| Description | The licensing of the College was established at its foundation. To practice in Edinburgh and neighbourhood required the College licence obtainable by examination, from which Scottish university graduates were exempt, and the licence, though not obligatory, was available to those practising outside the area of the College's jurisdiction, subject to their satisfying examiners and to payment of appropriate dues.
In its early days the College often granted individuals a licence and advanced them to fellowship at one sitting, and as a result the initial intermediate stage of Candidate became largely redundant and was discarded around 1710.
A partial attempt to control the situation was made a number of years later by stipulating that at least a year must have elapsed between being granted a licence and being admitted to fellowship, but this rule was not consistently followed.
Both the terms Fellow and Member were used reasonably indiscriminately in the early records of the College for individuals who did not technically hold those titles, and although the College's membership was a creation of the late nineteenth century.
In 1763 licentiateship was made a necessary stepping stone to fellowship and it was stipulated that at least a year must have elapsed between being granted a licence and being admitted to fellowship, but this rule was not consistently followed. The rule was rescinded in 1829, the order of licentiate fell into disuse and was rescuscitated in an entirely new form in 1859. Under terms of the charter of 1861 a new level between licentiate and fellow was created, which now had to pass an examination.
After creation of the MRCP examination in 1969 the three colleges of physicians agreed to establish a category of membership called Collegiate Members, who had extra privileges over ordinary members. |
| Description Of Item | Fellowship and membership records held in this series date back to 1695, although earlier information on fellowship is held in College minutes, reports and correspondence series. |