The Charter for the company is drawn …
Years: 1711 - 1711
September
The Charter for the company is drawn up by Blunt, based upon that of the Bank of England.
Blunt is paid three thousand eight hundred and forty-six pounds for his services in setting up the company.
Directors will be elected every three years while shareholders will meet twice a year.
The company employs a Cashier, Secretary and Accountant.
The Governor is intended to be an honorary position and will later be customarily held by the ruling monarch.
The charter allows the full court of directors to nominate a smaller committee to act on any matter on its behalf.
Anyone who is a director of the Bank of England or East India Company is disbarred from being a director of the South Sea company.
Any ship owned by the company of more than five hundred tons is to have a Church of England clergyman on board.
The exchange of government debt for stock is to occur in five separate lots.
The first two of these totaling two and three quarters of a million pounds from about two hundred large investors had already been arranged before the company's charter is issued on September 10, 1711.
The government itself exchanges three quarters of a million pounds of its own debt held by different departments (at this time, individual office holders hold responsibility for money in their charge, and are at liberty to invest it to their own advantage before it is required).
Harley exchanges eight thousand pounds of debt and is appointed Governor of the new company.
Blunt, Caswall and Sawbridge together provide sixty-five thousand pounds, Janssen twenty-five thousand pounds of his own plus a quarter million pounds from a foreign consortium, Decker forty-nine thousand pounds, Sir Ambrose Crawley thirty-six thousand nine hundred and seventy-one pounds.
The company has a Sub-Governor, Bateman, Deputy Governor, Ongley and thirty ordinary directors.
In total, nine of the directors are politicians, five are members of the Sword Blade consortium and seven more financial magnates who have been attracted to the scheme.
The company creates a coat of arms with the motto 'A Gadibus usque ad Auroram' (from Cadiz to the dawn) and rented a large house in the City as its headquarters.
Seven sub-committees are created to handle its everyday business, the most important being the 'Committee for the affairs of the company'.
The Sword Blade company is retained as their banker and on the strength of its new government connections issues notes in its own right, notwithstanding the Bank of England monopoly.
The task of the Company Secretary is to oversee trading activities, the Accountant, Grigsby, is responsible for registering and issuing stock, and the Cashier, Robert Knight, acts as Blunt's personal assistant at a salary of two hundred pounds per year.
Locations
People
- Daniel Defoe
- John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough
- Jonathan Swift
- Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer
- William Paterson
Groups
- Anglicans (Episcopal Church of England)
- Bank of England (independent)
- Britain, Kingdom of Great
- East India Company, British (United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies)
- South Sea Company, the
