Cathedral Restoration, Courtesy of Magna Carta

To embark on the mother of all restoration projects, it's good to have the mother of all historical documents to help with the fund-raising efforts.

An original 1215 version of the Magna Carta, which sat lost and forgotten in the archives of England's medieval Lincoln Cathedral for six centuries, is coming to Manhattan this fall. The visit is part of an aggressive fund-raising campaign aimed at restoring the cathedral, which conservators and architectural consultants estimate will have to come up with some $4.5 million a year to save its limestone gargoyles and stained-glass windows.

The so-called Lincoln Magna Carta, by far that church's most valuable possession, is one of just four remaining original versions of the document signed by King John and his barons at Runnymede, England, in 1215. Lincoln Cathedral's copy is in remarkably good condition because it sat in a drawer for so long. The three other copies — one at Salisbury Cathedral and two at the British Museum in London — are generally considered too fragile to travel overseas for such an exhibition.

The cathedral's newly installed dean, the Rev. Philip Buckler, came to Manhattan recently to work out the final details of the document's three-month exhibition at the Fraunces Tavern Museum on Pearl Street. The Sons of the Revolution, the venerable group of Revolutionary War descendants that oversees the museum, and its executive director, Richard Gregory, approached Rev. Buckler earlier this year to see if the document could be displayed there.

The willingness of Lincoln Cathedral's dean to allow the document to travel is partly because of his commitment to raise enough funds to support the multimillion-dollar restoration of that building, which was commissioned by William the Conqueror starting in 1072 as part of a new power base in the English Midlands. "The government of the United Kingdom doesn't financially support the buildings owned by the Church of England," Rev. Buckler said. "The independence of the church from the crown is one of the legacies of Magna Carta; the irony here isn't lost on me."

Rev. Buckler preached about the Magna Carta's legacy at both Trinity Church Wall Street and St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue during a visit in the spring. In drafting the document, the barons of England forced King John to make concessions that granted rights to the individual. "It's going to be marvelous for American schoolchildren to see for themselves the document that in many ways set the stage for the Declaration of Independence," Rev. Buckler said. "Notions of an individual's liberties embodied in the Magna Carta are what guided Thomas Jefferson, as well as the framers of the American Constitution."

The last time the Lincoln Magna Carta visited New York was in 1939 for the World's Fair. The British government secretly worked out an arrangement with America after the fair that kept the document locked away at Fort Knox until the end of World War II. "Hitler would have loved to get his hands on it," Rev. Buckler said.

Between 30 and 40 copies of the Magna Carta were originally produced by scribes and brought from Runnymede by the bishops and barons of England to the major cities of that country. By June of 1215, however, King John had second thoughts and attempted to overturn some of the concessions he made earlier that year. "The notion of everyone in society having the right to a trial by a jury of his peers must have been earth-shattering in 1215," the dean said.

By 1297, a new set of Magna Cartas was written to help ensure that the provisions made earlier that century would stand. Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot owned one of the versions from 1297, but it was sold at Sotheby's on December 18. Co-founder and managing director of the Carlyle Group, David Rubenstein, bought the 1297 version for $21.32 million in the sale and said he intends to loan it to the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

There's no way to place a price on Lincoln Cathedral's original 1215 copy that's set to be displayed on Pearl Street, according to the Rev. Buckler. But insuring it for a transatlantic trip is nevertheless an expensive proposition, he said. Another downtown institution, the insurance company AIG, has agreed to sponsor the exhibition, which is tentatively set to run from the fall through early 2009. Rev. Buckler said that AIG's involvement has significantly helped defray expenses associated with insuring a priceless, 800-year-old vellum document.

The exhibition is also a way for Fraunces Tavern to tout its recent addition to the National Register of Historic Places. Even though the 1719 building is Manhattan's oldest existing structure, it only received the federal distinction this year. "There can be no more fitting venue for this special exhibition than the site of Washington's farewell to his officers on December 4th, 1783," Mr. Gregory said.

Besides being the cathedral at which the composer William Byrd spent most of his career, Lincoln boasts strong American connections. Genealogists believe that about 15% of American citizens claim at least one ancestor from the county of Lincolnshire, England — the home of Captain John Smith and most of the Jamestown settlers. Mr. Gregory said the Fraunces Tavern Museum has extensive genealogical resources that visitors can use to see if they're descended from the English families who received word of the Magna Carta and its meaning in 1215.