For the fifth time since it was inked onto sheepskin in 1215, one of the four original copies of Magna Carta has arrived in New York, though it has probably never traveled here under cushier circumstances.

On Saturday, Chris Woods, an archive conservation consultant, fresh from a first-class flight from London, donned purple plastic gloves to unveil the document before a hushed crowd of curators and exhibition installers in a dimmed gallery at Fraunces Tavern Museum on Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan.

The creased, rumpled page of Latin script — King John's promises to allow Englishmen basic civil liberties like jury trials and taxation with representation — will be the centerpiece of a show, "Magna Carta and the Foundations of Freedom," that opens on Tuesday.

Magna Carta will be one of a few British artifacts in an exhibition that also includes copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, as well as a dented cannonball from the Revolution.