Tucked away at the Houghton Library at the Harvard Law School is an archived copy of the Magna Carta, the 1215 document that influenced the creation of the U.S. Constitution by setting down principles of civil rights and justice – including the tenet that even kings must follow the law. Librarians took it out Thursday for a special visitor: Sir Lindsay Hoyle, speaker of the U.K. Parliament’s House of Commons.
Hoyle is on a two-day dash through Boston, Cambridge, Duxbury and Plymouth to mark the United States’ 250th anniversary and celebrate the relationship between Massachusetts and his nation. That pace slowed as librarians ushered him to a wood-paneled, book-lined room and laid the 811-year-old vellum on a table for him to peruse.
The speaker leaned over the document and examined it at length. It’s a rumpled, browned square (80 years ago, Sotheby’s auction house called it “somewhat rubbed and damp-stained”) yet readable and an object of awe.
“That is quite something,” Hoyle said. “Very, very special, very impressive.”
The document was once thought to be a replica, having been bought by Harvard for just $27.50 in 1946, said Amanda Watson, the law school’s assistant dean for library and information services. When given to World War I flying ace Forster Maynard in gratitude for him saving the borough of Appleby from being bombed, “it was a gift, but they also thought it was a copy,” Watson said. “It was quite a valuable gift, but no one knew how valuable.”
Last year, looking for a copy of the Magna Carter for publication, a researcher in Britain examined Harvard’s versions online and was shocked to discover that what he thought to be a copy from 1327 was actually an original – one of seven from King Edward I’s 1300 confirmation. (The original seals were cut off during wartime to protect it, disguising its value, Watson said.)
It’s “one of the world’s most valuable documents,” said that academic, David Carpenter, last year.
Hoyle spoke of his feelings upon seeing it.
It struck him that “we come all this way to find a piece of history from the United Kingdom, from England – we’ve got to remember this was England at that time – and the fact that the world has been built on the values of the Magna Carta. That’s what binds us together so well. Your constitution is entwined in the history of the Magna Carta,” Hoyle said. “That’s what makes our relationship much more special than any other country.”
Urged to go beyond the historical and address the political at a time Donald Trump and the Supreme Court have placed the president above the law, Hoyle chose diplomacy:
“I always say, whatever, wherever, remember why the Magna Carta came about.”
He would say no more. On Friday, Hoyle is expected to head to Duxbury to pay tribute to Myles Standish, the pilgrim who was born in Chorley, England – the district Hoyle represents in Parliament – and to Plymouth to tour Mayflower II, the full-scale reproduction of the ship that carried Standish to Massachusetts in 1620.
He called the Harvard visit “something so special.”
“To be able to see this,” Hoyle told his Harvard hosts, “I’ve got to say, is very moving. Thank you.”
Hoyle called Harvard’s purchase in 1946 “probably the best $30 I’ve ever heard of being invested.”
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