Add MS 89344

Engraving of Magna Carta by John Pine, 1st state (London, 1733).

By Permission of The Right Honourable Peter Lord King, Baron of Ockham, Lord High Chancellor of Great-Britain [and others], Trustees of the Cottonian Library. This Plate being a correct Copy of King John's Great Charter, taken from an Original now remaining in the Cottonian Library, is to them most humbly Dedicated (London: J. Pine, [1733])

A coloured facsimile, on vellum, of one of the British Library’s two manuscripts of the 1215 Magna Carta (Cotton Charter XIII 31A), made shortly after the Cotton library fire (October 1731). The engraving provides a faithful reproduction of the medieval script and seal of Magna Carta (the only manuscript of King John’s Magna Carta with its original seal still attached). The shields of the barons have been coloured by hand.

John Pine (d. 1756) was commissioned to make this engraving in 1733 by the Trustees of the Cottonian Library. At the foot is this statement by David Casley (d. 1754), Deputy Keeper of the Cottonian Library: ‘There are two Originals of King Johns Magna Charta, of the Liberties of England, in the Cottonian Library … [the fire] shrivell’d up both sides of [this] Magna Charta, and melted the Wax of the Seal, so that the Impression cannot now be discerned … And to transmit to Posterity the Writing thereof, this Copy is engraven in the same Form and Hand; having only Nineteen Letters supply’d from the other Original, which are wanting in this by reason of two holes in the Parchment.’ The engraving was authenticated by Casley and the other commissioners, dated 9 May 1733.