Harvard Bought The Magna Carta For $27.50 Back In 1946
The library of Harvard Law School bought a tattered document for $27.50 back in 1946, and records described it as a copy of the Magna Carta with some stains on it.
The Magna Carta was Britain’s 1215 charter that restricted the authority of the monarch and protected individual rights.
Now, scholars have discovered that this copy is actually an original. It is a rare version of the Magna Carta that was reissued in 1300 by Edward I. According to Harvard Law School, the document is just one of seven known surviving copies of this reissue.
A medieval historian at King’s College London named David Carpenter was browsing Harvard’s digital archive when he stumbled upon an image of the document, known as HLS MS 172.
He thought it looked like an original from 1300, so he reached out to another medieval historian for a second opinion.
“The instant I saw it, I knew! Everything about the document looked right,” said Nicholas Vincent, a medieval historian at the University of East Anglia.
“The layout, the text, the handwriting, and the large capital E for Edwardus.”
The Magna Carta, which is Latin for “great charter,” was created in 1215 by a group of English barons. They wanted to protect their property and rights against King John, per the National Archives. It established that the king was not above the law.
The charter also later served as the basis for the United States’ founding documents, including the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Today, four known copies of the original issue are in existence.
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Multiple versions of the charter emerged in the years that followed. In 1225, the “definitive version” of the Magna Carta was released and then reissued on several occasions.
The 1300 reissue was the last time that a king of England confirmed the 1225 Magna Carta, according to Carpenter.
Experts at Harvard Law Library used spectral and ultraviolet imaging to scan the historic document to determine its age. The images allowed them to compare the document with other originals from 1300.
This original 1300 Magna Carta ended up at Harvard through a series of events. A Royal Air Force veteran had inherited the document and decided to sell it at a Sotheby’s auction in 1945. At the auction, it was incorrectly dated to 1327.
The London book dealer Sweet & Maxwell purchased it for £42. About a month later, the Harvard Law School Library bought the document for $27.50, which equates to $450 today.
“That is a fantastic discovery,” said Carpenter. “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 yet to be won.”
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