An Original Magna Carta

 

Magna Carta 1215 [detail]

Exciting recent news from British researchers, Professor David Carpenter, Professor of Mediaeval History at King’s College, London and Professor Nicholas Vincent, Professor of Mediaeval History at the University of East Anglia. Both men are experts on mediaeval England, and their recent combined study of a copy of the Magna Carta, owned by Harvard Law School, shows that it is not a later copy as formerly believed, but it is in fact one of the seven scripts surviving, from King Edward 1’s 1300 issue of this incredibly important document.

Magna Carta on display in Salisbury Cathedral

The Magna Carta is considered a key step in the evolution of human rights against oppressive rulers and has formed the basis of constitutions around the world. It was influential in the founding of the United States informing an array of rights from the Declaration of Independence to the framing of the U.S Constitution and the subsequent adoption of the Bill of Rights.

The script in Harvard Law School Library [labelled as HLS MS 172] was bought by the library in 1946 for the sum of $27.50, according to the library’s accession register. The auction catalogue [also in the library] described the manuscript as a “copy made in

Auction catalogue extract

1327……. Somewhat rubbed and damp-stained”. It had been purchased a month or so earlier by the reputable London bookdealers, Sweet & Maxwell, via Sotheby’s, from a Royal Air Force war hero for a mere £42. Professor Carpenter described HLS MS 172  as “a remarkable testament to a fundamental stage in England’s political development” and as “one of the world’s most valuable documents.” This is a fantastic discovery, “he said. “Harvard’s Magna Carta deserves celebration, not as some mere copy, stained and faded, but as an original of one of the most significant documents in world constitutional history, a cornerstone of freedoms past, present and those yet to be won.”

Professor David Carpenter

Professor Carpenter had been studying unofficial later copies of the Magna Carta when he came across the digitised version of HLS MS 172 on the Harvard Law School Library website and realised it might just be an original and not a copy. He began to compare it with other originals to establish its authenticity and teamed up with Professor Vincent to try together to investigate its provenance. Professor Vincent described Magna Carta as “a totem of liberty, central to our sense of who we are: a freedom-loving, free-born people. It is an icon both of Western political tradition and of constitutional law. The provenance of this document is just fantastic…given present problems over liberties, over the sense of constitutional tradition in America, you couldn’t invent a provenance that was more wonderful than this!”

In establishing the authenticity of the manuscript, the professors noted that its dimensions at 489 mm X

Magna Carta in its original glory

473 mm are consistent with those found in the other six originals as is the handwriting with a large capital ‘E’ at the start in ‘Edwardus’ and the elongated letters in the first line. Carpenter and Vincent believe the document was issued to the former parliamentary borough of Appleby in Cumbria circa 1300. It was then passed down through an aristocratic family of the 18^th century, the Lowthers, who eventually gave it to Thomas Clarkson who was the leading slavery abolitionist of the day. In the early 1800s Clarkson retired to the Lake District where he became a friend both of William Wordsworth, and of local landowner, William Lowther, hereditary lord of the manor of Appleby. Through Clarkson's estate,

Professor Nicholas Vincent

it was bequeathed to Air Vice-Marshall Forster ‘Sammy’ Maynard, a WWI flying ace who ended up as commander of the airbase in Malta at the start of WW2 and who inherited the archives of  both Thomas and John Clarkson. The provenance of the document is as extraordinary as its long survival although there is little evidence of its exact whereabouts from the 14th century to the 18th, but, given that the original was issued to the borough of Appleby in Cumbria in 1300 it seems likely that was where it might quietly have bided its time over the centuries. 

The Huntington copy of Magna Carta

The professors also collated the seven originals with each other and discovered that a new text of the original Magna Carta had been prepared when the clerks were ordered to keep to the format then designed. This was a high bar for the newly found script but using ultraviolet light and spectral imaging, the researchers discovered that HLS MS 172 passed muster, with its text perfectly matching up with that in the originals. Professor Carpenter suggested that this exacting uniformity also provided new evidence of the importance of the high status of Magna Carta in the eyes of its contemporary world. The text was so important that it had to be correct in every detail.

Thomas Clarkson
An important person in the Magna Carta
 story and leading slave abolitionist of his day.

Magna Carta means 'the Great Charter' and it represented a triumph of tenacity for the barons in curbing the tendency of King John to accrue all power to the monarch. It forced King John to share power with the barons in 1215, thus changing England's government from an 'Absolute Monarchy' to a 'Limited Monarchy' because it placed legally enforceable limits on his power.  The document made clear that the King, like everyone else, was subject to the law, not above it. It is believed that the King had little intention of keeping his promises but events, and history, favoured the reformers.