Erasmus Smith

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Erasmus Smith, attributed to the circle of John Michael Wright

Erasmus Smith (baptised 1611 – died 1691) was an English merchant, landowner and philanthropist in the field of education who lived during a period of political and religious turbulence.

Smith's family owned manors in Leicestershire and held Protestant beliefs. He become a merchant, a supplier of foodstuffs to the armies of the Puritan Oliver Cromwell - especially during Cromwell's suppression of rebellion in Ireland — and an alderman of the City of London. He was a beneficiary of legislation designed to provide finance for those military campaigns of the 1640s and 1650s, from which he gained extensive landholdings in Ireland both as a return for monies given in support and by speculation in the land options promised to others who had given such support.

Subsequently, during the remainder of Cromwell's rule and then the succession of Charles II, Smith manoeuvred to protect his land gains and to further his general religious sympathies. He achieved this in part by creating an eponymous Trust whereby some of his Irish property was used for the purpose of financing the education of children and provided scholarships for the most promising of those to continue their studies at Trinity College, Dublin.

Background

Erasmus Smith was born in 1611 and baptised on 8 April of that year at Husbands Bosworth, Leicestershire. He was the second son of Roger Smith and his second wife, Anna (née Goodman). Henry "Silver-tongued" Smith, the Puritan preacher, was an uncle. The family had changed their name to Smith from Heriz (or Harris) when they inherited the manor of Edmondthorpe during the reign of Henry VII, and it was Erasmus's grandfather, also called Erasmus, who had bought the manor of Husbands Bosworth in 1565.[1][2]

By 1631 Roger Smith was an alderman of the City of London and in 1635 he was knighted. Erasmus followed his father to the City, served a seven-year apprenticeship with a poultry merchant, John Saunders, and was made a freeman of the Grocers' Company on 10 February 1635. In 1657, he too was elected an alderman,[3] but preferred to pay a fine of £420 in order to be released from the duties of office. In these early years he was also unwilling to have much involvement in the business of the Grocers' Company, although this changed later in life: the cause of his initial reluctance may have been his preference to concentrate on acquiring his wealth.[2] According to the records of the Aldermen of the City of London, Erasmus was Member of Parliament for Ardee in County Louth between 1665 and 1666.[3][4]

The tomb of Sir Roger Smith at the church of St Michael and All Angels, Edmondthorpe. The figures to either side are his two sons, and the two figures reclining with him are his two wives.[5]

Acquisition of lands in Ireland

In July 1642 Roger Smith subscribed £225 under the terms of the Adventurers' Act of 1641, whereby money loaned to the government of Charles I for the purpose of suppressing the Irish rebellion was secured by lands confiscated in that country. The lands had been confiscated in law but it would require the overthrow of the rebels in order to crystallise those property assets. The subsequent Doubling Ordinance of 1643 allowed those who had subscribed to receive twice the amount of land if they added a further 25% of their initial financial aid: Roger Smith accepted those terms, contributing a further £75 in July 1643 and then two more payments of £75 in August and in October of that year.[6][lower-alpha 1]

Erasmus Smith had become a "Turkey merchant".[lower-alpha 2] He was a Protestant and, like his father, by 1650 he was supplying foodstuffs[lower-alpha 3] to Oliver Cromwell's armies in the civil wars of that time. This applied in particular to military activities in Ireland, where the rebellion of 1641 was believed by him and others to have resulted in part from a failure of education in that country.[2][7][8]

W. J. R. Wallace, in his history of Smith and the eponymous Trust, notes that the first record of Erasmus being in Ireland is from 1648 and that <templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />

Erasmus was clearly a businessman first and foremost; any attempt to put him into a political stereotype as a Roundhead and then accuse him of political double-dealing seems inaccurate.[10]

By the time that the rebellion was suppressed in 1653, and just prior to the first assignments of land under the terms of the Settlement of Ireland Act, 1652, Roger had registered the transfer of his investment to Erasmus.[2][6] His son had speculated by buying out the interests of other subscribers, who had tired of the delay in seeing a reward from their investment; and he was also entitled to further land grants in payment for his supplies to the army. What began as a grant of 666 acres (270 ha) eventually became — by the 1680s, after various wranglings and adjustments — over 46,000 acres (19,000 ha) situated in nine counties,[9] and Erasmus had an estimated worth of £120,000.[2][7][8][lower-alpha 4]

Philanthropy in Ireland

Smith had no desire to live in Ireland. In 1655 – the year that his father died – Smith proposed that some of the profits from his Irish lands should be used to support five Protestant schools for boys. A Trust was established for this purpose in 1657, in relation to which Smith and the Grocers' Company had various powers of oversight and for which eighteen trustees were appointed. The Trust initially encompassed 3,381 acres (1,368 ha) of his land. In keeping with his religious views, the schools were to teach their pupils "fear of God and good literature and to speak the English tongue.", and both prayers and catechism (in the style of the Presbyterian Assembly of Divines) were compulsory. Those pupils who showed particular promise were to have the opportunity of taking up scholarships at Trinity College, Dublin.[2][13]

His plans for the Trust were, however, overtaken by events. Cromwell died in 1658 and Smith's arrangements would not be entirely acceptable to the new regime.[14][lower-alpha 5] The Restoration period, which began around 1660 and saw Charles II become king, was not sympathetic to the Puritan beliefs of the Cromwellian Interregnum. Nonetheless, Smith's venture was able to survive the political upheaval and change in moral tone, albeit in modified form. That it did so was largely due to his wealth and connections, but also because the educational purpose for which his lands were being used was clearly beneficial and because he engaged in many lawsuits in order to protect both his own interests and those of family and friends. Referred to by his enemies as "pious Erasmus with the golden purse", Smith came to an arrangement in 1667 which reduced the number of schools to three and required that he give £100 annually to one of Charles's favourite institutes, Christ's Hospital.[2] The terms stipulated that although the schools were to be for the free education of children of Smith's tenants, they should each provide education on similar terms to a further 20 children from poor families, and that additional children could be schooled at a charge not to exceed two shillings.[15]

Erasmus Smith (1611–1691), by George White (ca. 1684–1732), after an earlier mezzotint picture.

Wallace argues that Smith <templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />

adapted to the different versions of Protestantism which were favoured by successive governments during the Commonwealth and the Restoration. Since these did not involve denial of any of the fundamentals of his faith, the changes were probably not too painful. He retained his sympathy for the Puritan divines of his youth to the end of his life, as witnessed by some of the bequests in his will."[16]

A Royal Charter was granted to the Trust in 1669. This stipulated the Trust's name to be The Governors of the Schools Founded by Erasmus Smith, Esq. and provided for a seal bearing the words "We are faithful to our Trust".[17] By 1675 the new board of 32 trustees had around £600 per annum available to them from the landholdings; by the first quarter of the eighteenth century this had risen to £1100. Free schools were established in Templemore, Galway and Drogheda. Funding was also given to another school, in Dublin: the recently founded King's Hospital School benefited from the trust's interest by being provided with twenty scholarships at Trinity College and also apprenticeships. The trust also funded a lectureship in Hebrew at the College,[2] and arrangements were in place to that any surplus funds generated were used for purposes such as clothing the poor children in the grammar schools and arranging apprenticeships.[18]

Philanthropy in England

During his lifetime, the Irish schools were not as successful as Smith had hoped they would be. He and others attributed this to the resentment shown by Catholics, and there was also resentment from those charged with sending Irish rent money to England's Christ's Hospital.[2]

The arrangement by which an annual grant was given to Christ's Hospital fitted with Smith's own interests in that institution. The Hospital had for many years enjoyed close links with various Livery Companies and Smith had become a Governor there in 1658. The aftermath of the Great Fire of London in 1666, as a consequence of which the Hospital was destroyed, demonstrated his interest. He wrote that <templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />

Providence sometime after the fire directed me to view the Hospital which with grief I beheld in its ashes. The consideration of the many children that had their habitation there but then scattered abroad, made me resolve to encourage others with myself to raise the foundation.[19]

and he was a benefactor during the period of reconstruction. He became frustrated that, during a period when the Hospital was so clearly in need of financial assistance, the trustees of his Irish munificence were choosing to procrastinate in their remittances of the annual grant.[19] By the mid-1670s he had determined to use the powers granted to him under the terms of the Royal Charter in order to divert surplus funds from the Trust to the Hospital,[20] and by 1681 relations between Smith and the trustees were so strained that both the governments in London and in Dublin were involved in attempts to determine who had responsibility both for the administration and collection of income and for the distribution thereof. One such involved person was Sir John Temple, the Solicitor General for Ireland, who asserted that anomalies between the stipulations of 1667 and the Charter of 1669 showed that the revenue should stay in Ireland, and also that there was in fact no surplus available in any event because the Trust had not at that time met with all of its responsibilities in Ireland under the terms of the Charter.[21] Various parties then engaged in legal actions and in petitions to both James I and his successor from 1685, James II. With the added complication of James II being overthrown by William of Orange, the dispute remained unresolved at the time of Smith's death.[22]

Death and legacy

Smith had married Mary, the 20-year-old daughter of Hugh Hare, the 1st Baron Coleraine, in 1670 when he was 59. The couple had nine children, five of whom were baptised in Clerkenwell, where he had lived at St John's Court for many years.[2][14]

In 1683 he bought the manor of Hamerton, Huntingdonshire, in the parish church of which he was buried, next to his wife, upon his death some time between 25 August and 9 October 1691.[lower-alpha 6] He had also bought Weald Hall in 1685.[2][23][24]

Smith's six sons and three daughters generally died young. One, Hugh Smith, inherited Weald and Hamerton from his older siblings in 1732 and appointed his two daughters as co-heirs. One of those daughters, Lucy, married into the Stanley family. Her husband changed his surname to become James Smith-Stanley, Lord Strange, and the couple were the parents of Edward Smith-Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby.[24][25]

The Erasmus Smith Trust continues to operate today.[26]

Recognition

Four professorships at Trinity College are named after him:[7]

  • Erasmus Smith's Chair of Natural and Experimental Philosophy (established 1724)
  • Erasmus Smith's Chair of Hebrew (1724)
  • Erasmus Smith's Chair of Modern History (1762)
  • Erasmus Smith's Chair of Mathematics (1762)

References

Notes

  1. ↑ Another amendment caused the land grants to be made in Irish acres rather than statute acres, which boosted the area of land eventually obtained by 62%.[6] 1.000 Irish acre (1.620 acres).
  2. ↑ The phrase "Turkey merchant" is used by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.[2] There is some ambiguity regarding its meaning. Given his apprenticeship in the poultry business, it may refer to trade in the bird but according to Trinity College, Dublin it refers to trade with the country of that name.[7] Wallace is silent on the issue, referring to Smith simply as a "merchant".[6]
  3. ↑ The precise foodstuffs supplied is uncertain. For example, Champion refers to "cheese, oats and flour",[8] Wallace says wheat, rye and oatmeal,[6] and the 1897 edition of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography states oatmeal, wheat and cheese.[9]
  4. ↑ The varied location of the lands was in part a consequence of allocations being made by the drawing of lots; the final determination took some years because of various legal challenges, including from people who had been dispossessed.[11] By 1669 he had possession of over 37,000 acres (15,000 ha).[12]
  5. ↑ One particular issue was the composition of the board of trustees, which included many people whose religious sentiment was not in accord with the changed environment, especially with the restoration of the Church of Ireland as the Established Church in January 1661.[14]
  6. ↑ On 25 August 1691 Smith added a codicil to his Will of 6 May 1690. This very detailed document is discussed by Wallace at some length.[23]

Citations

  1. ↑ Wallace (2004), p. 13.
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 Barnard (2004).
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Beavan (1908).
  4. ↑ Wallace (2004), p. 13, 22–23.
  5. ↑ Wallace (2004), p. 16.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Wallace (2004), p. 15.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Trinity College, Dublin.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Champion (2002).
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 ODNB (1897), Smith, Erasmus.
  10. ↑ Wallace(2004), p. 17.
  11. ↑ Wallace (2004), pp. 17–19.
  12. ↑ Wallace (2004), p. 27.
  13. ↑ Wallace (2004), p. 19.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 Wallace (2004), p. 23.
  15. ↑ Ancestry Ireland.
  16. ↑ Wallace (2004), p. 11.
  17. ↑ Wallace (2004), p. 28.
  18. ↑ Wallace (2004), p. 29.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Wallace (2004), p. 30.
  20. ↑ Wallace (2004), p. 31.
  21. ↑ Wallace (2004), pp. 34–35.
  22. ↑ Wallace (2004), p. 37.
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Wallace (2004), p. 38.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Page, Proby & Inskip (1936), pp. 66–69.
  25. ↑ Wallace (2004), p. 39.
  26. ↑ High School, Dublin.
Bibliography
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Further reading

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External links

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