Lost Declaration Found in London: Only Known Copy Outside America Surfaces

Sometimes the most historically significant discoveries happen by accident. A volunteer sorting through centuries-old naval correspondence at The National Archives in Kew, London, recently stumbled upon something that shouldn’t exist outside the United States—an original 1776 printing of the Declaration of Independence.

Michael Scurr was cataloguing letters from Thomas Fitzherbert, a captain with HMS Raisonable, when he spotted a reference to documents seized from a captured American privateer called the Dalton of Newburyport. Among those papers was what would become a jaw-dropping find: one of only 11 surviving copies of the so-called Exeter Declarations, and the only one ever discovered beyond American borders.

This particular copy was printed in Exeter, New Hampshire, by Robert Luist Fowle sometime between July 16th and 19th in 1776 for his newspaper, the New Hampshire Gazette or Exeter Morning Chronicle. It ended up in British naval hands after the Dalton was captured on December 24, 1776—just six months after the Declaration was signed. Fitzherbert forwarded the document to Royal Navy officers in London, where it’s remained tucked into official archives for 250 years, waiting to be rediscovered.

The timing couldn’t be more poignant. The discovery arrives as The National Archives opened a new exhibition charting America’s emergence as an independent nation, timed to mark the country’s 250th anniversary. It’s a reminder that history often hides in plain sight, filed away in dusty correspondence and waiting for someone curious enough to actually read what’s been catalogued.

What makes this even more remarkable is how it got there. When HMS Raisonable’s crew seized the Dalton, naval law required all captured papers be brought before a court to verify the capture’s legality. Fitzherbert’s junior officer testified that all documents had been surrendered. Clearly, that wasn’t quite true—the Declaration quietly made its way to the Admiralty instead. For two and a half centuries, this American founding document sat in British government files, a captured prize that nobody realized they had.