MIN/2007/14
Minute: refusal of a bequest
- Kind:
- Minutes
- Date:
- November 2007
- Origin:
- Stewardship. One of five recorded refusals.
- Access:
- Open.
A gift of $180,000 declined because of what it asked for. The donor's letter is quoted and the refusal is explained.
MINUTE OF THE STEWARDSHIP MIN/2007/14
SUBJECT: BEQUEST OF THE LATE MR — , 180,000
1. The bequest is conditional. The will directs that the sum be used for a reading room at River House, that the room bear the testator's name, and that his papers be held there in perpetuity and not catalogued with the general archive.
2. RESOLVED to decline the bequest entire.
3. Reasons. The naming of a room by payment would make a room's name a price, which PRO/1980/04 clause 6 forbids in substance if not in words. The perpetual holding would commit a house of nineteen people to a duty in 2107. The separate cataloguing would create a class of records the archivist does not control.
4. It is recorded that River House needs a reading room, that it has needed one since 1991, and that the stewardship has just declined the money to build it. The house was consulted and concurred, unwillingly, and asked that its unwillingness be minuted. It is minuted.
5. The executors were informed in a letter which set out these reasons in full and thanked the family without qualification. A copy is at COR/2007/61.
6. River House still has no reading room.
Reconciled with the Common Record
Catalogued at the North House · reproduction permitted for study · redactions are not itemised