Morice v Bishop of Durham
1805 English trusts law case
Morice v Bishop of Durham [1805] EWHC Ch J80 is an English trusts law case, concerning the policy of the beneficiary principle.
Facts
General Mordaunt Cracherode (died 20 June 1773, or in 1768 by some accounts) was appointed Lieutenant Governor of Fort St. Philip, Menorca, in 1753 and as a lieutenant-colonel was commanding officer of the marines during George Anson's voyage round the world.
His son, Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode, was an important benefactor to the British Museum. Despite leaving them his large collections of books, prints and other artworks, his home-made will left his sister Ann his land and residual fortune; she was then 79, and without children or close relations. Clayton's friend, Shute Barrington, Bishop of Durham descended upon her, and after exercising what many later felt was undue influence, persuaded her to make a new will, in which he was named sole executor, with wide power over the disposition of the funds. After bequests, some £30,000 was left for the executor to spend on "such objects of benevolence and liberality as the trustee in his own discretion shall most approve of" – perhaps equating to £2.1 million in modern terms. After Ann died in 1802 the will led to the case being litigated when her cousins Anne and William Morice sued to overturn the will. William had already been bequeathed £16,000 in the will.
The key legal point was that "The testator purported to make a trust for such objects of benevolence and liberality as the trustee in his own discretion shall most approve of."
Judgment
Court of Chancery
Sir William Grant held that the will could not amount to a charity, and so the money had to return to the next of kin.
“Morice v Bishop of Durham” enters the record as 1805 English trusts law case. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Morice, Bishop and Durham can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Morice v Bishop of Durham” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Morice, Bishop and Durham provides the most credible route into that argument.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 14, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q6912172. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1805, 1773, 1768 and 1753.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Morice v Bishop of Durham” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.