Catalogue description Home Office: Charters: Drafts and Related Papers

The documents in this series relate to petitions addressed to the Home Secretary, for royal charters of incorporation unless otherwise mentioned. The petitions came from societies, companies, boroughs, hospitals, charities and educational establishments.

The series appears to be the product of a nineteenth century sorting exercise, as does HO 80. Documents in both series bear coloured or graphite pencil dates (some erroneous) in a later hand than that of the documents. These series may have been formed as part of the general sorting of papers when the Home Office central registry system was set up in 1848.

The arrangement of papers within each case reflects the administrative process. Petitions sent to the Secretary of State were referred by him for the law officers' opinion. Successful applications were then taken to the Privy Council for formal approval by Order in Council, occasionally with royal sign manual. These documents each have a standard form.

Petitions give names of petitioners, and state the reasons for the benefits sought. Those of boroughs are often on parchment, some bearing seals. Petitioners often enclosed draft charters, couched in their preferred form of words. Petitions and draft charters were rarely dated by their senders; in these cases the date given in the class list is that of annotation by the Secretary of State on forwarding to the law officers.

English and Welsh petitions were sent to the Attorney General and Solicitor General, while Scottish petitions went to the Lord Advocate of Scotland. Their reports begin 'In obedience to the Commands … signified to us by the Right Honourable [Home Secretary] …'. They recite the petition in full, and end with a recommendation as to whether the charter should be granted. Reports are signed and dated, as are annotations made on the draft charter. Where the law officers recommended a petition be granted, as they did in the majority of cases in this class, they often drew up draft warrants for Orders in Council, giving their preferred text for the charter. Where they objected to a petition being granted, there is no draft warrant and usually no further papers, unless a new petition was made.

Orders in Council record the decision to grant a charter, and provide what is usually the final text for the charter. They sometimes give background information on the case, such as reasons for objections to the charter being over-ruled. In two cases the Orders bear the sovereign's sign manual.

In some cases there is correspondence, generally where there was objection to the petition. There are also some lists of borough officials among the papers for town charters, where elections were held while the charter was being processed, since the names were to be included in the charter.

Few cases contain all of these types of document: in nearly half of cases there is only one type. It is still possible to elicit a great deal of information, because of the way that successive papers repeat the details of earlier ones.

Earlier papers can be found in: HO 42

Later papers can be found in: HO 45