or which is already provided for by Act of Parliament, it is obvious it requires the authority of Parliament in such cases to enable the trustees to depart from that which is their prescribed duty, according to the rule existing.” 24. The Berkhamstead School Case (1865) LR 1 Eq.102 concerned a school regulated inter alia by a statute of Edward VI. Page-Wood V-C approved a scheme for its further regulation which permitted the charging of fees for all pupils, notwithstanding that the statute provided that some boys should be educated entirely gratuitously. While the scheme so approved appears to have been contrary to the provisions of the founding statute the question of jurisdiction was not raised but the variation was justified because the original purposes of the statute had become impractical. 25. In Attorney-General v Governors of Christ’s Hospital [1896] 1 Ch. 879 the Attorney-General propounded a scheme whereby certain endowments, excepted from the operation of the Endowed Schools Act 1869, would be made over to another governing body in augmentation of the endowments held by them subject to the provisions of that Act. Chitty J refused to do so. He said (p.888): “I hold that it is beyond the jurisdiction of the Court to sanction the Attorney-General’s scheme in the face of the opposition of the existing governing body. Their title is founded on Royal Charter, and is established by Act of Parliament. To whatever lengths the Court may have gone, it has never assumed legislative authority: it has never by a stroke of the pen at one and the same time revoked a Royal Charter and repealed an Act of Parliament. It has never ousted from its rights of administering the charitable trusts of such a body as the present governors against their will, and that, too, in a case where no breach of trust is charged.” Later (p.889) he observed that to establish such a scheme as that submitted by the Attorney-General nothing less than an Act of Parliament would suffice. 26. In Re:Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners’ Royal Benevolent Society [1959] Ch.220 Danckwerts J approved a scheme conferring wider powers of investment than those authorised by the statute incorporating the charity. The arguments and his conclusion are evident from the following passage from his judgment (p.227): “It is said on behalf of persons interested in the charity that the court is empowered to make a scheme to authorize a wider range of investments in this case, because the matter is not really covered by the very limited power of investment contained in section 11 of the Act of 1850. On the other hand, it is said on behalf of the Attorney-General that that is not the right way to construe section 11 of the Act of 1850: that although in form it is a positive permission, it involves a negative prohibition and, therefore, to allow any wider power of investment of the trust funds would be to attempt to alter the statute by “a stroke of .. the pen” and the court has no power to do that. The cases to which I have been referred are far from clear, but I think the general principle which emerges is that the court cannot alter the said statute by a stroke of the pen and cannot therefore direct anything which is inconsistent with the terms of