Charters of the East India Company with related documents: the “parchment records”

Legal and other formal documents relating mainly to the rights and privileges of the East India Company.

The documents listed relate mainly to the East India Company (1600-1858). Many are records of key evidential value, being proof of the rights and privileges accorded to the Company by the monarch or by his or her ministers. The following gives the background to some of the more important documents.

On 30th December 1600, Elizabeth I granted a charter to “The Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies”. This corporate body received exclusive rights for fifteen years to trade to the “Indies”, an area that was defined as extending from the Cape of Good Hope to the Straits of Magellan. A contemporary transcript of the charter survives (IOR/A/1/2); the document itself is now lost, possibly surrendered in 1609 when James I renewed the charter, making it perpetual (IOR/A/1/5).

From 1609 to 1657, the Company received several more charters from the monarchs but none that altered the fundamental constitution of the corporate body. Most were grants of permission to ship gold and silver bullion out of the country. These were the grants on which the Company’s trade depended. The aim was to acquire spices but as English goods were not in demand in the Spice Islands, the Company used bullion to buy cottons and silks in Persia and India. These goods were then shipped to the Spice Islands where they were traded for the spices needed for the home market. IOR/A/1/10 to IOR/A/1/19 are grants to allow the shipment of bullion. IOR/A/1/3 and IOR/A/1/4 are licenses to sell ungarbled spices (spices that had not been cleaned). The licenses were issued because the large quantities of spice that the Company sold abroad made the constraint that prevailed at the time impractical.

The first charters had granted the Company power to govern the activities of its overseas servants but these powers proved inadequate to maintain discipline on board ship. As a result, the Company procured for each voyage’s commander a commission that gave him the authority to punish serious offences such as murder or mutiny; IOR/A/1/6 is an example of an early commission. In 1615 the Company itself was given the authority to grant these commissions. The increase in the number of overseas servants and the difficulty of controlling their behaviour led James I in 1623 to authorise the Company to issue similar commissions to the chief officers in its trading posts (IOR/A/1/8).

In 1637 Charles I granted the Courten Association a charter to trade to the east independently of the Company.

In 1652 England went to war with the Dutch. Since the beginning of the century, Dutch trading activities in the Spice Islands had severely restricted English trade in the region. The lowest point was reached in 1623 when the Dutch massacred the English factors at Amboyna. Peace between the two countries was established by the Treaty of Westminster (1654) under which the Dutch paid £85,000 to compensate for the massacre and for their interference with English trade. By this time, however, the division of the Company’s capital was no longer clear. After 1612, subscriptions had ceased to be raised for individual voyages and were instead raised for periods (often overlapping periods) of several years. Unsure how to divide the £85,000, the Company deposited the money with Sir Thomas Vyner and Alderman Riccard who acted as trustees for all beneficiaries. Following a request by the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, to borrow the money, the Court of Directors lent him £50,000; IOR/A/1/20 is Cromwell’s agreement to repay the sum within eighteen months.

In 1657 the Company obtained a charter from the Lord Protector by which the Courten Association and other temporary ventures were united with the Company, and the Company’s different stocks were drawn into one joint stock. No copies of the charter are known to survive.

Under the first charter granted by Charles II in 1661, the Company’s powers were significantly extended (IOR/A/1/22). The Company was authorised to govern its own settlements, to raise armed forces to protect its trade, to coin money and to arrest and repatriate interlopers (unauthorised traders). It was given the right to occupy St Helena and the island was formally granted to the Company in 1668 (IOR/A/1/30). Bombay, received by the Crown in 1661 as a dowry portion on the King’s marriage to Catherine of Braganza, was granted in 1668 with powers of civil and military government on the island (IOR/A/1/26). In 1677 the Company was given the right to coin money at Bombay (IOR/A/1/34).

The marked increase in privileges can partly be accounted for by the Company’s readiness to help the monarch financially. Between the years 1660 and 1684, a total of £324,150 in loans passed from the Company to the King. Charters IOR/A/1/33, 35, 36, 37 and 38 relate to the King’s repayment of these loans. The transactions were often not straightforward; information about the form that individual loans took is to be found in the Court Minutes of the period.

The charter of James II in 1686 gave the Company the right to appoint maritime officers who in turn were entitled to raise naval forces; power was also granted to coin money in the currencies of Indian princes (IOR/A/1/40). The important right of establishing a municipal corporation at Madras was given the following year; the grant enabled the town’s representatives to administer civil law. The Court of Directors feared that officials at Madras might become too difficult to control if they were in receipt of a grant directly from the King; consequently, a charter that recited the King’s approval was granted in the Company’s name (IOR/A/1/41).

Meanwhile, merchants excluded by the Company’s monopoly from trading to the east were becoming increasingly dissatisfied. Several formed themselves into an association popularly known as the “new” company and in 1691 both companies presented their cases to Parliament. In an effort to reach a compromise, Parliament resolved to increase the capital of the “old” company but to limit the amount of stock that could be held by any individual member. Shortly afterwards the old company inadvertently failed to pay a tax that had been imposed on joint-stock companies and thereby forfeited its charter. A new charter confirming the former one was issued in 1693 (IOR/A/1/46) but it was stated to be revocable if the Company did not submit to further regulations that might be imposed on them within the year. Supplementary charters (IOR/A/1/48 and IOR/A/1/49) were duly issued. Under these, the Company’s capital was doubled but the amount of capital that could be held by an individual was limited to £10,000.

In the meantime, the monopoly conferred on the old company by the 1693 charter had been successfully challenged in Parliament. In theory, the eastern trade was from that time onwards open to all although the Company instructed its factors to take no notice of Parliament’s resolutions. In 1698 the first Act of Parliament for regulating the trade to the East Indies was passed. Effectively putting the monopoly up for auction, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Montagu, devised an arrangement for the government to borrow two million pounds. All those who offered money, whether individuals or corporations, were to be united into a corporation called the General Society and each member of the Society was to be permitted to trade to the East Indies (IOR/A/1/51). Commissioners were appointed to receive subscriptions (IOR/A/1/52), subscriptions were gathered (IOR/A/1/53 and IOR/A/1/54) and two charters were issued. The first (IOR/A/1/55) incorporated the General Society as a company and the second (IOR/A/1/56) incorporated most of the subscribers to the General Society as a joint-stock company, to be called The English Company, Trading to the East-Indies. The company was granted arms (IOR/A/1/58). The old company nevertheless held a stake of £315,000 in the English Company in the name of its treasurer, John Du Bois. As a corporate body within the General Society it was entitled to continue trading; it also obtained a private Act of Parliament by which it continued as a corporation until the government loan should be repaid.

The privileges obtained by the English Company were therefore of no real use to them and in 1702 a coalition between the companies was effected. A tripartite indenture was drawn up between the two companies and Queen Anne, by which a scheme was agreed for equalising the capital of the two companies and for combining their stocks (IOR/A/1/59 and IOR/A/1/60). It was decided that the companies would trade jointly, operating under a joint board of directors, and that the old company would wind itself up within seven years. In 1708 Lord Godolphin was given the task of settling the differences that remained between the companies (IOR/A/1/63) and in 1709 the old company surrendered its charter (IOR/A/1/67). The charter of the English Company continued but it now covered both companies and the name of the corporation was changed to “The United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies". As no new charter was issued, the legal and constitutional foundation of the United Company rested upon the original charter granted to the English Company (IOR/A/1/56).

From 1709 onwards, any fundamental changes to the Company’s powers and privileges were made by Act of Parliament. A few royal charters were issued in the eighteenth century that related to the Company’s powers in India. A charter of 1726 granted the right to set up or re-establish municipalities and Mayor’s Courts at Madras, Bombay and Calcutta (IOR/A/1/70). Madras fell to the French in 1746 and on its recapture in 1749 a new charter was issued to re-establish the town’s rights (IOR/A/1/78). After the fall and recapture of Calcutta in 1756 and 1757, charters were issued to compensate the Company in some measure for its losses (IOR/A/1/79, IOR/A/1/80 and IOR/A/1/81). IOR/A/1/81 additionally gave the Company power to dispose of any territories it might acquire from Indian princes or governors. Other royal charters in the collection relate to Crown appointments (IOR/A/1/96, IOR/A/1/97, IOR/A/1/98, IOR/A/1/114). A series of charters appointing members of the Board of Control was transferred to the Public Record Office in 1868.

Later documents include many proclamations of loyalty made by Indians to Queen Victoria, on the Crown’s assumption in 1858 of the government of India. Among the more recent documents might be noted an original Instrument of Abdication of Edward VIII (IOR/A/1/102). One of several, the document was given to the India Office because of the King’s position as Emperor of India.

Unrestricted

At some time before 1835 an earlier catalogue had been made of the records. It is preserved in IOR/H/710. The manuscript of Sainsbury's catalogue is in IOR/L/E/2/53, no. 531. In this he was assisted by William Foster, who was to succeed hi as Superintendent. Papers in Foster's handwriting in IOR/H/710 include a manuscript of the catalogue and notes on the former locations of each document. See William Grigg, Relics of the Honourable East India Company (London, 1909), pp. 3-4 describes the legal context of these documents. See also IOR/L/R/7/300 for correspondence relating to transfer of Board of Control papers from the National Archives.

When in 1875 Dr George Birdwood was appointed Curator of the Indian Museum, he was given a box of documents for the museum’s collection. The box had been discovered by Sir John Kaye, Secretary to the Political Department, while clearing out his office on retirement; in it were forty parchments. Recognising them as core records of the East India Company, Birdwood arranged for their cataloguing by Noel Sainsbury of the Public Record Office. Sainsbury’s work was well-known to the Company as he had catalogued many of its early records. Birdwood was keen to publicise the records’ discovery and presented a paper, “Some Documents recently discovered in the India Office”, to the Royal Society of Literature. Sainsbury’s catalogue appeared as an appendix to Birdwood’s Report on the Old Records of the India Office (London, 1878).

Between 1879 and 1890 several more core documents were transferred to the collection of “parchment records”, as they were known, from the India Office Library. Some were new discoveries, having been found in cases that had remained unpacked since the removal of all the records in 1860 from the Company’s headquarters in Leadenhall Street. Further related records were discovered in the Accountant General’s office.

From these sources the Superintendent of the Records, Frederick Danvers, prepared in 1890 a Catalogue of the Parchment Records. The catalogue appeared in the second reprint of Birdwood’s Report in 1891 and an expanded version incorporating later discoveries was printed in the List of General Records 1599-1879 Preserved in the Record Department of the India Office, London (London, 1902). In 1919 William Foster published A Guide to the India Office Records 1600-1858 in which he noted the discovery of four more documents.

Until 1995 the catalogue in the List of General Records remained the standard finding aid to the parchment records. As new documents were discovered or acquired, successive record-keepers made hand-written additions to the list. In 1990 the few records that related to property ownership were transferred to the Legal Adviser’s records (IOR/L/L/2). In 1995 the parchment records were re-arranged but in 2001 it was decided to restore the listing to Danvers’s original arrangement. The property records remain with the Legal Adviser’s records.