Henry Smith (moneylender)

The trust established by his endowment survives as the Henry Smith Charity, providing grants of tens of millions of pounds annually.

Smith is known to have lent significant sums to Thomas Waller, a member of parliament in Kent, and to Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex.

His most significant property lay in Sussex, including the manor of Eastbrook, Southwick, which Smith purchased in 1595 from Lord Charles Howard.

Smith acted as a witness at the 1606 marriage of the earl's younger brother Edward Sackville to Mary Curzon.

Smith died on 3 January 1628 in his house in Silver Street and was buried in the chancel of All Saints Church, Wandsworth, on 7 February; a monument there shows him in the robes of an alderman.

He urged the towns to follow the example of Dorchester which had set up institutions to provide work and education for the children of the poor.

[1] In his will Smith left £200 to Mary Curzon and her children and made provisions for the support of the descendants of his sister, Joane.

[3][2] Further contributions of £1,000 were made to the towns of Reigate and Richmond (the latter never fully realised as it relied on a debt owed to Smith) and £500 to Wandsworth.

He also left £10,000 to purchase impropriations of tithes "for the releife and maintenance of godlie preachers and the better furtherance of knowledg and Religion" [sic].

Other bequests went for the benefit of the elderly and disabled poor, from which Smith excluded people judged to be "excessive drink[ers], whoremongers, common swearers, pilferers, or otherwise notoriously scandalous" as well as vagrants and those not resident in a parish for at least five years.

[2] The trust continues in its modern form as the Henry Smith Charity and, under a wider remit, by 2010 gave more than £25 million in grants for social and medical causes per year.