The timing is impeccable.
On the heels of the beginning of the festivities celebrating the 800 year anniversary of the Magna Carta, in which all four surviving copies of the original edition of 1215 edition will be displayed together for the first time, word comes that another early copy has been discovered!
The four surviving copies of the Magna Carta being prepared for display at the British Library. Photograph: Clare Kendall/British Library/PA
Unearthed at the Council Archives for the town of Sandwich the copy was found when researchers happened upon it while looking for a copy of the town’s original Charter of the Forest.
From Paul Graeme, mayor of Sandwich Town Council:
On behalf of Sandwich Town Council, I would like to say that we are absolutely delighted to discover that an original Magna Carta and original Charter of the Forest, previously unknown, are in our ownership.
To own one of these documents, let alone both, is an immense privilege given their international importance. Perhaps it is fitting that they belong to a town where Thomas Paine lived, who proposed in his pamphlet Common Sense a Continental Charter for what were then the American colonies, ‘answering to what is called the Magna Carta of England… securing freedom and property to all men, and … the free exercise of religion’.
More at Huffington Post UK: Magna Carta Found In Council Archives, Valued At £10 Million.
Previously on Book Patrol:
Coming Soon: The four surviving copies of the Magna Carta will be under one roof