Harvard’s $27 Discovery: An Authentic 1300 Magna Carta Found in Law Library

Purchased for just $27.50 shortly after World War II, the faded and water-stained manuscript housed in Harvard Law School’s library had drawn little attention since its arrival in 1946.

That is about to change.

Two British historians, one of whom stumbled upon the manuscript by chance, have revealed that it is in fact an original 1300 version—not a mere copy—of the Magna Carta, the medieval document that laid the groundwork for many of the world’s most cherished freedoms.

It is among only seven surviving documents from that year.

“I never expected in my lifetime to discover a Magna Carta,” said David Carpenter, a medieval history professor at King’s College London, recalling the moment in December 2023 when he made the remarkable find.

The manuscript’s value is difficult to quantify, but acquiring a 710-year-old Magna Carta for less than $30 (roughly $500 today) is undoubtedly one of the bargains of the last century. For comparison, a Magna Carta sold for $21.3 million in 2007.

Nicholas Vincent, a medieval history professor at the University of East Anglia, helped authenticate the document. He noted that the manuscript, which bound the nation’s rulers to act within the law, has resurfaced at a time when Harvard faces significant pressure from the former Trump administration.

“In this particular case, it concerns an institution being directly challenged by the state itself, so it seems almost providential that it has emerged when and where it has,” Vincent said.

'You and I both know what this is!'

Providence aside, the discovery was largely accidental.

Carpenter was at his home in Blackheath, southeast London, browsing digital images from Harvard Law School’s library as part of research for a book when he opened a file labeled HLS MS 172, the catalog name for Harvard Law School Manuscript 172.

“I got to 172 and it was a single parchment leaf of the Magna Carta,” he said. “And I thought, ‘Oh my God, this looks like an original, because I’ve read originals.’”

Carpenter emailed Vincent, who was then working at a library in Brussels. “David sent it with a message saying, ‘What do you think this is?’” Vincent recalled. “I replied in seconds, ‘You and I both know what this is!’”

The two scholars confirmed the manuscript’s authenticity after Harvard Law School photographed it under ultraviolet light and subjected it to multiple spectral imaging techniques, which can reveal details invisible to the naked eye.

By comparing it to six known 1300 originals, they found the text matched perfectly, as did its dimensions: 489 by 473 millimeters. The handwriting, featuring a large capital “E” at the start of “Edwardus” and elongated letters on the first line, also aligned.

“This is the best thing that can happen to a librarian,” said Amanda Watson, deputy dean of Harvard Law School’s library. “Our daily work is to digitize, preserve, save, and open up access to items for people like David Carpenter.”

Watson added that the document had been exhibited occasionally but, as part of a large collection, was not on permanent display. The library has yet to decide whether it will now be made publicly available, but Watson said she could not envision it being sold.

“In the United States, owning items that are seven centuries old is truly special,” added Jonathan Zittrain, professor of international law and director of Harvard Law School’s library.

'The Law of the Land'

The Magna Carta—Latin for “Great Charter”—has been invoked to support numerous causes over the centuries, sometimes on shaky historical ground. However, it has grown into a global symbol of the importance of fundamental freedoms, including habeas corpus. By limiting the power of the monarch, it came to represent protection against arbitrary and unjust governance.

One of its most famous clauses states: “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived in any way… except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.”

Originally issued in 1215, it documented concessions won by rebellious barons from the obstinate King John of England, often known as King John the Bad in folklore.

Although King John later annulled the charter, his son Henry III issued revised versions, the last in 1225, which were reaffirmed by Henry’s son Edward I in 1297 and again in 1300.

The document influenced the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights contains several provisions believed to derive from the Magna Carta.

There are 25 original Magna Carta manuscripts in existence, produced at different times. Including Harvard’s, only three are located outside the United Kingdom.

Harvard Law School acquired its copy from a London legal bookseller, Sweet & Maxwell, who had purchased the manuscript at Sotheby’s auction house in December 1945.

At that auction, it was catalogued as a copy with an incorrect date of 1327 and sold for £42—about a fifth of the average annual income in the UK at the time—on behalf of Air Vice-Marshal Forster Maynard, a World War I fighter pilot.

Maynard inherited the manuscript from the family of Thomas and John Clarkson, noted British abolitionist activists from the 1780s onward.

Vincent believes the document may be a lost Magna Carta issued for the former parliamentary district of Appleby-in-Westmorland in northern England, last referenced in writing in 1762.

While undeniably famous, many Britons seem to have only a vague understanding of the Magna Carta. Former Prime Minister David Cameron famously struggled to translate the term “Magna Carta” when asked on a late-night talk show in 2012.

Yet few dispute its significance in the development of Western ideas of rights and liberties. With some of these freedoms now under renewed threat, Vincent said the Harvard discovery is timely.

The Magna Carta, he said, subjects the monarch to the rule of law. “The head of state cannot simply act against someone because he dislikes them; he must act according to law.”

The charter’s text is incorporated into 17 U.S. state constitutions, “so there is more of it in American state law than in British law,” Vincent noted.

Vincent compared the discovery to finding a masterpiece by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, of whom only 36 paintings survive. “He is considered the rarest of all the great masters, so there are fewer of these than Vermeers,” he said.

Both Vincent and Carpenter plan to visit Harvard Law School next month to see and handle the document in person for the first time, a moment Vincent predicted will be deeply moving.