The Instrument is simply a document on parchment, signed by the King, but unsealed and unattested. It recites that sundry eminent professors of painting, sculpture, and architecture had solicited the King's patronage and assistance in establishing a society for promoting the arts of design, and that the utility of the plan had been fully and clearly demonstrated. Therefore the King, being desirous of encouraging every useful undertaking, did thereby institute and establish the said Society under the name of the 'Royal Academy of Arts in London,' graciously declaring himself the patron, protector, and supporter thereof, and commanding it should be established under the forms and regulations thereinafter set forth, which had been humbly laid before his Majesty, and had received his royal assent and approbation. The rules declared that the Academy should consist of forty members only, who should be called Academicians; they were to be at the time of their admission painters, sculptors, or architects of reputation in their professions, of high moral character, not under twenty-five years of age, resident in Great Britain, and not members of any other society of artists established in London. Under this rule, it will be noted, that engravers could not aspire to the honours of the Academy. Sir Robert Strange regarded this as a direct affront to the members of his profession, and attributed it to his well-known attachment to the Incorporated Society and hostility to the designs of the ex-Directors of that body. The provision that members of other societies were to be disqualified from becoming members of the Academy, was of course aimed at the rival institutions, and undoubtedly a severe restriction upon the general body of artists. Of the forty members who were to constitute the Academy, the Instrument named thirty-six only; a circumstance which justified suspicion that the leaders in the enterprise had so small a following that they could not muster in sufficient force to complete the prescribed number of original members: or they may have purposely left vacancies to be supplied as artists of eminence were detached from the rival societies or otherwise became eligible. Among the thirty-six,[9] while many artists of fame appear, it must also be said that many very obscure persons figure, whose names, but for their registry upon the list of original Academicians, would probably never have been known to posterity in any way. Nearly a third of the number are foreigners. There are two ladies, Mesdames Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser, the first and last female Academicians. Then there are coach, and even sign-painters, a medallist, and an engraver--Bartolozzi, whose nomination was in direct contravention of the Academy's constitution and an additional injustice to Sir Robert Strange. The originators of the plan must surely have felt that they were marching through Coventry with rather a ragged regiment at their heels.