After all, it was no longer a copy of the Magna Carta.

It is considered one of the founding documents of Western political thought and law. Franklin Roosevelt, in his inauguration speech in 1941, considered it a medieval testament to "democratic aspirations" .

Written in 1215 and signed by King John of England, the Magna Carta not only guaranteed the freedoms and rights of its subjects, but also limited the power of the English monarchs, declaring that they were not above the law. In essence, it was an agreement between the King and the barons – in exchange for certain concessions, including tax limits, the nobles reaffirmed their loyalty to the sovereign.

Between 1215 and 1300, different kings of England renewed their commitment to these principles by producing new copies of the document. It is thought that there may have been around 200 originals in total. Of these, 24 remain today, preserved mainly in British institutions and collections.

Given the unique importance of the text of the Magna Carta, later copies abound. And everything pointed to it being nothing more than a manuscript acquired by Harvard Law School (Massachusetts, USA) in 1946 and subsequently placed in a corner of the university library, where it was forgotten for decades. It had been catalogued as a copy from 1327.

Until two medieval history professors decided to investigate the document with a magnifying glass and discovered that, after all, there is a high probability that it is a lost original.

"Professors, who spent a year investigating the Harvard document, believe it came from the town of Appleby in Cumbria," writes the BBC .

It passed through the hands of a landowning family named Lowthers, who gave it to Thomas Clarkson (1760 – 1846), a prominent writer and politician who fought for the abolition of slavery. From him, it passed by inheritance to the Maynard family, one of whose members sold the document at a Sotheby's auction in 1945.

At the time, a London bookseller bought the manuscript for £42 – a modest sum, but which still turned out to be a bad deal, since a few months later Harvard University would acquire it for £7 – the equivalent of around €400 today.

The professors' analysis showed that "the handwriting and dimensions are consistent with those of the six previously known originals from 1300," explains the BBC . As for the content of the text, the words used and their order correspond exactly to the documents from that period.

The 27-year difference between the previous dating and the new hypothesis changes everything. This is, after all, “a lost and extraordinarily rare original of the Magna Carta from the reign of Edward I,” the experts concluded. A copy from 1297 was sold in New York 18 years ago for $21 million.