A case decided in the High Court in November, 1933, can be reckoned another and final stage in the gradual process of freeing bequests for the saying of masses from legal restrictions imposed on account of their purpose. In spite of the passing of the Catholic Relief Act of 1829, gifts made for a Catholic purpose have been strictly controlled by the law and it is only by several steps culminating in the case of In re Caus (Times Law Reports, 1933; Vol. 50, 80) that they are now almost entirely free of legal fetters. In the following account of the law on this topic an attempt is made to trace the various stages in its somewhat complicated develoment.

The law, thought for so long to have been settled by the ruling case of West v. Shuttleworth in 1835 (2 My. and K. 684), was based on the Chantries Act, 1547. Mass, and gifts for the purpose of having it said, were of course recognized by the common law as part of the religion of the country before the Reformation. The Chantries Act, however, contained a severe condemnation of the doctrines of purgatory and the mass, directing that property disposed of within five years before the passing of the Act, for the purpose of enabling mass to be said, should be forfeited to the Crown. But the Act did not prohibit such gifts for the future. The idea, nevertheless, that gifts in support of priests, and for having masses said for the soul of a deceased person, were made illegal by this enactment spread among lawyers.