<P> In the 21st century, four exemplifications of the original 1215 charter remain in existence, held by the British Library and the cathedrals of Lincoln and Salisbury . There are also a handful of the subsequent charters in public and private ownership, including copies of the 1297 charter in both the United States and Australia . The original charters were written on parchment sheets using quill pens, in heavily abbreviated medieval Latin, which was the convention for legal documents at that time . Each was sealed with the royal great seal (made of beeswax and resin sealing wax): very few of the seals have survived . Although scholars refer to the 63 numbered "clauses" of Magna Carta, this is a modern system of numbering, introduced by Sir William Blackstone in 1759; the original charter formed a single, long unbroken text . The four original 1215 charters were displayed together at the British Library for one day, 3 February 2015, to mark the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta . </P> <P> Magna Carta originated as an unsuccessful attempt to achieve peace between royalist and rebel factions in 1215, as part of the events leading to the outbreak of the First Barons' War . England was ruled by King John, the third of the Angevin kings . Although the kingdom had a robust administrative system, the nature of government under the Angevin monarchs was ill - defined and uncertain . John and his predecessors had ruled using the principle of vis et voluntas, or "force and will", taking executive and sometimes arbitrary decisions, often justified on the basis that a king was above the law . Many contemporary writers believed that monarchs should rule in accordance with the custom and the law, with the counsel of the leading members of the realm, but there was no model for what should happen if a king refused to do so . </P> <P> John had lost most of his ancestral lands in France to King Philip II in 1204 and had struggled to regain them for many years, raising extensive taxes on the barons to accumulate money to fight a war which ended in expensive failure in 1214 . Following the defeat of his allies at the Battle of Bouvines, John had to sue for peace and pay compensation . John was already personally unpopular with many of the barons, many of whom owed money to the Crown, and little trust existed between the two sides . A triumph would have strengthened his position, but in the face of his defeat, within a few months after his return from France John found that rebel barons in the north and east of England were organising resistance to his rule . </P> <P> The rebels took an oath that they would "stand fast for the liberty of the church and the realm", and demanded that the King confirm the Charter of Liberties that had been declared by King Henry I in the previous century, and which was perceived by the barons to protect their rights . The rebel leadership was unimpressive by the standards of the time, even disreputable, but were united by their hatred of John; Robert FitzWalter, later elected leader of the rebel barons, claimed publicly that John had attempted to rape his daughter, and was implicated in a plot to assassinate John in 1212 . </P>

How many copies are there of the magna carta