Founding by Royal Charter

Thomas Linacre, an English physician and classical scholar who had studied medicine in Italy and translated Galen's works into Latin, petitioned King Henry VIII to establish a formal college of physicians for London, modeled on similar continental bodies, in order to distinguish trained and examined practitioners from the many unlicensed healers then practicing in the city. Henry VIII granted the petition and founded the College of Physicians by royal charter on 23 September 1518, with Linacre as its first president, giving the new body the authority to examine and license physicians and to punish unlicensed or malpracticing ones within the City of London and seven miles around it.

An Act of Parliament in 1523 extended the College's licensing authority from London across all of England, formalizing its role as the kingdom's principal regulator of legitimate medical practice, a jurisdiction that would repeatedly place the College at the center of disputes over what counted as legitimate medicine as new movements arose over the following centuries. The College received the additional word Royal in recognition of its status over time and moved among several London premises before settling into its present home, continuing to hold examinations and confer fellowship on physicians it judged qualified.