Charter of Privileges

Examples of Charter of Privileges in the following topics:

• Quaker Liberty

  • The Quaker colony of Pennsylvania emphasized freedom of religion through its Charter of Privileges.
  • The Charter of Privileges extended religious freedom to all monotheists, and government was initially open to all Christians.
  • The first hospital in the British American colonies, Pennsylvania Hospital, was founded in 1751, and The Academy and College of Philadelphia (which later became the University of Pennsylvania) was founded in 1749.
  • The Charter of Privileges also mandated fair dealings with Native Americans.
  • George Fox was the founder of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers

• The Holy Experiment

  • Penn sought to create a liberal frame of government and attract all sorts of people, including many Quakers.
  • Succeeding Frames of Government, also known as the Charter of Privileges, were produced in 1683, 1696, and 1701.
  • The fourth Frame (Charter of Privileges) remained in effect until the American Revolution.
  • The Charter of Privileges extended religious freedom to all monotheists.
  • The Charter of Privileges mandated fair dealings with Native Americans.

• Pennsylvania and Delaware

  • In 1681, William Penn founded the Province of Pennsylvania, also known as Pennsylvania Colony, in British America by royal charter.
  • Penn received the charter for Pennsylvania from Charles II and brought over Quaker dissidents from England, Wales, the Netherlands, and France.
  • The Charter of Privileges mandated fair dealings with American Indians.
  • Their speech reflected this belief in that they addressed all others as equals, using “thee” and “thou” rather than terms like “your lordship” or “my lady” that were customary for privileged individuals of the hereditary elite.
  • William Penn and his fellow Quakers imprinted their religious values on the early Pennsylvanian government; the Charter of Privileges extended religious freedom to all monotheists, and the government was initially open to all Christians.

• The Second Bank of the United States

  • The Second Bank of the United States was chartered in 1816, five years after the First Bank of the United States lost its own charter.
  • The predominant reason that the Second Bank of the United States was chartered was because the United States had experienced severe inflation and was having difficulty financing military operations during the War of 1812.
  • Apart from a general hostility toward the banking system and a belief that specie ("hard" money of gold or silver) was the only true money, Jackson's reasons for opposing the renewal of the charter revolved around his belief that bestowing special privileges (such as government sponsorship) on banks was the cause of inflation and other perceived evils.
  • The Whigs and anti-Jackson National Republicans hoped they would gain enough seats in Congress during the election of 1836 to override a second Jackson veto, thereby extending the Bank's charter.
  • In 1836, the Bank's charter was allowed to expire.

• The Rights of Englishmen

  • "The rights of Englishmen" is a concept used to describe a tradition of unwritten constitutional rights and liberties, originating in Britain, from which many Anglo-American declarations of rights have drawn inspiration.
  • The Magna Carta, sealed in 1215 by King John after coercion from an assembly of his barons, is an English charter that limited the power of the king by guaranteeing certain rights, liberties, and privileges to the English aristocracy .
  • It is important to note, however, that the Magna Carta, as it was written in 1215, was a charter that applied only to the king and nobles, and did not explicitly protect the rights of commoners.
  • Furthermore, the Glorious Revolution reinforced the meaning of Magna Carta with the Lockean notion that this charter was an early form of a social contract between a king and his people.
  • Essentially, Lockean conceptions of political rights included the right of man to determine the political structure that would oversee the protection of his natural rights.

• Maryland

  • Charles I of England granted the charter for Maryland to create a colony north of the Potomac to rival New Netherland's claims to the Delaware River valley.
  • The original charter granted the Calverts an imprecisely defined territory north of Virginia and south of the 40th parallel, comprising perhaps as much as 12 million acres.
  • Maryland's foundational charter created a state ruled by Lord Baltimore, who directly owned all of the land granted in the charter.
  • The charter created an aristocracy of lords of the manor who bought land from Baltimore and held greater legal and social privileges than the common settlers.
  • The need for cheap labor to help with the growth of tobacco led to a rapid expansion of indentured servitude and, later, forcible immigration and enslavement of Africans.

• The Bank War and Economic Boom

  • Anti-BUS Jacksonian Democrats opposed the national bank's reauthorization on the grounds that the institution conferred economic privileges on financial elites, violating republican principles of social equality.
  • With the Bank charter due to expire in 1836, the president of the Bank, Nicholas Biddle, in alliance with the National Republicans under Senators Henry Clay (KY) and Daniel Webster (MA), decided to make rechartering a referendum on the legitimacy of the institution in the general election of 1832.
  • Instead of allowing the Bank to go out of existence, Biddle arranged its conversion to a private corporation in Pennsylvania just weeks before its federal charter expired in March 1836.
  • This episode of the Bank's existence ended in 1841 with liquidation of the institution.
  • Analyze the significance of the Bank war in the development of 19th-century America

• The Rise of the Assemblies

  • Prior to 1776 there were three forms of colonial government: provincial, proprietary, and charter.
  • The charter colonies included Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.
  • The Massachusetts charter was revoked in 1684 and replaced by a provincial charter in 1691.
  • Charter governments were political corporations created by letters patent which gave the grantees control of the land and the powers of legislative government.
  • However, it is important to note that these assemblies were mostly representative of the privileged and mercantile classes.

• Bankers and Lawyers

  • The Second Bank of the United States, chartered in 1816, played a major role in the controversies of this period.
  • Anti-federalists viewed the bank's tight control over the nation's currency as a monopoly, and argued that the powers and privileges possessed by the Second Bank were unconstitutional.
  • Its role as the sole depository of the federal government's revenues also made it a political target of banks chartered by the individual states.
  • President Andrew Jackson strongly opposed the renewal of the Second Bank's charter, which was scheduled for 1836, and built a successful platform for the election of 1832 around this issue.
  • The bank shouldered the majority of the blame for this crisis and subsequently lost its charter in 1836.

• English Administration of the Colonies

  • Britain's 13 North American colonies reflected different structures of government: provincial, proprietary, and charter.
  • By 1776, Britain had evolved three different forms of government for its North American colonies: provincial, proprietary, and charter.
  • In a charter colony, Britain granted a charter to the colonial government establishing the rules under which the colony was to be governed.
  • Charter governments were political corporations created by letters patent, giving the grantees control of the land and the powers of legislative government.
  • The charters of Rhode Island and Connecticut granted the colonists significantly more political liberty than other colonies.