y HARVARD LAW REVIEW. VOL. VIII. MAY 25, 1894. NO. 2. ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE ORIGIN OF CY PR^S, THE remark of Lord C. J. W^ILMOT in the great case of Attorney- General V. Downing in 1767,^ that ** the Court thought one kind of charity would embalm the testator's memory as well as another," and his reference without apparent disapproval to the case of Da Costa V. Da Paz,^ then recently decided, but since so generally repudiated as an authority,^ seemed to approve the greatest lati- tude in the application of the doctrine of cy prh, at a time when more reasonable limits were beginning to prevail. As, however, appears from the context, it was rather an historical resume; and shortly states in a concise form the prevalent mediaeval notions out of which the doctrine of cy prh in the law of charities was devel- oped, — notions, as we shall see, striking with deepest root into the soil of mediaeval society from the earhest period. The statute of 43 Eliz. c. 4, which, while it did not originate,* codified the law of charitable trusts in its day, and became a sort of Magna Charta of that branch of the law, enumerated the following objects as the only ones which either directly or by analogy were good charitable uses, namely, gifts : — 1 Wilmot's Notes, i. 33; i Jarm. Wills, *243 n. 2 Amb. 228. • Jackson v. Phillips, 14 Allen, 539, 575 ; Minot v. Baker, 147 Mass. 348, 351.
- Stat. 2 Hen. V. c. i, provided for impotent poor, lazars, &c. ; 12 Rich. II. c. 7, and
I Hen. VII. c. 7, for scholars in universities ; i Edw. VI. a 14, for piers and jetties ; 2 & 3 Edw. VI. c. 5, for walls and bridges. 10
