On 8 February 1693, the royal charter establishing the College of William & Mary was issued by King William III and Queen Mary II of England. The charter established the first college in the Colony of Virginia and the second in what is now the United States, after Harvard in 1636. The document served as the college's constitution for nearly 90 years, establishing it as an extension of the British Imperial bureaucracy and Church of England hierarchy. The original document has been lost, but contemporary copies survive. The chartering is celebrated annually at the college on 8 February as Charter Day.

The charter was initially given to James Blair, the colony's commissary, who returned to Virginia and presented it to the Virginia General Assembly in September 1693. The college was constructed at Middle Plantation, where the city of Williamsburg was established in 1699. The charter intended for the college to operate a seminary for the colony and a mechanism for converting Native Americans, but it operated only as a grammar school for about two decades. One of the charter's provisions called for the eventual transfer of the college's governance to the faculty, which was ceremonially completed on 15 August 1729. During the 18th century, the college celebrated 15 August as Transfer Day.

The original charter was reported by Carlo Bellini to have been taken from the college in the 1780s, and reported as last being observed in the possession of the Russian trader Fedor Karzhavin. It is now considered lost, though contemporary and later copies survive. An 18th-century copy possibly made for Governor of Virginia Edmund Andros is occasionally displayed. Another 18th-century copy was previously held by Harvard. Both of these copies are now part of the William & Mary Libraries' special collections.

Background The Colony of Virginia, an English colony in North America, repeatedly had sought to establish a college during the 17th century. An initial plan to develop a college under the auspices of the Virginia Company at Henrico, a site near modern-day Richmond, was proposed in 1619. This college, which was intended to educate colonists and local Indians, was abandoned following the Powhatan attack of 1622.; Social and political factors including the collapse of the Virginia Company served as barriers to a college's establishment in Virginia for several decades. The Stuart Restoration in 1660 reestablished the Church of England (Anglican church) in the colony and brought the royalist William Berkeley back as Virginia colonial governor. In the subsequent years, the Virginia General Assembly submitted petitions to the Crown asking for letters patent that would allow the colony to raise funds for the establishment of schools and colleges in Virginia, particularly for the education of Anglican ministers. An act passed in the General Assembly in 1661 which was meant to establish a college but did not have any effect. Instability in both England and Virginia which reached a climax in the latter with the 1676 Bacon's Rebellion still prevented the establishment of a college in the colony.

Over the 17th century, the population of Virginia grew to feature a substantial number of colonists educated at English and Scottish universities particularly the University of Oxford at a proportion greater than the New England Colonies. Many of those with university training were Anglican clergymen. Interest in a Virginian college continued to grow among Virginia's elite, and a new effort towards establishing a college began 1689 during Nathaniel Bacon's administration, shortly after the Glorious Revolution installed King William III and Queen Mary II as England's joint monarchs. This effort would be led by James Blair, a Scottish Anglican clergyman.;

Blair, who had been educated at University of Aberdeen's Marischal College and University of Edinburgh, was appointed to represent the bishop of London's interests as the colony's commissary in 1689. His appointment was read before the General Assembly on 3 June 1690. For the two succeeding generations, Blair would exert substantial political and ecclesiastical influence in Virginia. At his first convocation of Virginia's clergy on 23 July 1690, Blair received support for his "Several Propositions" favoring the establishment of a college. Also on 3 June, Francis Nicholson had been sworn in to lead the colony as its lieutenant governor. Nicholson was a supporter of education and, alongside the General Assembly, backed Blair's efforts.; John Page was credited in the 1699 May Day orations for initiating a February 1691 meeting that brought support for the college movement from the elite in Jamestown, then the colonial capital. In April 1691, the General Assembly established a committee to secure funds for a college and selected Blair to travel to England to secure a royal charter for this college. On 21 May, the General Assembly approved its instructions to Blair on securing a charter, a grant of arms, private donations, and a teacher for the college's grammar school.;

Chartering Blair's arrival in London

In June 1691, Blair sailed from Lynnhaven Bay to Bristol. Blair arrived in London in early September 1691. His time in the city went unrecorded in contemporary accounts besides in public records and Blair's letters to Nicholson with the exception of long-unpublished details in Gilbert Burnet's History of His Own Time. A possibly apocryphal anecdote from Blair's efforts in London were detailed by Benjamin Franklin in a 1774 letter. Blair's 1691 instructions from the General Assembly regarding drafting the charter detailed that he was to consult the charters of other English colleges. According to these instructions, the new college's charter was to establish both the college and its grammar school as a place for boys and young men to learn "Lattin, Greek, & Hebrew Tongues, together wth Philosophy Mathematicks & Divinity". He was also instructed that the college's governmental structure should include 18 trustees, which were named in the instructions and included Nicholson.

Upon his arrival in London, Blair discovered that all the people he needed to discuss the proposed college with were not in the city or otherwise not in a position to assist him: Virginia's colonial agent was in Wales, King William was in Continental Europe, several bishops Blair knew were in their dioceses, and Bishop of London Henry Compton was ill and out of favor with William. Blair had previously lived in London and was acquainted with Bishop of Worcester Edward Stillingfleet. From Stillingfeet, Blair learned that Queen Mary favored the bishop and that she was a supporter of charitable ventures. Burnet, the bishop of Salisbury, also lent his influence in support of the college. Through Archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson, Blair was able to get an audience with William. Blair, Tillotson, and former Virginia governor Lord Howard of Effingham went to the King on 12 November. William positively received Blair's description of the planned college, though it proved a limited success for Blair, as the college remained unchartered and William was soon distracted with military planning against the French.

Securing funding Two days after the audience with the King, Blair was asked to send a financial request for the college to Compton and Tilloston, who met with Blair and backed the proposal. The proposal was then submitted to the Lords of Trade and Plantations, at which point it wound through the imperial bureaucracy for eight months, drawing some opposition over the perpetual allocation of Crown funds for the college. Blair spent that time seeking private financial support for the college. Burnet preached the sermon at the scientist Robert Boyle funeral, which saw the executors of Boyle's estate offer profits from the Brafferton Manor in Yorkshire in support of an Indian school at Virginia's college. This plan was likely not related to the similar objectives of the earlier Henrico plan, but instead reflected similar efforts then ongoing at Harvard College. The lords of trade, the merchant Micajah Perry, and Blair also negotiated an arrangement where the proposed college would receive £300 from three accused pirates.

Benjamin Franklin's 1774 letter reported that, as Blair sought to secure royal funds for the college from the Lords of the Treasury, he tried to convince the naval treasurer Edward Seymour to back the funding in Christian consideration for the souls of Virginia's residents. According to Franklin, Seymour said in reply, "Souls! Damn your souls. Make tobacco!" Regardless of the veracity of the account, the treasury did oppose the funding, but Blair had prevailed against them by 1 September 1692. On that date, Queen Mary approved Blair's request for money from quit-rents and tobacco taxes putting £1985:18:10 towards a Virginian college and "free school" (the term used in Blair's instructions regarding the college's grammar school) and provided two land grants totaling 20,000 acres in Virginia's Blackwater Swamp and Pamunkey Neck for the college to draw revenue from. In exchange, the college would pay a symbolic quit-rent of two Latin verses each Guy Fawkes Night, 5 November.; ; ;

Drafting and approval Blair prepared the text for the college's charter with the assistance of two London lawyers. These lawyers were possibly Robert Sawyer who had served as Attorney General for England and Wales and Heneage Finch who had served as Solicitor General for England and Wales. Nicholson recommended a "Robert Sawyer & Mr. Finch" for the task, and Blair wrote to Nicholson to thank him for his "advice about the lawyers". The two lawyers had experience with royal charters from having previously forced boroughs and proprietary colonies like the Massachusetts Bay Colony to surrender their charters in order to increase the Crown's authority over them. Though Sawyer died seven months before the college's charter was granted, both were likely involved in its drafting.

The college charter underwent the four steps of copying required for such a document. First, a warrant copy was written in English by the treasury. The second copy was the King's bill, which was created by the attorney general in Latin with italicized script on five large sheets, each of which was signed by the King. The third copy was the writ of the privy seal, also in italicized Latin, where the King and Queen directed the Lords Commissioners of the Great Seal to make the record patent. The fourth copy was the enrollment, which was in Latin written in chancery hand and the copy entered into the government's patent rolls. Blair had the charter name the new college as the College of William and Mary in Virginia, making it the namesake of the King and Queen in the hope that this would help overcome opposition to its establishment.

On 8 February 1693 of the Julian calendar as then used by England (18 February on the Gregorian calendar), King William and Queen Mary granted the college's charter with a privy seal to Blair at their court in Kensington Palace. Blair gave a copy of the charter to the Commissioners of Customs in London, purchased boxes to store the charter and seal, and sailed to Virginia via Portsmouth with several copies of the charter in English and Latin.; Blair presented the charter to the other members of the Virginia Governor's Council the General Assembly's upper house and Virginia's new governor, Edmund Andros, on 1 September 1693. He then read it before the next joint session of the General Assembly, where both the council and House of Burgesses the General Assembly's lower house passed memorials thanking the King and Queen for their actions and paid Blair a £250 honorarium and £600 for his expenses on the trip.

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