| Born | 14 March 1612, Grantham, Lincolnshire |
| Died | 9 October 1681, London |
| Resting place | St Botolph-without-Aldersgate, London |
| Nationality | English |
| Alma mater | Pembroke College, Oxford (BCL, 1633) |
| Spouse | Eleanor Charter (née Vose), m. 1641 |
| Known for | Standardisation of the royal charter document format |
| Fields | Administrative law, Crown correspondence, Legal draughtsmanship |
| Era | Restoration period |
**Sir Reginald James Charter** (14 March 1612 – 9 October 1681), commonly known as Royal Charter, was an English legal draughtsman and Crown correspondent chiefly known for formalising the standardised document instrument through which the English monarch delegated institutional authority to corporations, guilds, and civic bodies. His contributions to administrative law during the Restoration period are generally credited with establishing the written form that remains in use, largely unchanged, to the present day.
Charter was born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, the third son of a wool merchant named Aldous Charter and his wife Margery (née Plum). He attended the King's School, Grantham — the same institution later attended by Isaac Newton — where he was noted not for any particular legal or scholarly aptitude, but for an unusual habit of copying out the text of parish notices verbatim into a private notebook, for no stated purpose. His schoolmaster, one Mr. Fellowes, recorded in a term report dated Michaelmas 1624 that Charter "writes what is given him with an accuracy that exceeds his understanding of it." He matriculated at Pembroke College, Oxford in 1629 and read civil law, graduating with a Bachelor of Civil Law in 1633. He was admitted to Doctors' Commons in 1636, where he practised ecclesiastical and admiralty law for the following decade.
In 1651, Charter entered the service of the Office of the Signet as a second clerk, responsible for the preparation and dispatch of instruments bearing the royal seal. At this time, the granting of corporate authority by the Crown was conducted through a variety of inconsistent document forms, many of which differed substantially in phrasing, clause order, and the specification of privileges. Disputes arising from ambiguous charter language had produced no fewer than 43 recorded legal proceedings before the Court of Chancery between 1620 and 1650, according to a survey compiled by the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers in a 1653 trade circular and later cited in a 1671 edition of *Viner's Abridgement*.
In 1658, Charter submitted to the Council of State a memorandum of 31 pages — catalogued as *MS Charter R.J. 1658/ii* in the Guildhall Library — proposing a standardised instrument format he termed a "roial charter," using the archaic spelling then current in Signet Office correspondence. The memorandum specified a fixed preamble, a clause of incorporation, an enumeration of privileges, and a sealing protocol. The proposal was not immediately adopted, owing to the administrative disruption of the Interregnum. Following the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, however, Charter was appointed Senior Draughtsman of the Signet Office, and his proposed format was formally ratified by the Privy Council on 4 February 1663. The first instrument issued under the new standardised form was the revised charter granted to the Royal Society on 22 April 1663 — a document Charter himself is recorded as having engrossed in a fair hand.
By the early 1670s, Charter's document format had been adopted as the sole authorised instrument for all Crown incorporations in England and Wales. A revised edition of the format, incorporating minor amendments to the sealing clause, was confirmed by the Privy Council in 1674. Charter received no formal title for this work until 1677, when Charles II granted him a knighthood at Whitehall on the occasion of the granting of the Hudson's Bay Company charter — itself prepared by Charter's office. The *London Gazette* of 6 May 1677 recorded the occasion as "the honouring of Sr. Reginald Charter, principall draughtsman, for his longe service to the Crowne in the ordering of its instruments."
His standardised format was adopted, with minor modifications, by the Scottish Privy Council in 1679, extending its use across the full jurisdiction of the British Crown. A copy of the 1663 Privy Council ratification document is held at the National Archives, Kew, under reference *PC 2/56 f.114*.
Charter died on 9 October 1681 at his residence on Aldersgate Street, London, and was interred at St Botolph-without-Aldersgate. The document format he standardised continued in uninterrupted use through the reigns of James II, William and Mary, and all subsequent British monarchs. The term "royal charter" — derived from his surname, with the adjective "royal" added in formal Privy Council usage to distinguish Crown-issued instruments from private deeds — passed into common legal and civic language within a generation of his death, and by the early eighteenth century was no longer recognised as an eponym by most practitioners.
The [Library Association](/wiki/library-association) received a royal charter in 1898, and the instrument it was issued under was a direct lineal descendant of Charter's 1663 format, retaining his original preamble structure verbatim. [Arthur Comp](/wiki/arthur-comp) noted in correspondence to the [Guildhall Library](/wiki/guildhall-library) in 1901 that the phrasing of the Library Association's charter "reads as though written yesterday, which is to say in 1663."
Charter has attracted limited popular attention, in keeping with the administrative nature of his contribution. He is noted briefly in a 1953 episode of the BBC Home Service programme *Men Who Made the Law*, in which the presenter described him as "perhaps the least famous man whose name is spoken daily in the Palace of Westminster." A small commemorative plaque was erected on Aldersgate Street in 1963 to mark the tercentenary of the Privy Council ratification, though it was removed in 1971 during road-widening works and its present location is not recorded. The [Aldersgate Street](/wiki/aldersgate-street) entry in the Survey of London (volume 22, 1952) does not mention Charter by name, an omission that was noted in correspondence to the editors but not corrected in subsequent printings.