Life
1611-1691; London merchant and alderman, received 666 acres in Tipperary for an ‘adventure’ of £300; built schools for local children ‘in the fear of God and good literature, and to speak the English tongue’, 1655; initially Presbyterian, the schools were placed under Episcopalian supervision by Royal Charter of 1699; m. 20 year-old dg. of Hugh Hare, Baron Coleraine, in 1670; the Erasmus Smith Chair of Natural and Experimenal Philosophy was established at Trinity College, Dublin (TCD) in 1724.
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References
Roy Foster, Modern Ireland, (p.105.)
| Erasmus Smith (Wikipedia) |
| [...] Smith was a benefactor during the period of reconstruction. 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. By the mid-1670s he had determined to use the powers granted to him under the terms of the Royal Charter in order to divert surplus funds from the Trust to the hospital, and by 1681 relations between Smith and the trustees were so strained that both the governments in London and in Dublin were involved in attempts to determine who had responsibility both for the administration and collection of income and for the distribution thereof. One such involved person was Sir John Temple, the Solicitor-General for Ireland, who asserted that anomalies between the stipulations of 1667 and the Charter of 1669 showed that the revenue should stay in Ireland, and also that there was in fact no surplus available in any event because the Trust had not at that time met with all of its responsibilities in Ireland under the terms of the Charter. |
| See Wikipedia - detailing his history, investments, politics and succession in Ireland - online. |
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Notes
Erasmus Smith chair of Modern History, TCD, held by John Begnall Bury in 1882 [ODNB]; note also The Erasmian, school paper of High School, Dublin.
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