Harvard Law School Paid $27 for a 'Magna Carta' Copy in 1940. It Was Actually An Original

Magna Carta is an important document in British history, however, many of its original copies have disappeared. Recently, a pair of scholars have found one of these elusive copies in the most unexpected place, Harvard University, stated Sky News. 

The Magna Carta was enacted in 1215 under the rule of King John. The document was remarkable because, for the first time, the rights of ordinary people under common law were outlined. The 1215 and 1300 issues of this document were special because it was put out as a single document carrying the king's seal as an official endorsement of the settlement. The documents in these issues are labeled as an 'original.'

In 1946, Harvard Law School bought a Magna Carta document, which they believed was a 'copy' from London book dealers Sweet & Maxwell, according to STV News. The law school reportedly paid 27 dollars and 50 cents for the document. The book dealer got the document from a Sotheby’s auction in London a month earlier. As per the description given by Sotheby's, the copy was issued in 1327 and had since then been "rubbed and damp-stained."

It was apparently put up for sale by First World War flying ace Air Vice-Marshal Forster 'Sammy' Maynard. Maynard had supposedly inherited the document from Thomas and John Clarkson, leading abolitionists of the anti-slavery campaign. It remained in Harvard for decades, recorded as a 'copy' until one fine day, David Carpenter, professor of medieval history at King’s College London, looked it up.

Carpenter was studying online copies of the Magna Carta when he came across the digitized Sotheby version put up by Harvard, stated LBC. Some features that he noted in the document made him think it could be one of the originals. He teamed up with fellow Magna Carta expert Nicholas Vincent, professor of medieval history at the University of East Anglia, for further examinations. 

Several tests were conducted, which included text analysis, that confirmed its 'original' status. Results indicated that the document was issued in 1300 under King Edward I. Carpenter labeled the discovery to be 'fantastic' as now the world has 25 original copies of Magna Carta. Furthermore, the document's historical value makes the finding more special. "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," he explained.

The discovery makes the price of the Harvard document astounding, as the originals can potentially fetch millions of dollars, according to Sky News. Sotheby's sold another 'original' at $21.3m in 2007. However, Harvard doesn't have any plans to sell the crucial document.

The Harvard document is the seventh known original Magna Carta from the 1300 issue, according to LBC. Researchers think it was given to the former parliamentary borough of Appleby in Westmorland, England. Prof. Vicent believes the Harvard document was misidentified because of the exhaustion brought by the Second World War. "I think everyone was knackered at the end of the Second World War. I think whoever read it at Sotheby's and looked at it, I suspect what they thought was 'oh it can't be an original Magna Carta because we'd know about it,'" he said.