Harvard's ‘stained copy' of Magna Carta is the real deal, say experts
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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