Illuminated initial H in a 15th-century Magna Carta confirmation

What it is

This is a page from a 15th-century manuscript, a later copy of a charter confirmed by Henry III. It is written in Latin in brown ink, in a single column. The page opens with an ornate illuminated initial H, for Henricus, which is decorated in red, blue and gold with floral vine designs down the left margin. Red and blue paragraph markers appear in the text, and the page is marked 71. The record is a digital image of the page.

Why it matters

Henry III confirmed the Magna Carta first agreed in 1215 by his father, King John. Copies made long after the event show how the charter was kept and valued in later centuries. Scribes and illuminators who decorated such pages were skilled workers, and their work shows how important the document was to the people who preserved it.

Look closer

• What do the colours and decorations of the first letter suggest about how the text was valued?
• Why might a copy made more than two centuries after the event be useful to historians, and what might it change?
• Who would have read or owned a manuscript like this, and what does the image leave out?