The loss of the original charter

The Stationers’ original charter was lost when the Great Fire of London destroyed the hall on 4 September 1666. Before the flames reached Ave Maria Lane, the clerk George Tokefield rescued at least fifteen of the current waste books, registers, and other ledgers, together with the two original ‘great books’ and seven or eight other past volumes containing valuable records of apprenticeship, court rulings, and (above all) the entrance of copies. A few miscellaneous papers and indentures were also saved, either by Tokefield or among the personal effects of a Company officer who had temporary custody of them. But the records left behind included all the Company's letters patent, including the English Stock patents of 1603 and 1616, Elizabeth's confirmation of the charter, and the charter of 1557 itself. Blagden suggested that the charter was lost before the Fire, ‘probably…sometime during the previous twenty-five years of dis-turbance’, but the records on which he based that belief point more persuasively in the opposite direction.

Sometime before 7 March 1664 the attorney general issued a writ of quo warranto ‘against the Charter of this Companie’. On the 14th the Court of Assistants appointed a committee to ‘viewe the Pattentes and other wrytinges, thereby to prepare some Answer to be reported to the Table, about that busines’. One of the first writings examined was evidently the charter itself, for the entry continues: