The following article is a presentation of precatory words and the creation of trusts in a Commonwealth Caribbean jurisdiction. Re Codrington, U.S.P.G. v. Attorney-General concerned a bequest in the will of Christopher Codrington, who was once Chief Governor of the Leeward Islands, and who died in 1710. His will was admitted to probate in Barbados in 1711. The will contained, inter alia, a bequest of his two plantations in Barbados to the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. This Society entered into possession of the Codrington Estates in 1712 and from that date applied the whole of the income from the estates towards the fulfilment of the testator's wishes as expressed in the bequest. From 1745 until 1775, and again from 1789 until 1830, a grammar school was maintained by the Society. From 1830 Codrington College was maintained by the Society as an institution of higher learning and students received instruction in theology and the classics. However, according to the Society, the income was now insufficient to maintain the College in its present form, and therefore it sought the direction of the Court. The main question which the Court was asked to determine was whether the terms of the will created binding trusts or not. The High Court of Barbados held that a trust was created. The United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel was incorporated in 1701 by letters-patent under the privy seal of King William III. Its objects are set out in the preamble of its charter and were clearly charitable. Now, "equity looks to the intent rather than the form" and, therefore, neither technical nor special words are necessary to create a trust. The paramount consideration of the court is to ascertain the testator's intention from the words used in the instrument. Precatory words, therefore, can create a trust, if the court is satisfied that the testator's clear intention in using these words was to create one. However, the modem attitude to precatory words in the courts of the United Kingdom is to construe them with circumspection. Of course, trusts can be imposed by any language which is clear enough to show an intention to impose them; and in a proper case, the court will hold that a trust is created if, on the true construction of the intention of the testator, a trust was intended. It was, therefore, interesting to see how the High Court of Barbados would construe the will. Sir William Douglas C.J. proposed three main principles. He said: "Firstly, the will must be construed in accordance with the law as it stood in 1702, when the will was made". This view is clearly right, for although the court is in fact ascertaining the intention of the testator from the words used in his will, the attitude of the courts towards precatory words which prevailed in the earlier cases until the turning point in Lambe v. Eames should prevail. The court should take the view which a court in 1702 would have taken. This view was that precatory words did create a trust