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Secondary sourcePainting1864

John Signs the Great Charter

James William Edmund Doyle and Edmund Evans · 1864

An 1864 coloured illustration in A Chronicle of England showing a king signing a document with barons and clergy around him. It is a Victorian imagining, not a primary view.

This illustration imagines King John signing the charter, showing how Victorian readers pictured the making of Magna Carta.

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Colored illustration of a medieval scene: a king in a red robe with a white cross sits at a draped table, signing a document while armored barons and clergy in robes stand around, under a timber-roofed pavilion with a field and tents behind.
James William Edmund Doyle and Edmund Evans, King John signs the Magna Carta, illustration in A Chronicle of England, 1864.

About this source

What it is

This is a coloured book illustration from A Chronicle of England, made in 1864 by James William Edmund Doyle and Edmund Evans. It shows a king in a red robe with a white cross seated at a draped table, signing a document. Armoured barons and clergy in robes stand around him under a timber-roofed pavilion, with a field and tents behind.

Why it matters

The illustration pictures King John signing Magna Carta more than six centuries after the event. It shows how Victorian readers were taught to imagine the charter's origins, using the king, the barons and the clergy as the main figures of the story.

Look closer

  • Who is shown signing, and who stands around him, and what does that suggest about power?
  • Which details of the tents, banners and clothing might the artist have invented?
  • Why might a history book of 1864 choose this scene to explain the charter?

This painting is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Magna Carta on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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