2015 – an important year for Magna Carta

This year marks an important historical event – the 800th anniversary of the sealing of the great charter by King John on 15 June 1215 at Runnymede on the banks of the Thames between Windsor and Staines. Magna Carta lays down the principle that ‘No free man shall be arrested, or imprisoned, or deprived of his property, or outlawed, or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor shall we go against him or send against him, unless by legal judgement of his peers, or by the law of the land’. This became the fundamental principal of English justice, the basis of the United States Constitution and part of the law of all modern democracies.

There are just four surviving original exemplars of the 1215 Magna Carta. One of these is inscribed Lincolnia on its reverse, and is owned by Lincoln Cathedral. Lincoln’s Magna Carta is currently on tour, returning to Lincoln Castle later in 2015 when it will be exhibited permanently in a newly designed building – the David P J Ross Magna Carta Vault.

The four surviving copies of the 1215 Magna Carta have been awarded ‘Memory of the World’ status by UNESCO, in recognition of their outstanding universal value. Apart from the one at Lincoln, there are two at the British Library (one quite badly damaged in a fire) and one at Salisbury Cathedral.

Magna Carta is written on a single membrane of parchment. The text, written in iron gall ink, consists of 54 lines of closely-written and abbreviated Latin, in the neat hand of one of the clerks of the royal chancery. Magna Carta was drawn up in 1215 when King John’s barons forced him to agree to limitations on his power because he had levied heavy taxes to pay for his unsuccessful wars abroad and charged excessively for the exercise of royal justice.