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50 free Magna Carta trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Magna Carta trivia for history students, pub quizzers and anyone who has stood in front of one of the four surviving 1215 originals and wondered what it actually says. The quiz starts in the reign of King John: the lost French lands, the defeat at Bouvines, the barons' oath at Bury St Edmunds, and the ten days of haggling in a water-meadow beside the Thames that produced the charter sealed on 15 June 1215. From there it follows the document's messy afterlife. Pope Innocent III annulled it within weeks, the First Barons' War broke out, and it only survived because Henry III's regents reissued it in 1216, 1217 and 1225, when it finally acquired its name to distinguish it from the smaller Charter of the Forest. Later rounds cover Sir Edward Coke and the Stuart kings, its influence on the US Constitution, the Victorian historians who called the whole liberty story a myth, the clause repealed first, the three clauses still on the statute book, and the copies that ended up in Canberra, Washington and Fort Knox. Questions run from easy to expert and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our British history and medieval history quizzes.
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Q 01In what year did King John seal the Great Charter at Runnymede?
1215
The date was 15 June; formal copies were issued four days later when the rebels renewed their oaths of loyalty.
Q 02Runnymede, where the charter was agreed, is a water-meadow on the bank of which river?
the Thames
It sat on neutral ground between the royal fortress at Windsor and the rebel base at Staines, so neither side risked an ambush.
Q 03Which Archbishop of Canterbury drafted the charter to make peace between John and the barons?
Stephen Langton
The pope's commissioners suspended him from office that September for his part in the affair.
Q 04The rebel barons demanded that John confirm the Charter of Liberties issued by which earlier king?
Henry I
That century-old coronation charter supplied much of the language of the barons' first draft, the so-called Unknown Charter.
Q 05Which pope annulled the 1215 charter, calling it 'null, and void of all validity for ever'?
Innocent III
John had made himself a papal vassal in 1213 and argued the charter infringed the pope's rights as his feudal lord.
Q 06How many barons formed Magna Carta's clause 61 council empowered to seize John's castles?
25
The king had 40 days to put a breach right before the barons could act; all 25 chosen were rebels, which doomed the peace.
Q 07The collapse of the 1215 settlement led to which conflict?
the First Barons' War
The rebels offered the English throne to Prince Louis of France, and the war outlived John himself.
Q 08The rebels offered the English throne to which member of the French royal family?
Prince Louis
His army was beaten at Lincoln in May 1217 and his reinforcement fleet at Sandwich that August, after which he went home.
Q 09How old was Henry III when his father John died in October 1216?
Nine
A famous elderly knight became his guardian, and the regency reissued the charter to win the barons back.
Q 10The document acquired the name 'Magna Carta' in 1217 to distinguish it from which smaller companion document?
the Charter of the Forest
The forest charter pardoned forest offences and reined in the forest courts, a major source of royal income.
Q 11Which king reissued the charter in 1297, confirming it as part of England's statute law?
Edward I
It is this 1297 version, not the 1215 original, that remains on the statute book today, though almost all of it has been repealed.
Q 12How many original exemplifications of the 1215 charter survive today?
Four
Two are at the British Library, one at Lincoln Castle and one at Salisbury Cathedral; at least thirteen were issued in 1215.
Q 13Which cathedral's 1215 Magna Carta copy is possibly the best preserved, apparently written by its own staff?
Salisbury
It was first given to Old Sarum Cathedral and rediscovered in 1812; pin holes show it was once pinned up on display.
Q 21Who published the first copy of the charter printed on American soil, in 1687?
William Penn
It appeared in his tract 'The Excellent Privilege of Liberty and Property', echoing Coke's view of it as fundamental law.
Q 22Which colony's 1638 request to recognise the charter as part of provincial law was refused by Charles I?
Maryland
The Massachusetts Body of Liberties had already borrowed from clause 29 without asking the king's permission.
Q 23Whose 1904 article 'The Myth of Magna Carta' argued the 1215 charter protected baronial, not popular, rights?
Edward Jenks
Historians like Albert Pollard went further and said Coke had largely 'invented' the myth in the 17th century.
Q 14The Lincoln Cathedral copy spent much of the Second World War stored where for safekeeping?
Fort Knox, Kentucky
It had been on show at the 1939 New York World's Fair, and Churchill wanted to give it to the Americans outright to coax them into the war.
Q 15Which jurist introduced the clause-numbering system for the 1215 charter that is still used today?
Sir William Blackstone
His critical edition appeared in 1759; the original parchment had no paragraphs or numbered clauses at all.
Q 16The 1215 charter was written in which language?
Medieval Latin
Heavily abbreviated Latin on sheepskin parchment, about 15 by 20 inches, sealed with beeswax and resin.
Q 17What was the parchment of the charter made from?
sheepskin
The great seal was applied by an official called the spigurnel; the barons did not attach seals of their own and nobody signed.
Q 18Which 17th-century jurist made the charter a weapon against the divine right of kings, and was arrested for treason?
Sir Edward Coke
He was still working from the 1225 text; the first printed copy of the 1215 charter only appeared in 1610.
Q 19According to a 1660 pamphlet, which ruler dismissed the charter as 'Magna Farta'?
Oliver Cromwell
The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, repeated the story in a 2005 speech.
Q 20Which English statute of 1354 first introduced the wording 'due process of law', later used in the US Fifth Amendment?
the third of Edward III's Six Statutes
The same statute widened 'free man' to 'no man, of whatever estate or condition he may be'.
Q 24Which 1930 parody history called the charter 'a Good Thing for everyone (except the Common People)'?
1066 and All That
Sellar and Yeatman's book skewered the Whig view of history that Victorian schoolrooms had taught for decades.
Q 25Which organisation erected the Magna Carta Memorial at Runnymede in 1957?
the American Bar Association
The English and American legal professions had also formed the Magna Carta Society in 1922 to save the meadows from development.
Q 26Which judge called the charter in 1956 'the greatest constitutional document of all times'?
Lord Denning
The full quotation continues: 'the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot'.
Q 27Roughly how many clauses of the 1297 Magna Carta statute remain in force in England and Wales?
Three
They cover the freedom of the English Church, the ancient liberties of the City of London and the right to due legal process.
Q 28The surviving clauses also protect the 'ancient liberties' of which city?
London
When Occupy protesters cited the charter in 2012, the judge noted drily that this clause could hardly help them against the City itself.
Q 29Which country's national parliament displays a 1297 exemplification bought in 1952 for £12,500?
Australia
It came from King's School in Bruton, Somerset, and after a 2024 restoration hangs in the Members' Hall at Parliament House, Canberra.
Q 30Which businessman paid $21.3 million in 2007 for a 1297 Magna Carta now at the US National Archives?
David Rubenstein
The Perot Foundation had bought it from the earls of Cardigan in 1984; Rubenstein called it 'the basis for the Declaration of Independence'.