The Lacock Magna Carta

The Lacock Magna Carta Story

|When issued by Henry III at Westminster on the 11th February 1225, the Wiltshire copy of Magna Carta was given to the High Sheriff of Wiltshire, William Longspée for safekeeping in the county capital of Salisbury. On his death in March 1226, his wife, Ela 3rd Countess of Salisbury temporarily took on the role of High Sheriff until 1228. She then applied for the role on a permanent basis in 1231 and was successful, remaining in the role for more than five years.

Part of the continuing responsibilities of the High Sheriff was to look after the Wiltshire copy of the 1225 Magna Carta. When she then retired from public life in 1238, Ela joined the Abbey which she had originally founded in Lacock, Wiltshire in 1232 and the Magna Carta document went with her, where it remained for the next seven hundred years.

Matilda Talbot, who had been owner of Lacock Abbey until 1944 when she gave Lacock and the Abbey to the National Trust, presented the Lacock Magna Carta to the British Museum in 1945. Subsequently it was transferred to the British Library on its foundation in 1973 and can be seen today at the purpose built building next to St.Pancras Station in London.

This document, as well as being of national and international importance, also links every single owner of the Abbey, from Ela, 3rd Countess of Salisbury, all the way up to the National Trust, the current guardians of the legacy. If some of the details of the Lacock Magna Carta's history are a bit indistinct at the moment, then that is the reason for this site. Amongst other things, how on earth did it survive the Dissolution and move from being part of the Nunnery, to Sir William Sharington's library?