Harvard Law Paid $27 for a Copy of Magna Carta. It's an Original

Summary

Bought for $27.50 after World War II, the faint, water stained manuscript in the library of Harvard Law School had attracted relatively little attention since it arrived there in 1946.That is about to change.Two British academics, one of whom happened on the manuscript by chance, have discovered that it is an original 1300 version — not a copy, as long thought — of Magna Carta, the medieval document that helped establish some of the world’s most cherished liberties.It is one of just seven such documents from that date still in existence.“I never in all my life expected to discover a Magna Carta,” said David Carpenter, a professor of medieval history at King’s College London, describing the moment in December 2023 when he made the startling find.The manuscript’s value is hard to estimate, although it is fair to say that its price tag of under $30 (about $500 today) must make it one of the bargains of the last century. A 710-year-old version of Magna Carta was sold in 2007 for $21.3 million.Nicholas Vincent, a professor of medieval history at the University of East Anglia, in eastern England, helped authenticate the text. He noted that the document, which bound the nation's rulers to acting within the law, had resurfaced at a time when Harvard has come under extraordinary pressure from the Trump administration.“In this particular instance we are dealing with an institution that is under direct attack from the state itself, so it’s almost providential it has turned up where it has at this particular time,” he said.“You and I both know what that is!”Providential or not, the discovery happened largely by chance.Professor Carpenter was at home in Blackheath, south east London, plowing his way through Harvard Law School’s digital images as research for a book when he opened a file named HLS MS 172 — the catalog name for Harvard Law School Manuscript 172.“I get down to 172 and it’s a single parchment sheet of Magna Carta,” he said. “And I think ‘Oh my god, this looks to me ...