Definition
A Commission of Charitable Uses was a writ issuing out of the Court of Chancery directing a bishop and other named commissioners to inquire into and correct misapplication of lands and funds that had been donated or dedicated to charitable purposes. The commission authorized the named individuals to investigate allegations of fraud, misemployment, or dispute concerning charitable gifts and to provide redress where the original charitable purpose had been frustrated or corrupted.
The commission derived its authority from the Statute of Charitable Uses, 43 Elizabeth I, c. 4 (1601), which was the foundational English legislation establishing a framework for the supervision and enforcement of charitable trusts. Where a gift of land or money had been made for charitable ends — relief of the poor, support of schools, repair of roads and bridges, maintenance of soldiers and mariners, and similar purposes — and that gift was being diverted, mismanaged, or disputed, interested parties could seek this commission to trigger formal investigation and remedy.
The commission was not a standing body but an ad hoc instrument, issued for a particular inquiry and dissolving upon its completion. It represented equity's reach into charitable administration at a time when no permanent public body existed to oversee charitable assets.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is essentially extinct in modern legal practice but appears with some regularity in English legal history sources, equity treatises, and early American chancery materials that drew on English precedent. Researchers encountering it should understand several things.
First, the term is inseparable from the Statute of 43 Elizabeth I, c. 4. Any source discussing the commission is, directly or indirectly, discussing that statute's enforcement mechanism. The statute itself was influential far beyond England: American courts and legislatures in the colonial and early republic periods frequently cited or incorporated its principles, and the cy-pres doctrine — the equitable power to redirect charitable gifts when their original purpose fails — traces a direct line through this statutory framework.
Second, the commission represents a historical answer to a problem that modern law addresses through entirely different institutions: state attorneys general offices (which now hold primary supervisory authority over charities in most U.S. jurisdictions), the IRS (which administers tax-exempt status), and standing courts of equity. Researchers working in comparative or historical contexts should note that the functional successor to the commission's investigative and remedial role has been absorbed into these modern institutions, not into any single equivalent proceeding.
Third, the Wharton citation embedded in Rapalje & Lawrence signals that the historical dictionaries are reporting a received English doctrine, not an independently analyzed American one. Researchers should treat this entry as a pointer to English equity sources rather than a guide to American practice.
Fourth, researchers in trust and estate history who encounter references to "commissioners of charitable uses" or "commissioners under the statute of Elizabeth" are looking at the same institution described here. The full phrase and the abbreviated one appear interchangeably in older sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence, drawing on Wharton, provides the core description: the commission issues from Chancery, is directed to the bishop and others, and operates where charitable lands are misemployed or fraudulently administered, with authority to inquire and redress. The statutory hook — 43 Eliz. c. 4 — is correctly identified.
What the historical dictionaries do not provide is context for what happened to this mechanism. The Charitable Trusts Act 1853 in England eventually replaced ad hoc commissions with the Charity Commission, a permanent supervisory body. American jurisdictions never imported the commission form wholesale; instead, equity courts exercised direct jurisdiction, and the attorney general's parens patriae role filled the supervisory gap. Historical dictionaries written before or contemporaneous with the 1853 reforms naturally have no occasion to note this transition, leaving the entry looking more operative than it actually was by the time most American practitioners would have consulted it.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Trusts, Estates & Probate Encyclopedia: Charitable Estate Planning — Charitable Remainder Trusts, Charitable Lead Trusts, and Donor-Advised Funds (estates_127) — for the modern charitable trust framework that descends from the legal tradition this commission enforced.
The Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia: Defenses to Negligence — Immunities — Charitable and Familial (torts_28) — for the charitable immunity doctrine, which shares the same statutory root in 43 Elizabeth I and is relevant to understanding how equity historically treated charitable institutions.