Erasmus Smith
Having acquired significant wealth through trade and land transactions, he became a philanthropist in the sphere of education, treading a path between idealism and self-interest during a period of political and religious turbulence.
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.
[3][4] Henry "Silver-tongued" Smith, the Puritan preacher, was an uncle of Erasmus, and his maternal grandfather, Thomas Goodman, was a wealthy London merchant.
[5] The contacts of Thomas Goodman enabled Erasmus to serve a seven-year apprenticeship in London with a poultry merchant, John Saunders, and he was made a freeman of the Grocers' Company on 10 February 1635.
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.
[6][7] In July 1642 Roger Smith subscribed £225 under the terms of the Adventurers' Act 1640, whereby money loaned to the government of Charles I for the purpose of suppressing the Irish rebellion was secured by lands to be confiscated in that country.
The subsequent Doubling Ordinance of 1643 allowed those who had subscribed to receive twice the amount of land if they added a further 25 per cent 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.
[12]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.
[4][8][e] Erasmus 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.
[4][5][15] There have been various suggestions since at least the 19th century that creating the trust may not have been an altruistic act but rather one intended to curry favour and counter any possible legal challenges to holdings over which he had a tenuous claim, such as those obtained in Connaught.
[5] Writing in 1824, Hely Dutton said in his Statistical Survey of County Galway that Well knowing that his titles and tenures were very precarious, and liable at a future period to be litigated, he very cunningly made a grant of lands for the founding and endowment of Protestant schools, and other charitable purposes, for which he [later, in 1669] obtained a Charter ... appointing the bench of bishops, the lord chancellor, the judges, the great law officers, all for the time being, governors and trustees; well knowing that if any flaw should ever appear in the patents, titles or tenures, under which he got the estates, the law officers would always protect and make the title good to his heirs.
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.
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.
He became frustrated that, during a time 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.
With the added complication of James II being overthrown by William of Orange, the dispute remained unresolved at the time of Smith's death.
