Rare 1776 Declaration of Independence Found in UK Archives

A rare 1776 printing of the United States Declaration of Independence — one of just 11 known surviving copies of the “Exeter Declaration” and the only one outside the United States — has been discovered at The National Archives in Kew, London. The document was seized by the British Royal Navy on Christmas Eve 1776 and remained buried in British archives for 250 years until it was uncovered by a volunteer cataloguer in May 2026.

A Discovery Hidden in Plain Sight

The find was made by Michael Scurr, a retired insurance executive who has volunteered at Britain’s National Archives for 11 years. While cataloguing Royal Navy captains’ papers from the American Revolutionary War, Scurr opened a report on the capture of an American privateer and immediately recognized what he had found.

“I thought, oh, right, this is definitely a Declaration of Independence. How exciting is this?” Scurr told The Associated Press. “I called over to my boss and said, ‘I think you need to come and have a look at this.’”

The discovery was made possible by the Prize Papers Project, a 20-year collaboration between The National Archives and the University of Oldenburg that aims to catalogue and digitise papers taken from ships captured by the Royal Navy between 1652 and 1815.

The Exeter Declaration

Printed in Exeter, New Hampshire, by Robert Luist Fowle between 16 and 19 July 1776, the document was produced for Fowle’s newspaper, the New Hampshire Gazette or Exeter Morning Chronicle, to spread news of American independence quickly throughout the colonies. Unlike the official “Dunlap Broadsides” printed in Philadelphia on the night of 4 July 1776 — of which about 200 were printed and only 26 survive — the Exeter Declarations were regional reprints.

Dr Graham Moore, Revolution 250 curator at The National Archives, described the find as “one of the rarest forms of the Declaration we know about.” According to The National Archives, Moore noted that “it wasn’t meant to be preserved — it was printed quickly and distributed widely.”

Seized at Sea

The Declaration’s journey to London began on Christmas Eve 1776, when the 64-gun HMS Raisonable, under Captain Thomas Fitzherbert, sighted the American privateer Dalton off the coast of Portugal. After a seven-hour pursuit, the 18-gun vessel commanded by Eleazar Johnson Jr. surrendered. The Dalton was a privateer — a privately owned ship authorized by the Continental Congress to attack British merchant vessels.

Captain Fitzherbert forwarded the seized papers to the Admiralty Secretary in Whitehall, listing the Declaration simply as “another paper.” As BBC News reported, this bureaucratic oversight meant the document bypassed proper prize court procedure and disappeared into the state archives for centuries.

Amanda Bevan, Head of Legal Records at The National Archives, told NBC News that the discovery was “an amazing addition to the story of the Dalton and the many other privateers that fought the British at sea.” She added: “But the presence of the Declaration on the Dalton made it clear that they were doing this in the service of an ideal.”

Conservation and Exhibition

Heritage scientists at The National Archives conducted detailed analysis of the document, examining its paper quality, fibers, and printing characteristics. The paper was found to be of lower quality than the Dunlap Broadsides, consistent with economic constraints in New England during the 1770s. A long tear was repaired using fine Japanese paper and wheat starch paste.

The copy will be displayed at The National Archives’ exhibition “Revolution 250: America’s Independence Story, 1763–1783,” which runs from 24 June to 29 November 2026.

A Transatlantic History

Saul Nassé, Chief Executive of The National Archives and Keeper of Public Records, called the find “an extraordinary discovery.” As reported by CBS News, he described it as “a vanishingly rare surviving copy of the Declaration of Independence, found not in America, but here in the UK,” adding that it serves as “a powerful reminder that the history of the American Revolution is fundamentally transatlantic.”

Nicholas Guyatt, Professor of North American History at the University of Cambridge, explained why the document went unnoticed for so long: “From the British perspective, it was simply another document seized among many others. It was filed away, sent back to London and ultimately disappeared into the archives.”

Guyatt added that the discovery “reminds us that it still takes someone working through physical collections to uncover an object that can reshape our understanding of an event or provide entirely new historical context.”

What This Means

The discovery comes during the 250th anniversary year of the Declaration of Independence, adding a remarkable new chapter to the story of America’s founding. As the only known copy of the Declaration taken by military action, it carries a documented provenance that traces its journey from a New Hampshire printing press, to the deck of an American privateer, to capture by the Royal Navy, and finally to 250 years of obscurity in British archives.

The records of over 3,600 ships taken by the British during the American Revolutionary War are set to go online in October 2026 as part of the Prize Papers Project, raising the possibility of further historical discoveries still waiting to be found.