The Lady Hewley Trust, now a charity, began as a significant benefaction to support English Presbyterian, Congregationalist and Baptist ministers, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The trust was later at the centre of a 12-year legal suit in the nineteenth century, noted in Unitarian history, and turning on the current beliefs of ministers who were supported by its funds. While the legal judgement went against the Unitarians, the introduction of the Dissenters' Chapels Act (1844), which followed on the case, improved their position.