History in Documents and a Document in History. Ольга Пасько

king's authority ____________________________________

      10) the crucial principle ________________________________

      Text 3. Magna Carta (Part II)

      1. Read the text and match the questions A-I to the answers 1-9:

      A) Why is there more than one Magna Carta?

      B) What does 'Magna Carta' mean?

      C) What is Magna Carta written on?

      D) What does Magna Carta say?

      E) Why is Magna Carta important?

      F) Where did King John sign Magna Carta?

      G) How much of Magna Carta is valid today?

      H) Why is Magna Carta hard to read?

      I) Why is one copy of Magna Carta burnt?

      1) __________________________________________

      The scribes who produced Magna Carta wrote in Medieval Latin using the typical handwriting found in English documents in the early 13th century. The scribes also followed the usual practice of abbreviating words to save space on the parchment, because it was so expensive to produce.

      2) __________________________________________

      Magna Carta was written on parchment, not on paper. Parchment was the normal writing material in England until the end of the Middle Ages. It was made from sheepskin which was soaked in a bath of lime, then stretched on a frame to dry under tension. When it was dry, the skin was scraped with a curved knife to produce a smooth writing surface for the scribes, who wrote their text with a quill pen.

      3) _________________________________________

      Like other medieval royal charters, Magna Carta was authenticated with the Great Seal, not by the signature of the King. In fact there is no evidence that King John could write at all. Three of the four surviving copies of Magna Carta have lost their wax seals over the centuries. The only one which still has its seal is the burnt copy on display in the British Library. Unfortunately the seal was destroyed when the charter was burnt by fire in 1731, but the Great Seal on display with the Articles of the Barons shows what the seal on Magna Carta would originally have looked like.

      4) _________________________________________

      There is no evidence that a single Magna Carta was written up and sealed when King John met the barons at Runnymede in 1215. Instead, once the terms of Magna Carta had been finalised, the barons renewed their oaths of allegiance to the king. In the days that followed, the terms of the agreement were retrospectively written up into a grant by scribes working in the royal chancery. Many copies of this grant, which later became known as Magna Carta, were sent out to bishops, sheriffs and other officials throughout the country. We don’t know exactly how many were issued, but four now survive, one in Lincoln, one in Salisbury and two here in the British Library.

      5) _________________________________________

      Both copies of Magna Carta in the British Library came from the enormous collection of manuscripts amassed by Sir Robert Cotton who died in 1631. Exactly a century later, in 1731, there was a disastrous fire at Ashburnham House in Westminster where his library was then housed. Many rare and valuable manuscripts were destroyed or damaged in the fire, and unfortunately one of Cotton’s two copies of Magna Carta was caught up in the blaze.

      6) _________________________________________

      'Magna Carta' means 'The Great Charter'. In 1215 it was known as the Charter of Liberties, but when it was confirmed in 1217, the clauses dealing with the law of the royal forest were taken out and put into a separate document known as 'The Charter of the Forest'. After that, people began to refer to