Editing Royal charter (section)

====Australia====
The older Australian universities of [[University of Sydney|Sydney]] (1850) and [[University of Melbourne|Melbourne]] (1853) were founded by acts of the legislatures of the colonies. This gave rise to doubts about whether their degrees would be recognised outside of those colonies, leading to them seeking royal charters from London, which would grant legitimacy across the British Empire.<ref>{{cite book |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WHo2DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT129 |page=129 |title=Women in Higher Education, 1850–1970: International Perspectives |editor1=E. Lisa Panayotidis |editor2=Paul Stortz |publisher=Routledge |date=2017 |chapter=The final barrier? Australian women and the nineteenth-century public university |author=Julia Horne |isbn=9781134458240 |access-date=11 June 2019 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240822184851/https://books.google.com/books?id=WHo2DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT129#v=onepage&q&f=false |archive-date=22 August 2024}}</ref>

The [[University of Sydney]] obtained a royal charter in 1858. This stated that (emphasis in the original):

{{blockquote|the Memorialists confidently hope that the Graduates of the University of Sydney will not be inferior in scholastic requirements to the majority of Graduates of British Universities, and that it is desirable to have the degrees of the University of Sydney generally recognised throughout our dominions; and it is also humbly submitted that although our Royal Assent to the Act of Legislature of New South Wales hereinbefore recited fully satisfies the principle of our law that the power of granting degrees should flow from the Crown, yet that as that assent was conveyed through an Act which has effect only in the territory of New South Wales, the ''Memorialists believe that the degrees granted by the said University under the authority of the said Act, are not legally entitled to recognition beyond the limits of New South Wales''; and the Memorialists are in consequence most desirous to obtain a grant from us of Letters Patent requiring all our subjects to recognise the degrees given under the Act of the Local Legislature in the same manner as if the said University of Sydney had been an University established within the United Kingdom under a Royal Charter or an Imperial enactment.}}

The charter went on to (emphasis in the original):

{{blockquote|will, grant and declare that the Degrees of Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts, Bachelor of Laws, Doctor of Laws, Bachelor of Medicine, and Doctor of Medicine, already granted or conferred or hereafter to be granted or conferred by the Senate of the said University of Sydney shall be recognised as Academic distinctions and rewards of merit ''and be entitled to rank, precedence, and consideration in'' our United Kingdom and in our Colonies and possessions throughout the world ''as fully as if the said Degree had been granted by any University of our said United Kingdom''.<ref>{{cite web |title=Royal Charter of the University of Sydney |date=27 February 1858 |publisher=University of Sydney |url=https://sydney.edu.au/policies/showdoc.aspx |access-date=10 June 2019 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190618104437/http://sydney.edu.au/policies/showdoc.aspx |archive-date=18 June 2019}}</ref>}}

The University of Melbourne's charter, issued the following year, similarly granted its degrees equivalence with those from British universities.<ref>{{cite book |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VYYWDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA187 |page=187 |title=Music and Institutions in Nineteenth-Century Britain |editor=Paul Rodmell |chapter=Resisting the Empire? Public Music Examinations in Melbourne 1896–1914 |author=Kieran Crichton |publisher=Routledge |date=2016 |isbn=9781317092476 |access-date=11 June 2019 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240822184854/https://books.google.com/books?id=VYYWDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA187#v=onepage&q&f=false |archive-date=22 August 2024}}</ref>

The act that established the [[University of Adelaide]] in 1874 included women undergraduates, causing a delay in the granting of its charter as the authorities in London did not wish to allow this. A further petition for the power to award degrees to women was rejected in 1878 – the same year that London was granted that authority. A charter was finally granted – admitting women to degrees – in 1881.<ref>{{cite book |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WHo2DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT124 |pages=124, 128–131 |title=Women in Higher Education, 1850–1970: International Perspectives |editor1=E. Lisa Panayotidis |editor2=Paul Stortz |publisher=Routledge |date=2017 |chapter=The final barrier? Australian women and the nineteenth-century public university |author=Julia Horne |isbn=9781134458240 |access-date=11 June 2019 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240822185012/https://books.google.com/books?id=WHo2DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT124#v=onepage&q&f=false |archive-date=22 August 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |pages=62–64 |title=Knowing Women: Origins of Women's Education in Nineteenth-Century Australia |author=Marjorie R. Theobald |date=1996 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=9780521422321 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qfk4AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA62 |access-date=11 June 2019 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240822184900/https://books.google.com/books?id=qfk4AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA62#v=onepage&q&f=false |archive-date=22 August 2024}}</ref>

The last of Australia's 19th century universities, the [[University of Tasmania]], was established in 1890 and obtained a royal charter in 1915.<ref>{{cite web |title=Letters Patent granted to the University of Tasmania, signed 30th August 1915 |last=V |first=George |date=1 August 2018 |publisher=eprints.utas.edu.au |url=http://eprints.utas.edu.au/15939}}</ref>