. Thomas, the elder son, became a Page of the Chamber to Henry VIII and accompanied the king on expeditions, so the family clearly had achieved some status in Tudor England. We do not know anything about the younger son, Henry’s father, even his name, except that he settled in Wandsworth.
Very little is known about Henry Smith’s life. He had a sister named Joane, who ultimately married a Mr Jackson and had children. There is a story that Henry was whipped for being a beggar as a young man. It seems unlikely.
At some point he moved to the City of London where he become a successful salt merchant. He rose to become an Alderman of the Ward of Farringdon Without. Each City ward had only two aldermen, and it was a very prestigious position. He lived in Farringdon for many years. In 1611 he took a house in Silver Street in the neighbouring ward of Cripplegate Within. The property remained in the ownership of the trustees of this Charity until German bombing during the Second World War removed it from the map, and the present Barbican development covers the land Silver Street once occupied.
Henry married, but his wife’s name is not known. She died several years before him and they had no children.
Henry became extremely wealthy. It is not known whether the source of his wealth was his business as a salter (which seems unlikely) or whether he had inherited money which he invested successfully. During his lifetime he acquired a number of properties and estates, including manors in Southwick and Eastbrook in Sussex, Longney in Gloucestershire, Knole in Kent, and the manor of Sevenoaks, and other properties in Hampshire, Lancashire, Staffordshire, Durham, and Worcestershire.
In 1620 Henry Smith was 72, he had no children to leave his fortune to, and he began to plan the distribution of his considerable wealth for various charitable purposes. Initially he set up a trust under which the income of his estates (apart from £500 a year for his own maintenance) would be used for worthy causes. But his trustees misappropriated some of the money and he had to go to court to have it repaid and new trustees appointed. He endowed another charitable trust in early 1626.
In September 1627 he made his will. He died, aged 79, on 3rd January 1628. He chose to be buried in the parish church of Wandsworth where he had been born. The funeral took place on 7th February 1628. There is a monument set in the wall of the church near the altar showing him as a bearded man kneeling in alderman’s robes and holding a skull in one hand. The panel below records gifts of £1,000 each to the towns of Kingston, Croydon, Guildford Farnham, Richmond and Rygate and £500 to Wandsworth, for the relief of the poor.
In his will he made two further charitable gifts. The first gift stipulated that £1,000 should be invested in buying land and the rental income of £60 a year applied “for the use of the poore captives being slaves under the Turkish pirate … and for and towardes the reliefe and ransome of the said captives and slaves..” We now know these pirates as the Barbary pirates, who infested the North African coast and were a substantial risk to English seamen trading in the Mediterranean.
The second gift also of £1,000 was also to be used to buy land producing rental income of £60 a year which was to be used “for the use and reliefe of the poorest of my kindred, such as are not able to worke for theire livinge.” His executors were not certain what he meant by that. So he added a memorandum explaining: “his meaning was thereby ye poorest of his sister’s children and their children successively or like in effecte.”
By 1772, the danger from pirates had long since passed. Since no claims had been made under that trust since 1723, a private Act of Parliament was passed which merged it with the family charity, which was still providing help to Smith’s descendants. The scope of the trust was later widened to benefit a much wider range of people than Smith’s descendants.
The trustees have usually been members of the aristocracy. The most eminent trustees lent their names to some of the new streets and terraces which were built on the estate over the course of the 19th century. Pelham Crescent, Pelham Place and Pelham Street (formerly Pelham Road) were one of the first developments. They were named after Henry Thomas Pelham, third Earl of Chichester, who was one of the trustees. Another trustee, the third Viscount, later Earl, Sydney gave his name to Sydney Place. Onslow Terrace was named after the second Earl of Onslow. So was Cranley Terrace - Viscount Cranley was one of the titles held by the Earl of Onslow. Egerton Terrace was renamed in 1896 to honour the Honourable Francis Egerton. Sumner Terrace ((now part of Sumner Place) was named after George and William Holme Sumner, and Evelyn Gardens was named after William John Evelyn. Egerton Gardens took its name from the Honourable Francis Egerton, son of the first Earl of Ellesmere.
In recent times, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chancellor have had the responsibility of selecting new trustees. There is a maximum of twenty four trustees and a minimum of fifteen.
