Not all of us had remembered that though Magna Carta
was signed at Runnymede in 1215, the Great Charter which has legal validity today dates from ten years later, and bears the signature not of King John but of King Henry III. That is because the enactment underwent some amendment, and it is of course in its amended form that it remains effective. The generosity of Miss Talbot, of Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire, gives the British Museum a document of literally inestimable value—for it is worth in money just as much as a rich collector would give for it ; that deserves to be em- phasised in assessing a donation which puts the Lacock Abbey parchment ill public ownership for ever. How the document got to Lacock Abbey no one knows ; how it leaves there will be gratefully remembered as long, at any rate, as the British Museum stands. * * * *
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