College finances were inextricably bound up with, and dictated by, the Court of Chancery for most of the nineteenth century. Downing's charter directed that 'out of the resources.. there shall be in the first place set apart as much as shall be necessary to be applied to creating proper buildings.' Chancery controlled the management of the Building Fund [and later the Liquidation Fund]. In 1827 the Governing Body expressed a desire to be freed from the financial tutelage of the Court and in 1851 it complained that the Court still 'exercised a direct and permanent superintendence over the College property'. In 1856 however the Cambridge University Act required the Governing Bodies of all colleges to submit amended statutes, and this gave Downing the opportunity to rid itself 'of the blight imposed by the compulsion to pay a substantial proportion of its scanty revenues into a building fund'. Eventually in 1894 the Building Fund was wound up. It stood then at £13,121.