We have seen that according to the plan for the government of the institution which SLOANE had sketched in his Codicil of July, 1749, there would have been a Board of Visitors as well as a Board of Trustees. But, by the foundation Statute, enacted in 1753, both of these Boards were incorporated into one. Forty-one Trustees were constituted, with full powers of management and control. Six of these were representatives of the several families of COTTON, HARLEY, and SLOANE, the head, or nearest in lineal succession, of each family having the nomination, from time to time, of such representatives or ‘Family Trustees,’ when, by death or otherwise, vacancies should occur. Twenty were ‘Official’ Trustees, in accordance, so far, with SLOANE’S scheme for the constitution of his Board of Visitors; and by these two classes, conjointly, the other fifteen Trustees were to be elected. The Official Trustees were to be the holders for the time being of the following offices:—(1) The Archbishop of Canterbury, (2) the Lord Chancellor, (3) the Speaker of the House of Commons, (4) the Lord President of the Council, (5) the First Lord of the Treasury, (6) the Lord Privy Seal, (7) the First Lord of the Admiralty, (8 and 9) the Secretaries of State, (10) the Lord Steward, (11) the Lord Chamberlain, (12) the Bishop of London, (13) the Chancellor of the Exchequer, (14) the Lord Chief Justice of England, (15) the Master of the Rolls, (16) the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, (17) the Attorney-General, (18) the Solicitor-General, (19) the President of the Royal Society, (20) the President of the College of Physicians. [Sidenote: Act of 26 Geo. II, c. 22, Clauses 4–8.] To the first three of these Official Trustees Parliament entrusted the appointment, from time to time, of all the Officers of the Museum, except the Principal Librarian, who is to be appointed by the Crown, on the nomination of the ‘Principal Trustees,’ as the first three Trustees—the Archbishop, Chancellor, and Speaker—have always been called. The following fifteen persons were the first _elected_ Trustees, under the Act of 1753:—The Duke of Argyle, the Earl of Northumberland, Lord Willoughby of Parham, Lord Charles Cavendish, the Honourable Philip Yorke, Sir George Lyttelton, Sir John Evelyn, James West, Nicholas Hardinge, William Sloane, William Sotheby, Charles Grey, the Reverend Dr. Thomas Birch, James Ward, and William Watson. [Sidenote: Records of British Museum, in MS. ADDIT., 6179.] The first meeting of the Trustees under the Act was held at the Cockpit, Whitehall, on the 17th of December, 1753.