The history of the College of William & Mary can be traced back to a 1693 royal charter establishing "a perpetual College of Divinity, Philosophy, Languages, and the good arts and sciences" in the English colony of Virginia. It fulfilled an early colonial vision dating back to 1618 to construct a university level program modeled after Cambridge and Oxford at Henricus.David J. Gyertson, “God's Work Stands: a Legacy Worth Remembering,” CBN (April 2007), accessed October 12, 2018, https://www1.cbn.com/churchandministry/gods-work-stands-a-legacy-worth-remembering. A plaque on the Wren Building, the college's first structure, ascribes the institution's origin to "the college proposed at Henrico." It was named for the reigning joint monarchs of England, William III and Mary II. The selection of the new college's location on high ground at the center ridge of the Virginia Peninsula at the tiny community of Middle Plantation is credited to its first President, Reverend Dr. James Blair, who was also the Commissary of the Bishop of London in Virginia. A few years later, the favorable location and resources of the new school helped Dr. Blair and a committee of 5 students influence the House of Burgesses and Governor Francis Nicholson to move the capital there from Jamestown. The following year, 1699, the town was renamed Williamsburg.
During the American Revolution about 75 years later, the college successfully made the transition from British support and a role in government and the established church under Bishop James Madison, and added professional programs including a School of Law under George Wythe. With buildings and finances both devastated by the American Civil War (1861–1865), through the perseverance of school presidents Benjamin Stoddert Ewell and Lyon Gardiner Tyler, funding from the U.S. Congress and the Commonwealth of Virginia eventually restored the infrastructure and facilitated expansion of the school's programs with a new emphasis on educating teachers for the state's new public school divisions.
In 1918, William & Mary became the first of Virginia's state-supported colleges and universities to admit women as well as men to its under graduate programs. Adjacent to the restored colonial capital area which became Colonial Williamsburg beginning in 1926, the school has long been involved in the programs and work there. A few blocks away from the campus in the Historic Area, where students continue to attend Bruton Parish Church, a tradition of over 300 years duration.
Pre-charter
The first permanent settlement in the colony of Virginia was established at Jamestown in 1607 as a business venture funded by the Virginia Company of London and to replenish the English treasury. The role of the Protestant Church of England and its relationship to the English monarchy had been established in the 1530s by King Henry VIII, when he broke with the Papacy in Rome. In the Acts of Supremacy, Henry abandoned Rome completely, asserted the independence of the Ecclesia Anglicana and appointed himself and his successors as the supreme rulers of the Church of England. This sovereign relationship was later established when the original colony became a crown colony in 1624. The primary leaders of the colony, from the Virginia Company of London, and the accompanying clergy believed they could spread Anglicanism to the Native Americans in the new colony. The spiritual beliefs of the Native Americans differed from the colonists and were incorrectly assumed by colonists as a lack of education and literacy, due to the indigenous Powhatan people who lived in the area, that they called "Tsenacommacah", writing systems of petroglyph, pictogram and petroform. The colonists assumed teaching English literacy would result in enlightenment in civil and religious practices, and bring them into the fold as English subjects.
In November 1618, the Virginia Company of London gave orders for university grounds to be laid at Henrico, 12 miles from the current city of Richmond, to include an Indian School branch, and endowed it with 10,000 acres of land. A school of higher education for both Native American young men and the sons of the colonists was one of the earliest goals of the leaders of the Virginia Colony. In May 1619, the treasurer of the Virginia Company, Sir Edwin Sandys, reported that funds had been collected toward the proposed college. The Virginia General Assembly, established July 30, 1619, proceeded on July 31, 1619, to petition the Virginia Company for workmen from England to build the college. In May 1620, the Virginia Company appointed George Thorpe (Virginia colonist) to be first deputy in charge of the college lands. Within the first decade, a promising start of a "university" was initiated as part of the progressive colonial outpost of Henricus under the leadership of Sir Thomas Dale. In March 1622, Thorpe was killed and Henrico destroyed, postponing the college, in an Indian uprising of the Indian massacre of 1622. In 1624, the college plans were abandoned when the charter of the Virginia Company was revoked and Jamestown became a royal colony.
It would be almost 70 more years before their efforts to establish a school of higher education would be successful. In 1661 the college and free school land purchase was authorized by an act passed by the General Assembly but no progress was made. By July 1690 the college was proposed again and subscriptions in Virginia were authorized by Lieutenant Governor Francis Nicholson with a financial support appeal to Virginia traders who were merchants in England. In May 1691 the General Assembly issued instructions for the founding of the college to Reverend James Blair, the representative of the Bishop of London, sending him to England to present the request to the King and Queen to grant a charter for the college.
Founding
In 1691, under instruction from the House of Burgesses, Scottish clergyman James Blair arrived in England to secure the charter to re-establish a school of higher education. Some scholars believe Blair utilized some of the original plans from the elaborate but ill-fated earlier attempt at Henricus. Reverend Blair, as the representative for the Bishop of London in the colony, journeyed to London. Control of the Native Americans of the Powhatan Confederacy was no longer a priority in the Colony, as they had been largely decimated and reduced to reservations after the last major conflict in 1644. However, establishing the Jamestown College and assimilating Native Americans in general was retained as a vital part of the school's mission, as possible moral and political incentives to help successfully gain approval in London. Henry Compton, the current bishop of London, John Tillotson (Archbishop of Canterbury), and others supported Blair's assignment from the Virginia Colony to secure the charter for the college.
The college was founded on February 8, 1693, under a royal charter (technically, by letters patent) granted by King William III and Queen Mary II, to establish the College of William & Mary in Virginia to "make, found and establish a certain Place of Universal Study, a perpetual College of Divinity, Philosophy, Languages, and the good arts and sciences...to be supported and maintained, in all time coming." Named in honor of the reigning monarchs King William III and Queen Mary II, the college is the second oldest in the United States and was one of the original Colonial colleges. The Charter named Blair as the college's first president (a lifetime appointment which he held until his death in 1743). The king provided funds allocated from tobacco taxes, along with the Surveyor-General's Office "profits" and 10,000 acres each in the Pamunkey Neck and on Blackwater Swamp. Additional funds came from pirate loot courtesy of buccaneers Edward Davis, Lionel Wafer, and John Hinson; they had been arrested in Virginia and sent to England, where Blair interceded to secure their pardon in exchange for "donation" of a portion of their plunder to his project. Founded as an Anglican institution; governors were required to be members of the Church of England, and professors were required to declare adherence to the Thirty-Nine Articles.Webster, Homer J. (1902) "Schools and Colleges in Colonial Times," The New England Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly, v. XXVII, p. 374, Google Books entry The charter called for a center of higher education consisting of three schools: the Grammar School, the Philosophy School and the Divinity School. The Philosophy School instructed students in the advanced study of moral philosophy (logic, rhetoric, ethics) as well as natural philosophy (physics, metaphysics and mathematics); upon completion of this coursework, the Divinity School prepared these young men for ordination into the Church of England.
This early curriculum, a precursor to the present-day liberal arts program, made William & Mary the first American college with a full faculty. The college has achieved many other notable academic firsts. Although most other planned goals were met or exceeded, the efforts to educate and convert the natives to Christianity were to prove less than successful once the college was established.
Colonial history
In November 1693, the college was given a seat in the House of Burgesses and the General Assembly passed the act to establish the College site "as near the church now standing in Middle Plantation old fields as convenience will permit", and on the same day voted on funding for the college to be supported by tobacco taxes and an export duty on furs and skins. "Middle Plantation" was changed to "Williamsburg" in 1699 when the colonial capital was moved there from Jamestown. The peaceful situation with the Native Americans in the Virginia Peninsula area by that time, as well as the central location in the developed portion of the colony located only about from Jamestown, but on high ground midway between the James and York Rivers, must have appealed to the college's first president, for he is credited with selecting a site for the new college on the western outskirts of the tiny community of Middle Plantation in James City County.
In December 1693 a tract of was purchased from Captain Thomas Ballard, the proprietor of Rich Neck Plantation, in the amount of £170 for the College site just a short distance from the almost new brick Bruton Parish Church, a focal point of the extant community, and not far from the headwaters of Archer's Hope Creek, later renamed College Creek. The college library contains two of the boundary stones erected in 1694 that marked the property, which are available for viewing.
In May 1694 the College of Arms in London granted the college's coat of arms, described as: "Vert a Colledge, or Edifice mason'd Argent in Chief a Sun rising Or the Hemisphere proper," i.e., a college building in silver, on a green field; a golden sun at half orb against a blue sky. The new school opened in temporary buildings. Properly called the "College Building," the first version of the Wren Building was built at Middle Plantation on a picturesque site. On August 8, 1695, the laying of the first foundation bricks, later called the Main Building, were attended by Governor Edmund Andros and the Council of Virginia. It was renamed the Sir Christopher Wren Building between 1928 and 1931 when it was restored. In 1700 the front and the north wing were completed. The present-day College still stands upon those grounds, adjacent to and just west of the restored historic area known in modern times as Colonial Williamsburg.