WordNet
n. a charter granted by the sovereign (especially in Great Britain)
Wikipedia
A royal charter is a formal document issued by a monarch as letters patent, granting a right or power to an individual or a body corporate. They were, and are still, used to establish significant organisations such as cities (with municipal charters) or universities and learned societies. Charters should be distinguished from warrants and letters of appointment, as they have perpetual effect. Typically, a Royal Charter is produced as a high-quality work of calligraphy on vellum. The British monarchy has issued over 980 royal charters. Of these about 750 remain in existence. The earliest was to the town of Tain in 1066, making it the oldest Royal Burgh in Scotland, followed by the University of Cambridge in 1231. Charters continue to be issued by the British Crown, a recent example being that awarded to the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity, on 7 April 2011.
Charters have been used in Europe since medieval times to create cities (that is, localities with recognised legal rights and privileges). The date that such a charter is granted is considered to be when a city is 'founded', regardless of when the locality originally began to be settled (which is often impossible to determine).
At one time, a royal charter was the sole means by which an incorporated body could be formed, but other means (such as the registration process for limited companies) are generally used nowadays instead.
Among the past and present groups formed by royal charter are the British East India Company (1600), the Hudson's Bay Company, Standard Chartered, the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O), the British South Africa Company, and some of the former British colonies on the North American mainland, City livery companies, the Bank of England and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
Usage examples of "royal charter".
Have you ever read the original Psychlo Imperial Royal Charter of the Intergalactic Mining Company?
The fund for raising money to buy a Royal Charter for the Association of Gentlewomen.
This is the first I've heard of any fund, although I did know that the Association of Gentlewomen was applying for a Royal Charter, without which they cannot be recognised as an accredited Turanian guild, and take their place on the Council as a member of the Revered Federation of Guilds, and send an observer to the Senate.
Williams returned to England again, where he successfully defended his colony's grant against the onslaught of Puritan objections, and after the restoration of Charles II to the British throne, he secured a royal charter in 1663, sanctioning the liberal institutions he had created.
Then the entrance to the cave was carefully sealed and disguised, and Gandang led the Matabele nation back to become the slaves of Rhodes and his Royal Charter Company.
And there's the matter of the Royal charter, which has absorbed so much of our energies of late –.
But she sent her two cats with me, and her favorite maid Amiase, and a copy of the Royal Charter that's three hundred years old and the crown that King Fulstan wore at his coronation.
Cuilteine and Argoed, both of which will be handed over to the Order by royal charter upon the succession of your new vicar general.
At Stratford there was by royal charter a Court of Record sitting every fortnight, with six attorneys, besides the town clerk, belonging to it, and it is certainly not straining probability to suppose that the young Shakespeare may have had employment in one of them.