'Cheap copy' of Magna Carta is a 1300 original

British professors' discovery at Harvard

- By Sam Russell

A DOCUMENT sold as a copy of Magna Carta for a sum worth under £250 today has now been identified as an original issue worth millions.

A London book dealer sold it for $27.50 in 1946 to Harvard Law School Library in the US and even made a huge loss in the sale, having bought it for £42 a month earlier.

They snapped it up at auction when it was sold by First World War flying ace Air Vice-Marshal Forster "Sammy" Maynard, who had inherited the document from leading abolitionists Thomas and John Clarkson.

The Sotheby's auction catalogue described it as a "copy made in 1327, somewhat rubbed and damp-stained".

But still Sweet & Maxwell, now a major legal publishers, were happy to pay £42 for it nearly £1,500 today.

At the time, the post-war exchange rate of $4.03 to the pound meant £42 would have been worth $169.26.

Yet the bookseller let it go to Harvard for a fraction of that.

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