Magna Carta or the ‘Great Charter’was agreed to by King John #onthisday in 1215. It was written to ease tensions between the unpopular king and the barons whose privileges had slowly been eroded. The charter meant, among other things, the king was now subject to laws, and the barons’ rights were protected. It’s written in Latin, the official ‘language of record’ that was only understood by the elite – the nobility spoke Norman French at this time, and the charter was quickly translated to make it more accessible. This 18th-century copy of a manuscript in the Cottonian Library (Cotton MS Augustus II 106), has the arms of the 25 barons around the side of the text. It shows how the text of one of the surviving 1215 manuscripts would have looked before it was damaged by fire in 1731. http://ow.ly/Qq6R30cBVp1
#MagnaCarta #GreatCharter
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