Body Corporate

And so they gathered together, these speaking ones, —the various people who had anything to teach; —and formed themselves gradually, under the patronage of kings and other potentates who were anxious about the culture of their populations, and nobly studious of their best benefit; and became a body-corporate, with high privileges, high dignities, and really high aims, under the title of a University. ❋ Unknown (1909)

England as the mayor, in Germany as the burgomaster, who represents the body-corporate in all negotiations with the seigneur or the Crown or other communes. ❋ Unknown (1901)

That various mixed Governments do undertake to limit the franchise to the few as a privilege coming from the body-corporate, has nothing to do with the question, for I am discussing now rights, not practices; republics, not aristocracies. ❋ Matilda Joslyn Gage (1862)

This locker was big enough to admit the body-corporate of the skipper. ❋ Oliver Optic (1859)

Nor were these all my miseries; in fact, they were but a sort of running base to a thousand other strange and frightful fancies; the mere skeleton to a whole body-corporate of horrors. ❋ Washington Allston (1811)