Why Harvard mistook its £16m Magna Carta for £20 knock-off

Telegraph

26-06-2025

A British historian has blamed 'post-war chaos' for an original Magna Carta being mis-identified as a £20 copy.
It emerged in May that a copy of Magna Carta bought by Harvard University for just $27.50 in the 1940s is actually an original worth $21 million (£16 million), according to scans.
Speaking at a meeting of the Pipe Roll Society at The National Archives in London, Prof David Carpenter said the document was probably mis-catalogued by an auction house after the Second World War.
'This was just after the war, there was still a measure of chaos, someone has mis-read the date on it,' said Prof Carpenter, of King's College London. 'This is most likely how it happened.'
The document, originally drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Stephen Langton, in 1215 to make peace between King John and rebel barons, is credited with laying the foundations of many democracies around the world.
Although the first version was annulled, it was reconfirmed in 1300 by Edward I, promising protection of church rights, limits on taxes and access to impartial justice.
Four of its clauses, including a guarantee of due legal process, are still in law today.
There were thought to be only six originals remaining from the final version and Harvard believed it had bought an unofficial replica at auction in 1946.
Prof Carpenter was studying unofficial copies of Magna Carta when he came across the digitised version of the document on the Harvard Law School Library website and realised it might be an original document and not a copy.
'Of course, appearances can be deceptive, but the handwriting of the scribe who wrote the document was very similar,' he said.
'I immediately sent the image to my colleague Nicholas Vincent asking him: 'Is this what I think it is?''
Speaking at the same meeting, Prof Vincent, of the University of East Anglia, said: 'I told him immediately, you know what that is.'
Harvard's document was in a poor condition and so the two professors needed to use spectral imaging and ultraviolet light to make the text more legible.
'It matched word for word with the other charters confirmed by King Edward in 1300,' added Prof Carpenter.
Prof Vincent believes it was issued in 1300 by King Edward I to the former parliamentary borough of Appleby, in what was then Westmorland, and later fell into the hands of the local Lowther family.
They passed it to slavery abolitionist Thomas Clarkson and then via his estate it ended up in the hands of Air Vice-Marshal Forster Maynard, who was a pilot in the First World War and served with the RAF in Malta in the Second World War. He then took it to London book dealers Sweet & Maxwell, who sold it on to the auction house where Harvard bought it.
Prof Vincent told the meeting: 'It's an extraordinary story, the Harvard Magna Carta has an extraordinary provenance.'