Magna Carta Day

Today is Magna Carta Day, the anniversary of that June day in the year 1215 when, at Runnymede meadow beside the River Thames in Surrey, English barons presented King John with a written list of rights they demanded that he recognize…and he did.  So what has this got to do with me doing a blog posting?

In 1976, Nancy, Mom, Aunt Rachel and I went to Washington, D.C. to apply for Nancy's wedding license.  One of the places we went and visited was the Capitol Building and there in the Rotunda was being displayed an original copy of the Magna Carta.  I remembered studying about it in English history so it was quite exciting to see the real thing.  It had been loaned by the British government in honor of our Bicentennial Celebration in 1976. 

The copy of the Magna Carta exhibited in the Rotunda in 1976 was one of the two copies from the manuscript collection of Sir Robert Cotton, long preserved in the British Museum and classified as "Cotton Manuscript Augustus II, 106." Who first owned it is unknown. Sir Robert Cotton acquired it in 1629, the gift of a friend, Humphrey Wyems.  The document loaned to the United States is regarded by scholars as the most authoritative copy extant. It was a gesture of extraordinary generosity that Britain loaned a manuscript of such incalculable value so that visitors during the Bicentennial year could see the most enduring symbol of our inherited liberties - liberties common to the free and independent people of both Great Britain and the United States.

Written in Latin, the Magna Carta is quite simply one of the key moments in the history of democracy. Among other things, the charter established habeas corpus meaning that citizens can’t be thrown in jail at the drop of a hat. Much of its content comes from the Charter of Liberties issued by Henry I in 1100.