For the first time in their 800-year history, the four surviving “original” versions of the Magna Carta have been brought together at the British Library in Londonin an operation planned with military precision.
“It’s pretty high security,” admits June Osborne, Dean of Salisbury Cathedral; its copy of the charter has left home for the first time in decades to join its “siblings” in the exhibition.
“We had conservators all around it to make sure that in the transfer nothing threatened the document. But as in all of these matters of security the greatest advantage is secrecy,” she adds with a smile, refusing to go into detail about how, or when, the priceless page was brought to the capital. “I can tell you that as Dean I did not know when it moved … We have taken it really seriously.”
It’s all a far cry from the days when one of the charter’s previous custodians used to hide it under her bed for safe-keeping.
–
“It has become a relic in the best sense of the word, in that it represents a whole tradition,” says Justin Champion, professor of history at the University of Holloway. “It is a bit of a disappointment when you first see it… [it’s a] grubby brown manuscript,” but, he insists, it is much more than that.
“The Magna Carta [has become] not just an artifact [but] an idea — and as we know ideas are much more dangerous than things.”
Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy is at the British Library from March 13 to September 1, 2015; Magna Carta: Spirit of Justice – Power of Words is at Salisbury Cathedral from March 7, 2015 and Magna Carta: Power, Justice and Accountability is at Lincoln Cathedral and Lincoln Castle from April 1, 2015.
