Harvard’s Forgotten Stained Document Holds a Shocking Secret: An Original 1300 Magna Carta Unveiled After Decades
In a statement released by the university, David Carpenter, the professor of medieval history at King’s College London who made the discovery, called this newly rediscovered Magna Carta “one of the world’s most valuable documents.”
“This is a fantastic discovery,” Carpenter 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 corner stone of freedoms past, present and yet to be won.”
Why The Magna Carta Is One Of The Most Important Documents In History
Lorin Granger/Harvard Law SchoolThe large “E” as well as other features of this document were characteristic of all the other originals from 1300.
The Magna Carta, or “Great Charter,” was signed by King John of England on June 15, 1215, at Runnymede, a meadow by the River Thames. The document effectively served as a peace treaty between the king and a group of rebellious barons who had felt the king was behaving like a tyrant. King John’s rule had been plagued by heavy taxation, arbitrary justice, and military failures, which sowed discontent among his people.
The Magna Carta was a written agreement that attempted to limit the powers of the monarchy and assert that the king, like anyone else, was subject to the law. It was a radical idea for the time, of course, given that kings had long been considered to have divine right and to only be accountable to God.
The document contains 63 clauses addressing various grievances, including protection of church rights, access to swift justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown. One of its most famous clauses, for instance, states: “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions… except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.”
