A RARE copy of the 1916 Easter Rising Proclamation has sold at Sotheby’s in London for £305,000 just a fortnight before the centenary year gets underway.
The document, which was sold by a descendent of the original owner, had been expected to make between £80,000 and £120,000 when it went under the hammer on Tuesday.
However, eager bidders quickly reached figures more than double the original estimate.
Although 2,500 copies of the Proclamation were intended to be produced, only around 1,000 were actually printed. Most of these were destroyed in the storming of Liberty Hall and the chaotic events in the surrounding streets. As a result only a handful survived.
The text was read from the steps of the General Post Office on Easter Monday, April 24 1916, by Pádraig Pearse, who, along with Thomas J. Clarke, Seán Mac Diarmada, Thomas MacDonagh, Eamonn Ceannt, James Connolly and Joseph Plunkett, were the signatories of the Proclamation.
“Of the utmost rarity, the proclamation is undoubtedly the most important document in the history of the Irish Nation, containing the first aspirations of the Republic as well as being a Proclamation of Independence,” Sotheby’s said in its sales catalogue.
The original manuscript did not survive the Rising with most of the surviving copies now in museums or privately owned.
