endowed a hospital on the site of the Charterhouse, calling it the hospital of King James; and in his will he bequeathed moneys to maintain a chapel, hospital (almshouse) and school. The will was hotly contested but upheld in court, and the foundation was finally constituted to afford a home for eighty male pensioners (“gentlemen by descent and in poverty, soldiers that have borne arms by sea or land, merchants decayed by piracy or shipwreck, or servants in household to the King or Queen’s Majesty”), and to educate forty boys. The school developed beyond the original intentions of its founder, and now ranks among the most eminent public schools in England. In 1872 it was removed, during the headmastership (1863–1897) of the Rev. William Haig-Brown (d. 1907), to new buildings near Godalming in Surrey, which were opened on the 18th of June in that year. The number of foundation scholarships is increased to sixty. The scholars are not now distinguished by wearing a special dress or by forming a separate house, though one house is known as Gownboys, preserving the former title of the scholars. The land on which the old school buildings stood in London was sold for new buildings to accommodate the Merchant Taylors’ school, but the pensioners still occupy their picturesque home, themselves picturesque figures in the black gowns designed for them under the foundation. The buildings, of mellowed red brick, include a panelled chapel, in which is the founder’s tomb, a fine dining-hall, governors’ room with ornate ceiling and tapestried walls, the old library, and the beautiful great staircase.
CHARTER-PARTY (Lat. charta partita, a legal paper or instrument, “divided,” i.e. written in duplicate so that each party retains half), a written, or partly written and partly printed, contract between merchant and shipowner, by which a ship is let or hired for the conveyance of goods on a specified voyage, or for a definite period. (See Affreightment.)
CHARTERS TOWERS, a mining town of Devonport county, Queensland, Australia, 82 m. by rail S.W. of Townsville and 820 m. direct N.N.W. of Brisbane. It is the centre of an important gold-field, the reefs of which improve at the lower depths, the deepest shaft on the field being 2558 ft. below the surface-level. The gold is of a very fine quality. An abundant water-supply is obtained from the Burdekin river, some 8 m. distant. The population of the town in 1901 was 5523; but within a 5 m. radius it was 20,976. Charters Towers became a municipality in 1877.
CHARTIER, ALAIN (c. 1392–c. 1430), French poet and political writer, was born at Bayeux about 1392. Chartier belonged to a family marked by considerable ability. His eldest brother Guillaume became bishop of Paris; and Thomas became notary to the king. Jean Chartier, a monk of St Denis, whose history of Charles VII. is printed in vol. iii. of Les Grands Chroniques de Saint-Denis (1477), was not, as is sometimes stated, also a brother of the poet Alain studied, as his elder brother had done, at the university of Paris. His earliest poem is the Livre des quatre dames, written after the battle of Agincourt. This was followed by the Débat du réveille-matin, La Belle Dame sans merci, and others. None of these poems show any very patriotic feeling, though Chartier’s prose is evidence that he was not indifferent to the misfortunes of his country. He followed the fortunes of the dauphin, afterwards Charles VII., acting in the triple capacity of clerk, notary and financial secretary. In 1422 he wrote the famous Quadrilogue-invectif. The interlocutors in this dialogue are France herself and the three orders of the state. Chartier lays bare the abuses of the feudal army and the sufferings of the peasants. He rendered an immense service to his country by maintaining that the cause of France, though desperate to all appearance, was not yet lost if the contending factions could lay aside their differences in the face of the common enemy. In 1424 Chartier was sent on an embassy to Germany, and three years later he accompanied to Scotland the mission sent to negotiate the marriage of Margaret of Scotland, then not four years old, with the dauphin, afterwards Louis XI. In 1429 he wrote the Livre d’espérance, which contains a fierce attack on the nobility and clergy. He was the author of a diatribe on the courtiers of Charles VII. entitled Le Curial, translated into English (Here foloweth the copy of a lettre whyche maistre A. Charetier wrote to his brother) by Caxton about 1484. The date of his death is to be placed about 1430. A Latin epitaph, discovered in the 18th century, says, however, that he was archdeacon of Paris, and declares that he died in the city of Avignon in 1449. This is obviously not authentic, for Alain described himself as a simple clerc and certainly died long before 1449. The story of the famous kiss bestowed by Margaret of Scotland on la précieuse bouche de laquelle sont issus et sortis tant de bons mots et vertueuses paroles is mythical, for Margaret did not come to France till 1436, after the poet’s death; but the story, first told by Guillaume Bouchet in his Annales d’Aquitaine (1524), is interesting, if only as a proof of the high degree of estimation in which the ugliest man of his day was held. Jean de Masles, who annotated a portion of his verse, has recorded how the pages and young gentlemen of that epoch were required daily to learn by heart passages of his Bréviaire des nobles. John Lydgate studied him affectionately. His Belle Dame sans merci was translated into English by Sir Richard Ros about 1640, with an introduction of his own; and Clément Marot and Octavien de Saint-Gelais, writing fifty years after his death, find many fair words for the old poet, their master and predecessor.
See Mancel, Alain Chartier, étude bibliographique et littéraire, 8vo (Paris, 1849); D. Delaunay’s Étude sur Alain Chartier (1876), with considerable extracts from his writings. His works were edited by A. Duchesne (Paris, 1617). On Jean Chartier see Vallet de Viriville, “Essais critiques sur les historiens originaux du règne de Charles VIII,” in the Bibl. de l’École des Chartes (July–August 1857).
CHARTISM, the name given to a movement for political reform in England, from the so-called “People’s Charter” or “National Charter,” the document in which in 1838 the scheme of reforms was embodied. The movement itself may be traced to the latter years of the 18th century. Checked for a while by the reaction due to the excesses of the French Revolution, it received a fresh impetus from the awful misery that followed the Napoleonic wars and the economic changes due to the introduction of machinery. The Six Acts of 1819 were directed, not only against agrarian and industrial rioting, but against the political movement of which Sir Francis Burdett was the spokesman in the House of Commons, which demanded manhood suffrage, the ballot, annual parliaments, the abolition of the property qualification for members of parliament and their payment. The movement was checked for a while by the Reform Bill of 1832; but it was soon discovered that, though the middle classes had been enfranchised, the economic and political grievances of the labouring population remained unredressed. Two separate movements now developed: one socialistic, associated with the name of Robert Owen; the other radical, aiming at the enfranchisement of the “masses” as the first step to the amelioration of their condition. The latter was represented in the Working Men’s Association, by which in 1838 the “People’s Charter” was drawn up. It embodied exactly the same programme as that of the radical reformers mentioned above, with the addition of a demand for equal electoral districts.
In support of this programme a vigorous agitation began, the principal leader of which was Feargus O’Connor, whose irresponsible and erratic oratory produced a vast effect. Monster meetings were held, at which seditious language was occasionally used, and slight collisions with the military took place. Petitions of enormous size, signed in great part with fictitious names, were presented to parliament; and a great many newspapers were started, of which the Northern Star, conducted by Feargus O’Connor, had a circulation of 50,000. In November 1839 a Chartist mob consisting of miners and others made an attack on Newport, Mon. The rising was a total failure; the leaders, John Frost and two others, were seized, were found guilty of high treason, and were condemned to death. The sentence, however, was changed to one of transportation, and Frost spent over fourteen years in Van Diemen’s Land. In 1854 he was pardoned, and from 1856 until his death on the 29th of July 1877 he lived in England. In 1840 the Chartist movement was still further organized by the inauguration at Manchester of the National
