1821 was known as the "Constitution." Magna Carta also
suggested to the English radicals in 1838 the name "People's Charter,"
which they gave to their published programme of reforms (see CHARTISM).
This association of the idea of liberty with the word charter led to its
figurative use in the sense of freedom or licence. This is, however,
rare; the most common use being in the phrase "chartered libertine"
(Shakespeare, _Henry V._ Act i. Sc. 1) from the derivative verb "to
charter," e.g. to grant a charter. The common colloquialism "to
charter," in the sense of to take, or hire, is derived from the special
use of "to charter" as to hire (a ship) by charter-party.

CHARTERED COMPANIES. A chartered company is a trading corporation
enjoying certain rights and privileges, and bound by certain obligations
under a special charter granted to it by the sovereign authority of the
state, such charter defining and limiting those rights, privileges and
obligations, and the localities in which they are to be exercised. Such
companies existed in early times, but have undergone changes and
modifications in accordance with the developments which have taken place
in the economic history of the states where they have existed. In Great
Britain the first trading charters were granted, not to English
companies, which were then non-existent, but to branches of the
Hanseatic League (q.v.), and it was not till 1597 that England was
finally relieved from the presence of a foreign chartered company. In
that year Queen Elizabeth closed the steel-yard where Teutons had been
established for 700 years.

The origin of all English trading companies is to be sought in the
Merchants of the Staple. They lingered on into the 18th century, but
only as a name, for their business was solely to export English products
which, as English manufactures grew, were wanted at home. Of all early
English chartered companies, the "Merchant Adventurers" conducted its
operations the most widely. Itself a development of very early trading
gilds, at the height of its prosperity it employed as many as 50,000
persons in the Netherlands, and the enormous influence it was able to
exercise undoubtedly saved Antwerp from the institution of the
Inquisition within its walls in the time of Charles V. In the reign of
Elizabeth British trade with the Netherlands reached in one year
12,000,000 ducats, and in that of James I. the company's yearly commerce
with Germany and the Net