Harvard's 'stained copy' of Magna Carta is the real deal, say experts
Source: The Times (UK)
A rare Magna Carta document from 1300 has been identified in the US after being sold for just £42 by a First World War flying ace.
The manuscript is believed to be one of only seven surviving from Edward I’s reissue in 1300.
Harvard Law School bought it in 1946 at a Sotheby’s auction where it had been described as a “copy … made in 1327 … somewhat rubbed and damp-stained”.
It had been bought previously from Air Vice-Marshal Forster “Sammy” Maynard who, it is thought, took possession of the document after inheriting the archives of Thomas and John Clarkson, abolitionist brothers who had retired to the Lake District in the late 1700s and befriended William Lowther, the hereditary lord of the manor of Appleby.
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Read more: https://www.thetimes.com/uk/history/article/harvard-magna-carta-genuine-1300-2sl8330x5
This is a real Magna Carta, previously believed lost, that was issued to the former parliamentary borough of Appleby.
And oh, how perfect that it belongs to a university under attack by a president who would be king.
And that it went to Harvard after being sold by a flying ace who inherited it from abolitionists - all of whom would have had contempt for our corrupt, lawless, draft-dodging, racist, DEI-hating president.
Nicholas Vincent, a professor of medieval history who helped verify the old document is genuine, said that "given present problems over liberties, over the sense of constitutional tradition in America," the provenance (history of ownership) couldn't have been better.
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