The London Metropolitan Archive is housed in a rather non-descript building in a quiet cul-de-sac in Clerkenwell. But as the chief repository for the City of London, it contains remarkable and little seen treasures. I was lucky enough to be invited along to a rare unveiling of two of those gems, which number among the finest medieval documents held anywhere in the world.

The Magna Carta of 1297, which declares that ‘The City of London shall have all its ancient liberties and customs’, is generally considered the best preserved and most valuable of all the Great Charters. In near-perfect condition, with just slight damage to the seal, it is virtually priceless. To give you some idea of its worth, the copy, holed and shabby, owned by the populist US politician and businessman Ross Perot was auctioned recently for around $15 million.

Yet even the City’s pristine Magna Carta cannot compare in rarity with the most valuable of all the LMA’s documents: the beautiful and moving Charter of King William I to the City of London Corporation, issued just one year after the Conquest, in 1067. It is the earliest royal or imperial document which guarantees the collective rights of the inhabitants of any town, i.e. it is not directed to specific groups such as merchants or to institutions such as major churches. It’s significance is suffice to place it on the UNESCO UK Memory of the World Register.

The vellum charter is fragile and tiny – just 6ins by 1.5ins. Written in Old English, rather than the Conqueror’s French, it translates as:

William the King, friendly salutes William the Bishop and Godfrey the portreeve and all the burgesses within London both French and English. And I declare that I grant you to be all law-worthy, as you were in the days of King Edward; And I grant that every child shall be his father’s heir, after his father’s days; And I will not suffer any person to do you wrong; God keep you.

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- Writ of William I, 1067