18 The Foundation of the Royal Agricultural Society. 
in its incidents and so important in the annals of agriculture 
as to deserve special treatment in a separate article. 1 Encou- 
raged by the distinguished success of this Meeting, and by 
the gratifying support that the Society was receiving at all 
hands, the Committee resolved to petition Her Majesty the 
Queen for a Charter of Incorporation, and the President (the 
Duke of Richmond) was requested at the Committee Meeting held 
on February 5, 18 40, to prepare a draft of the petition. On 
March 4, 1840, the draft petition was considered and approved, 
and the Duke was authorised to " take the requisite measures on 
the subject," which he appears to have done with such remark- 
able celerity that only two days later, on March G, 1810, his 
Grace received a letter from the Marquis of Normanby, then 
Home Secretary, stating that the petition had been laid before 
Her Majesty, who had been pleased both to grant the Society a 
Charter under the title of the " Royal Agricultural Society of 
England." and to extend Her Royal patronage to it. 
The Charter itself was sealed on March 26, 1840, and a 
Meeting of the Members of Council named in it was held on 
the 30th of that month, at which the President was requested 
to present at the next Levee an address of thanks to Her 
Majesty, conveying " the Society's humble and dutiful acknow- 
ledgment to Her Majesty for this permanent mark of Her Royal 
patronage of the Society and its objects." It was reported at 
this meeting that the Society then consisted of 82 Life Gover- 
nors, 101 Governors, 122 Life Members, 1,972 Members, and 4 
Honorary Members, making a total of 2,371 subscribers. It is 
a notable and gratifying fact that at the present time no less 
than 42 of these subscribers still remain, after a lapse of 
fifty years, on the Society's books. At the Council Meeting 
held on March 5, 1890, the last assemblage of the Council in 
the first half century of the Society's corporate existence, it was 
unanimously resolved to elect as Foundation Life Governors all 
these surviving subscribers of the English Agricultural Society, 
and the Members so elected appear in the List of Governors 
given in the Appendix to this number. 
It is unnecessary to describe at any length the terms of the 
Charter. It recites that the founders had formed themselves 
into a Society for the " general advancement of English 
Agriculture," in order to prosecute the national objects already 
detailed on page 12, and declares that Her Majesty, " being 
anxious of promoting and encouraging by our Royal protection 
and patronage a series of objects which, prosecuted under the 
1 This il is proposed to publish in a subsequent number. 
