What became of Magna Carta?

Abstract

• THE loan of one of the British Library's two exemplars of King John's Magna Carta to the United States to mark the bicentenary of their independence is an historic event in itself, clearly deserving a commemorative note of some kind in this Journal. But what kind? The loan has, however, drawn attention to one part of Magna Carta's history often puzzling to the non-historian, and therefore perhaps worth retelling. What seems most frequently to confuse about Magna Carta is that there is more than one of it. 'But which is the Magna Carta?'. Here it is pertinent to observe that we know remarkably little about what actually happened at Runnymede. Contemporary chroniclers confuse rather than inform. If they bother to mention Magna Carta at all, it is only as an adjunct to the peace made between the king and his rebellious subjects. To reconstruct the events at Runnymede in June 1215, and so answer the question posed above, we are therefore thrown back on what can be deduced from the official records of the King's Chancery and the Magna Carta documents themselves.