It could well be argued that the signing by King John, and subsequent issuing, of Magna Carta in 1215 was the most decisive episode in English history. Contemporaries were in no doubt about its importance. Royal clerks set about immediately making copies and sealing them. At least 20 were made and put in the archives of cathedrals and other safe places. The charter, suitably amended, was reissued many times, notably in 1217 and 1225, and in derivative documents hundreds of times.
Although Magna Carta is now 800 years old, it is amazing what has survived. Runnymede, the meadow on the Thames where it was signed, is much as it was then. Four of the original copies are still intact. Two are in the British Library. One is in Lincoln Cathedral, another at Salisbury, both original places of deposit. Official documents from the first 50 years of its history that can still be studied can be numbered in hundreds, perhaps thousands.
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