Charter 750

The First Council

The Dissolution of Reading Abbey in 1539 left a power vacuum in the town. So in 1542 Henry VIII granted the first charter specifically to set up the Merchant Gild as a Corporation to run Reading. They could hold property, run the market, issue warrants and have a jail.
 

Subsequent charters amplified the Corporation’s powers. Elizabeth I’s charter of 1560 allowed the Corporation to buy land, make byelaws, run the Grammar School and repair the town’s bridges. This charter also granted the Abbey’s estates to the Corporation, and for the first time defined the town boundaries.

Charles I’s charter of 1638 granted Reading its own criminal court of quarter sessions and a coroner. It also allowed the Corporation to levy rates and oversee pub licensing, as well as providing the first planning regulations with fines for building roofs of thatch or subdividing dwellings.

This charter also provided for the Corporation’s management of the town’s charities. Some of these charities were substantial. John Kendrick, a wealthy cloth trader, had bequeathed money in 1624 for the Oracle workhouse for clothworking as well as money for education that survives today as Kendrick School.