Australia’s 1297 edition of Magna Carta, bought in 1952 for £12,500, is now worth $35m.
The precious document, the “foundation stone of constitutional and parliamentary government”, is in storage at Parliament House in Canberra while a new display case is built.
In answers to questions on notice published this week, the Department of Parliamentary Services said the Inspeximus issue of Magna Carta (meaning it has been inspected and confirmed to be valid) should be back on display by the end of next year. The department said the document had been valued at $35m.
“We’ve now contracted for the construction of a suitable display case that will surround it with appropriate inert gas to ensure it doesn’t deteriorate,” the parliamentary librarian, Dianne Heriot, said.
It is one of only four 1297 editions in existence, and the only one in the southern hemisphere, according to parliament’s website.
“It confirmed the rule of law – the principle that nobody, not even the monarch, is above the law – and, among other freedoms, laid the basis for establishing trial by jury, outlawing arbitrary detention, and ensuring that there should be no taxation without representation,” the website states.
“Over the centuries, its principles have been incorporated into the common law of many nations, and embodied in such momentous documents as the United States Declaration of Independence and constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and, of course, Australia’s own constitution.”
The first Magna Carta (which is Latin for “Great Charter”) was written in 1215 as a peace treaty between King John and his barons, who were rebelling against his authoritarian rule. It established that everyone, including the monarch, had rights and responsibilities under the law.
With the rebellion quelled, King John almost immediately sent the charter to Pope Innocent III to be annulled, then died of dysentery not long after. Magna Carta was amended and reissued in 1216, 1217, 1225 and 1297.
The 1297 version, then, is the definitive one. Edward I of England ordered its reissue, in which he declared that Magna Carta would from then on be a part of common law.
According to the Museum of Australian Democracy, in 1936 a schoolmaster found a 1297 Magna Carta in a desk at King’s school in Somerset. In 1951, the school decided to sell it to raise funds.
The then prime minister, Robert Menzies, decided to buy it for £12,500, describing it as “the most important [purchase] yet made by an Australian library”.
When it arrived, he described it as a “remarkable and historic document”.
“The barons at Runnymede in June 1215 did not know anything about democracy, but what they did was to lay a great deal of democracy’s true foundations,” he said.
