Office of Continuity Verification

Magna Carta

OR-1215-magna-carta-12-4 CERTIFIED FOR PUBLIC USE CAP Rev. 12.4

Event name

Magna Carta

Approved date range

June 1215

Certifying office

Office of Continuity Verification

Certification date

March 3, 2026

Effective revision

Revision 12.4

Published

August 11, 2026

Current approved summary

On June 15, 1215, in a field at Runnymede, King John of England authenticated a charter addressed to the grievances of his barons by affixing his great seal. He did not sign it, and the Bureau maintains no procedure by which he could have.

Pope Innocent III annulled the charter on August 24, 1215, within three months of its issue. It was reissued with alterations in 1216, 1217, and 1225. Four copies of the 1215 charter survive. Two are held by the British Library, one of which was badly damaged by fire in 1731. One is at Salisbury Cathedral. One is at Lincoln Castle.

The charter itself has no chapters. It is a single sheet of continuous Latin text with no divisions and no numbers. The sixty three numbered chapters in general use were supplied by Sir William Blackstone in his critical edition of 1759.

The Bureau’s approved count is sixty three. One of the sixty three is HAEB Property Receipt 1215-17B, entered in the chapter inventory under Revision 12.0.

The charter remains available.

Approved date range

June 1215.

The reissues of 1216, 1217, and 1225 are published as revisions to a single document rather than as three additional documents. This reduces the number of catalog records the Bureau maintains and does not alter what was written.

The annulment of August 1215 is recorded as a service interruption. Its duration is given as ten years, ending with the 1225 reissue. The Bureau’s availability figure for the charter covers the interruption and has not been adjusted.

Approved participants

1. King John of England, as grantor and sealing party.
2. The barons assembled at Runnymede, as petitioners.
3. Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the other negotiators named in the charter’s preamble.
4. Pope Innocent III, in the subsequent capacity of annulling authority.
5. Henry III, in the capacity of reissuing authority in 1216, 1217, and 1225.
6. Sir William Blackstone, in the capacity of supplying the numbering.
7. Employee 000, as custodian of the property receipt.

Participant 7 is not named in the charter. Participant 7 is named on the receipt.

Required causes

The following causes must remain in the record for the event to remain compliant. If any of them is withdrawn, the event returns to review and the charter becomes unavailable during the review.

1. The loss of Normandy in 1204 and the cost of the campaigns that followed.
2. Disputes over scutage, feudal dues, and the terms on which they were levied.
3. Baronial grievance sufficient to produce an assembly.
4. The physical presence of the parties at Runnymede in June 1215.
5. A great seal in working order.

The Bureau notes that cause 5 is the only required cause presently held in Bureau custody.

Recognized effects

1. A charter entered the record whose provisions, as later numbered, ran to sixty three chapters, of which the great majority addressed feudal obligation, inheritance, the treatment of widows, debts, forest law, the conduct of royal officials, and the removal of fish weirs.
2. Four of the sixty three chapters remain valid in law today, according to UK Parliament.
3. The charter was confirmed by later kings and parliaments and was invoked in seventeenth century English constitutional argument and in American constitutional tradition.
4. Four copies of the 1215 charter entered long term custody in institutions that are not the Bureau.
5. One property receipt entered long term custody in the Office of Records That Should Not Exist.

Effect 3 is the effect most frequently cited by the public. Effect 5 is the effect the Bureau is able to verify without a loan agreement.

Interpretive boundaries

The Bureau does not adjudicate the significance of the charter. Significance is a field on the catalog card. It is currently set to HIGH and was last reviewed in 1974.

The Bureau does not adjudicate whether the charter established individual liberty. That question is a formatting concern. The provisions are published in the order in which they appear, and the reader may weight them.

The Bureau does adjudicate attachment.

Property Receipt 1215-17B is HAEB Form 17-B, Declaration of Out-of-Period Property, at Revision 12.4. It cites the 1987 revision to the Continuity and Prior Events Act of 1908. It is signed as custodian by Employee 000. It was found in contact with the reverse of one of the surviving copies and it was cataloged where it was found. Case HAEB-1215-17B governs the receipt and is closed by definition.

Under Directive 9.9 a cataloged record is part of the record it is cataloged with. Under Directive 6.3 a property receipt may not be withdrawn while the property remains unreturned. The receipt was therefore entered in the chapter inventory.

The Office of Anachronism Control has twice requested its removal. Both requests were declined on the evidence of the detachment trial, during which the catalog count fell from sixty three to sixty two. The chapter that went missing is recorded in the case file and is withheld from this entry. Restoring the count required restoring the receipt.

The Bureau notes that the 1987 revision cited on the receipt amends an Act of 1908 that cannot be located, so that the revision cannot be compared with the text it revises. The Office of Internal Historical Affairs has been asked to establish the Act’s prior existence on HAEB Form 0. The request is open. The citation is valid while it is open.

Chief Historian’s note, retained at the author’s request. The charter has no chapters. Blackstone gave it sixty three and we have given it one of them. When we took the receipt off, the number that vanished was not the receipt’s. I have raised this in each of the last four revisions and have been asked to raise it in the next one.

The note is retained. The count is unchanged.

What you may remember differently

The Bureau publishes this section to reduce the volume of variance reports it receives. Several of the recollections below are correct as history and incorrect as filing.

1. You may remember that King John signed Magna Carta. He did not. He affixed his great seal. The Bureau accepts seals and has no approved procedure for a royal signature. Illustrations showing a signing are common and postdate the event by centuries.
2. You may remember the numbered clauses as part of the charter. They are not. The 1215 charter is a single sheet of continuous Latin text with no divisions and no numbers. The sixty three chapters everyone cites, including the Bureau, were supplied by Sir William Blackstone in his critical edition of 1759. The numbering is a later convenience that has been in use so long it is mistaken for the document.
3. You may remember Magna Carta as a charter of individual liberty. Most of its provisions concerned feudal obligation, inheritance, debts, forest law, the conduct of royal officials, and fish weirs. The liberty reading developed later, through confirmation, argument, and use. The Bureau considers the later reading correct because it is the reading currently filed.
4. You may remember that the charter took effect in 1215 and stayed in effect. Pope Innocent III annulled it within three months and England went to war. It was reissued with alterations in 1216, 1217, and 1225, and the 1225 text is the version that entered the statute tradition. The Bureau records the interval as an interruption and not as a failure.
5. You may remember a single original. Four copies of the 1215 charter survive, in three institutions. The Bureau’s inventory records four copies and one receipt.
6. You may remember that Magna Carta is still the law. Four of the sixty three chapters remain valid in law today, according to UK Parliament. The Bureau does not publish a figure for the other fifty nine and asks that it not be requested.

Members of the public whose recollection differs from this section may file HAEB Form 17-B only in respect of the receipt. Recollection concerning the charter itself is handled elsewhere.

Revision history

1. Revision 11.8. Reissues of 1216, 1217, and 1225 reclassified from separate documents to revisions of a single document.
2. Revision 12.0. Property Receipt 1215-17B entered in the chapter inventory. Approved count unchanged at sixty three.
3. Revision 12.1. Restored winter.
4. Revision 12.2. Revision not issued.
5. Revision 12.3. Removed references introduced by 12.2.
6. Revision 12.4. Clarified that 12.2 did not occur.

Entries 4 and 6 are both current. Entry 5 removed references to a revision that entry 6 establishes was never made. The removals were completed.

Known nonconformities

1. One of the sixty three approved chapters is a Bureau property receipt. When the receipt was detached during a trial, the catalog read sixty two.
2. The receipt is dated before the office that issued it and cites the 1987 revision to a 1908 authority that cannot be located.
3. The custodial signature on the receipt is that of Employee 000, for whom no personnel record exists.
4. The charter was annulled in 1215. The Bureau’s availability figure for the charter has never fallen below 99.9997 percent.

None of the above is open. Case HAEB-1215-17B is closed by definition.

Certification

I certify that the event described in this entry occurred within the approved date range, that its recognized effects remain in effect, and that the approved chapter count is correct as filed.

Lena Or, Chief Historian, HAEB-0302 Office of Continuity Verification March 3, 2026

Countersigned as custodian of the receipt by Employee 000, HAEB-0000, date not established.

Receipt held by the Office of Records That Should Not Exist. Acting Director, Elias P. Thorne, HAEB-0000-A.

The past remains available