ABSTRACT
The law relating to charities is a subject in itself, commanding its own distinct treatment in the practitioners’ texts.1 It does not itself conform neatly with the law on express trusts which we have already considered in Part 2. That the law of charities forms part of trusts law is an accident of history. Charities were originally overseen by the ecclesiastical courts and, as will emerge, retain many of the seeds of their religious heritage in the modern law. That part of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction was subsumed by the Courts of Chancery, in particular by ecclesiastical Lords Chancellor, and charities were consequently administered in a manner broadly similar to express trusts.
