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54 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS
for attaining the objects set forth in the charter. The corporation was
to meet annually for an election of officers on the third Thursday in
each year. ,
To transact the ordinary business of the trust a common council
was to be appointed, each member of which before entering upon his
duties was to take an oath of office, which the president of the corpora
tion was to administer. He, in turn, was to be sworn into office by the
chief baron of the exchequer. Lord John, Viscount Percival, was
designated as the first president of the corporation and it was made his
duty within thirty days from the granting of the charter to convene
the trustees for the purpose of perfecting an organization. Edward
Digby was named as chairman of the common council, a board to con
sist of fifteen members, eight of whom were named in the charter, as
follows: John, Lord Viscount Percival, Edward Digby, George Car
penter, James Oglethorpe, George Heathcote, Thomas Laroche, James
Vernon, William Belitha, Esqs., and Stephen Hales, A. M.
Both the president of the corporation and the chairman of the com
mon council were declared competent to vote and to participate in all
discussions. Provision was also made for each of these offices to be
filled by rotation.
All members of the trust were to serve without salary, fee, perquisite,
benefit, or profit whatever. Permission was granted for soliciting and
receiving subscriptions; also for appointing agents to collect moneys and
gifts. It was made the duty of the corporation to submit annually in
writing an account of all moneys and effects received and expended.
Furthermore, the corporation was empowered to frame such rules and
regulations for the government of the colony, to prescribe such pains
and penalties for infractions, and to establish such methods of enforce
ment as were not repugnant to the statutes and laws of the realm.
Religious freedom was accorded to all except Catholics. Says Mr.
Brooks:* "This discrimination was due to historical causes. In 1688
the Catholic monarch, James II, was expelled from England, and it
was made the law of the land that no Catholic should ever sit on the
throne. Catholics were also excluded from holding any civil or military
office or from sitting in Parliament. For many years the exiled family
of Stuart schemed to regain the lost throne, usually with the assistance
of a powerful party in England and with the sympathy of Catholic
France. Only seventeen years before the granting of the charter of
Georgia there had been a rising of Catholics in favor of the Stuart
Pretender. So it was natural that Englishmen did not care to harbor
within the new colony persons whom they regarded as hostile to the
English throne and religion."
Georgia's territorial domain, as fixed by the terms of her charter,
was to include all the lands embraced between the Savannah and the
Altamaha rivers, reaching back from the headwaters of these streams,
in a westerly direction, to the South Seas, an indefinite expression which,
at a later period, was construed to mean the Mississippi River. It was
to include also the islands of the sea lying opposite the eastern coast,
within a distance of twenty leagues therefrom, together with all the
•"History of Georgia," E. P. Brooks, p. 45.