The act was a ratification of an event that had already taken place, the founding of the Collegium Scoticum, one of a number of national colleges into which the university was divided.

[3] The Collegium Scoticum came into existence in 1325 and its foundation was confirmed by King Charles IV of France in August 1326.

The Scots students were expelled from the University of Paris in 1409, during the Hundred Years' War, and did not return until 1440 following the Treaty of Arras.

Meanwhile, the college buildings at Rue des Fosses de S. Victor became a repository for many valuable Scottish state documents.

James Beaton bequeathed his property, including the archives of the Diocese of Glasgow, and a great mass of important correspondence, to the Scots College.

This patent was registered by the Parliament, July 12th, 1688; it completely freed the college of all its debts, and gave it the official position which it had hitherto lacked.

After he died of a brain hemorrhage on 16 September 1701 at Saint-Germain-en-Laye his body was laid in a coffin at the Chapel of Saint Edmund in the Church of the English Benedictines in the Rue St. Jacques.