Henry Smith (moneylender)

Henry "Dog" Smith (May 1549-1628) was an English Puritan and philanthropist.

Smith was born in Wandsworth, Surrey, in May 1549, to Walter Smith and his wife, whose maiden name was Wolphe. The family had its origins in Gloucestershire. Henry Smith settled in London where he joined the Worshipful Company of Salters. By the late 1590s he had become a money-lender, and by 1597 was living in St Dunstan-in-the-East. He is known to have leant significant sums to Thomas Waller, a member of parliament in Kent, and to Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex. Through he business he acquired significant property holdings including in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Middlesex, and Kent. His most significant property lay in Sussex, including the major of Eastbrook, Southwick, which Smith purchased in 1595 from Lord Charles Howard. He later added the estate of Warbleton surrendered to him by a debtor. Smith provided finance to Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset, purchasing the Knole estate in Kent which he leased back to the earl for £100 per annum. Smith acted as a witness at the marriage of the earl's son Edward Sackville to Mary Curzon.

Smith was elected an alderman of the ward of Farringdon Without in February 1609 but served only until May. In 1611 Smith purchased a house in Silver Street, in the parish of St Olave's, where he remained until his death. Smith was married but had no children. His nickname was attributed to a popular legend that had him spend time as a beggar with an animal that followed him around.

In October 1620 Smith established a number of trusts to distribute his wealth to charities after his death. Smith's business was jeopardised by the unexpected death of the 3rd Earl of Dorset in 1624, who owed £9,000. He made grants of £1,000 each to the towns of Kingston, Croydon, Dorking, Farnham and Guildford during his lifetime. 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 his alderman;s robes.

Left £200 to Mary Curzon and her children in his will. He also left £1,000 to Reigate and Richmond (the latter never fully realised as it relied on a debt owed to Smith) and £500 to Wandsworth. He urged to towns to follow the example of Dorchester which had set up institutions to educate the children of the poor. He left £10,000 to purchase impropriations of tithes to maintain preachers. This again depended on moneys from debtors which was not fully recovered, £300 was found for the benefit of clergymen in Dorchester. Smith also left £2,000 to purchase property, the rent of which was to be split half to benefit poor members of his family and half to support victims of the Barbary slave trade. His trustees used this bequest to purchase property in South Kensington and Chelsea that originally brought in £130 per year. This became the most significant of his trustees holdings after it became the site of housing developments in the 19th century. Other bequests went for the benefit of the eldery and disabled poor, from which Smith excluded people judged to be "excessive drinking, whoremongers, common swearers, pilferers, or otherwise notoriously scandalous" as well as vagrants and those not resident in a parish for at least five years. The donations were to be in the form of clothing marked with Smith's name or bread and fish provided at the parish church on the Sabbath. By 1641 teh trustees had accumulated property that brought £1,619 in rent per annum that was divided between 205 parishes. Around half of this was from estates that had been owned by Smith and the rest bough tby teh trustees. The recipients included almost every parish in Surrey plus others across 21 counties. Pershore in Worcestorshire received the most, £50 per year, with half receiving less than £5 and only 10% more than £10. Some parishes were chosen by the trustees because of their local interests. Many were puritans such as the Earl of Essex and the MP William Rolfe, but Richard Lumley, 1st Viscount Lumley was a Catholic and Sir Richard Gurney, 1st Baronet belonged to the established church.

Antiquarian Nathanael Salmon said that the parish omitted in Surrey was MItcham, where Salmon said Smith had been flogged for vagrancy. In other accounts he had been flogged in Leatherhead and left the parish a whip and been refused alms and cursed by the women of Ashstead where he left he praish a scold's bridle. Smith in fact left money to each of these parishes.

Each parish allocated SMith's funds as they saw fit. His ambitions for education seem to have been largely ignored. Kingston used its funds to establish aclothing charity in the 1620s. By 1869 the charity commissioners decried the expenditure of Smith's funds without discrimination for those that deserved it. 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.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11425886/An-overcoat-for-a-lonely-old-man.html