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he defeat the rights legally vested in the new body. The case is not varied by observing, that the charter of restitution is granted to the old corporation; for the same argument equally applies. Though the King may pardon, he cannot by that pardon, though in favour of the original owner, affect the right of others, or restore what he had parted with by an intervening grant.

After hearing counsel on this writ of error, the following questions were put to the Judges:

1st, Whether the matter of the plea, as the same stood admitted or found by the verdict, was sufficient to support the defendant's title to the office of Alderman in question? 2d, Whether the matter of the replications, as the same stood admitted or found by the verdict, was sufficient to avoid such title?

And the Lord Chief Baron having delivered their unanimous opinion in the affirmative, it was thereupon ordered and adjudged, that the judgment given in the Court of King's Bench should be reversed; and that judgment should be entered for the King. (MS. Jour. sub anno 1790. p. 334.)

In the year 1614, one William Jones, by his will, gave £5000 to the parish of Newland, for the poor, and the maintenance of a preacher there, to be paid to the Haberdashers Company, to be by them bestowed accordingly; and he also gave the Company £1000 as a gratuity for what they were to do.

The Company accordingly received this legacy and gratuity, and soon afterwards, in 1615, laid out about £600, part of the legacy, in erecting a house for a preacher, and also an hospital, wherein they placed sixteen poor people, and allowed them 2s. 6d. a week each, 2s. 6d. every quarter for firing, and three yards of cloth, at 6s. 8d. per yard, yearly, for gowns, and £66 13s. 4d. per ann. to the preacher; all which payments, together with a quit-rent of 11s. per ann. amounted only to £195 4s. 4d. a year; whereas the interest of £4400, the remainder of the legacy, at £8 per cent, the then current rate of interest, amounted to £352 per ann.; and which, for a period of seven years, when the money was first laid out in a purchase, exceeded the disbursements by £1097 9s. 8d.

In 1622, the Company laid out £4500, part of this money, in the purchase of lands in the county of Huntingdon, of the yearly value of £280; and in 1674 they sold this estate for £4620, and laid out the money in the purchase of lands in Surrey; but never appropriated any part of these new-purchased lands for the specific maintenance of this charity.

The Company having afterwards (but for what reason does not appear) reduced the weekly stipend of the poor to 2s. abridged them of the quarterly allowance for firing, furnished them with an inferior kind of cloth, and in other respects mismanaged the charity; an information was, in Hilary term 1697, exhibited against them in the Court of Chancery, to rectify these abuses and on the 20th of June 1699, the cause was heard before the Lord Chancellor Somers, who, after declaring that the Company had done very ill, in not appropriating separate lands for the charity, and in being angry with the poor, and withholding their payments, referred it to a Master, to see whether the £5000, or how much thereof, had been laid out, and how and when, and [371] what diminution there had been in the annual payments to the charity.

The Master having made his report, and thereby certified the several facts above