Pass me that pen...

The Royal Mint has come in for some stick by portraying King John on a new coin with Magna Carta in one hand and a quill pen in the other - the inference being that he signed the document.  This has been described as "a schoolboy error" because as "everybody knows" back then monarchs did not sign documents, they authenticated them by affixing their seal.  So Magna Carta was not signed - it was sealed.  But is it that simple?  We'll never know for sure of course, because we weren't there, but what is certain is that the documents that we have today (several copies were made, of which four still survive) were not created on that day in that tent at Runnymede, but were the much later work of scribes, with each copy being authenticated by seal. What actually happened on the day we don't know, but clearly someone must have been taking notes and it is not beyond the bounds of probability that those there - including the king - would have scribbled their names or made their marks to show they agreed with what had been written.  So signed? Possibly.