In October 1216 King John met with catastrophe within the Wash. Ever because the sealing of Magna Carta, a little bit over a 12 months earlier than, he had been plotting how greatest to avenge himself on the barons who had wrested it from him – and, quickly sufficient, England had been plunged into civil battle. The barons, disunited and leaderless, had been on the again foot. Realising they wanted assist, they invited Louis, the son of the French king Philip Augustus, to take the throne and in Might 1216 an invasion was duly launched. John was now in deep trouble. After elevating reinforcements on the Welsh border, he raced throughout to Windsor and on to East Anglia. His vitality was exceptional. He rode 40, even 50 miles every day, and refused to sleep earlier than the political views had been settled. On 9 October he arrived in King’s Lynn – an vital staging publish on his option to Lincolnshire – and obtained a rapturous welcome. However virtually instantly issues started to come back unstuck. Because the up to date chronicler Roger of Wendover defined:
Then, beginning out in direction of the north, within the river which is known as Welestreme, by an surprising accident he misplaced all his wagons, carts, and pack horses with the treasures, treasured vessels, and all the opposite issues which he cherished with a lot care; for the bottom was opened within the midst of the waves, and bottomless whirlpools, which swallowed all of them up, with the boys and the horses, in order that not one foot soldier escaped to announce the catastrophe to the king. The king, nonetheless, having barely escaped along with his military, handed the next evening at an abbey which is known as Swineshead, the place, because it was thought, there befell him so nice grief of thoughts on account of the issues swallowed up by the waves that he was seized with sharp fevers and commenced to be grievously sick.
From right here, issues deteriorated. In accordance with Roger, John solely made his sickness worse by binge-eating. That very same evening, he gorged himself foolish with peaches and cider, ‘strongly excit[ing] and inflam[ing] the feverish warmth inside him’. With nice effort, he tried to hold on; however by the point he reached Newark Fortress, he might go no additional. On the evening of 18 October, he died.
Dazzling jewels
A thriller, nonetheless, stays. What did John truly lose within the Wash? For all its vividness, Roger of Wendover’s account comprises treasured little data. We all know that it was precious. However how precious? Clearly, it wasn’t so huge that the shock of the accident actually made John sick, as Roger claimed. A barely later chronicler, Ralph of Coggeshall, signifies that the king almost certainly caught dysentery in King’s Lynn, earlier than the treasure was misplaced. However that it was of immense private worth to him is in little question. Matthew Paris tellingly noticed that, along with ‘arms, tents, and victuals’, the bags prepare contained ‘the issues which the king, subsequent to his life held too pricey on the earth’. And that is unlikely to be an exaggeration. In spite of everything, John was at battle. If he was to pay his troops, he wanted each scrap of treasure readily available.
However what precisely does that imply? What treasures had been out there to John? As A.V. Jenkinson identified a little bit over a century in the past, the king is understood to have owned various dazzling jewels, to which he was keenly hooked up. These included a clasp studded with emeralds and rubies he had been given by the bishop of Norwich, and 4 gorgeous rings he had obtained 11 years earlier from Pope Harmless III.
There have been different private treasures, too. As quickly as John had determined to repudiate Magna Carta he had instantly set about recovering no matter treasured objects he had left within the care of spiritual establishments across the kingdom. On 24 June 1215 he wrote to 17 prelates asking them to ship him ‘all that you’ve got of ours in your custody, each of current and of historical commenting, akin to jewels, golden and silver and different’. Inside a month he had collected at least ‘143 cups and 14 goblets, 14 dishes, 8 flagons, 5 pairs of basins, 40 belts, 6 clasps, 16 staffs, 52 rings and a couple of pendants’ – largely in gold or silver – in addition to ‘4 shrines, 2 gold crosses, 3 gold combs, a gold vessel ornamented with pearls … 2 candelabra, 2 thuribles and three golden phylacteries’.
Most hanging of all was the royal regalia. He possessed two units of those, together with one which had belonged to his grandmother, Empress Matilda. Historically, that they had been saved in Westminster Abbey; nevertheless it had been John’s behavior to go away them with the Knights Hospitaller and the Knights Templar. We all know for a indisputable fact that, even earlier than Magna Carta had been sealed, he had requested for them again. On 28 Might 1215 the Templars returned Matilda’s regalia, together with a powerful German crown, two swords and a royal pallium of purple. A 12 months later the Hospitallers delivered the remaining.
No hint
So which of those treasures did John have with him in October 1216? Effectively, clearly not all of them. Some – maybe the bulk – had already been melted down or offered off to pay his troopers. In accordance with the Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, begun in round 1224, John had virtually no cash left by the top of his reign and, by extension, not a lot treasure both. On the similar time, some might also have been put aside for his son, Henry III. David Carpenter has identified that there are numerous objects on the checklist of regalia used at Henry’s second coronation, held at Westminster in 1220, which appear to correspond to these belonging to John’s personal regalia in 1216, together with a crown, sword, sceptre and tunic – indicating that they had been stored protected.
However at the very least a few of this fabulous treasure will need to have been misplaced. Once more, Matthew Paris supplies us with a clue. In accordance with his Historia minor, when Henry III obtained his first coronation in Gloucester, 9 days after John’s dying, he was topped with a ‘golden circlet’, relatively than a crown. This would possibly properly have been just because it was too harmful to maneuver a crown even a brief distance at such a chaotic time. However it’s simply as probably that at the very least considered one of John’s crowns had been mislaid. It’s maybe no coincidence that additionally it is at round this time that Matilda’s crown vanishes from the documentary file; and there are a number of different objects belonging to John’s regalia of which no hint has been discovered.
The trail
So if a few of John’s treasure was certainly misplaced, the place is it? It’s troublesome to make sure. The topography of the Wash has modified dramatically over time. Again within the thirteenth century it had a fairly completely different look to at the moment. Now referred to as the Nene, the river Wellstream was then a a lot bigger waterway. Simply outdoors Wisbech, it flowed out into an enormous estuary, a number of miles throughout, reaching at its widest from King’s Lynn within the west to Lengthy Sutton within the east. It will need to have been a marshy and treacherous place, as troublesome to cross as it’s to reconstruct. Surprisingly, nonetheless, it’s attainable to make some guess as to the probably path adopted by John’s treasure.
We all know from Roger of Wendover that the king and his baggage prepare travelled by completely different routes. Given the gravity of the state of affairs, John wanted to make haste. Leaving the slow-moving wagons behind, he set off with a small retinue by the quickest route into Lincolnshire. After leaving King’s Lynn, he crossed the Nice Ouse and made for Wisbech, 15 miles to the southwest, the place he spent the evening. The following day, he crossed the bridge over the Wellstream and took the street north.
In the meantime, the bags prepare adopted a extra direct, however slower, route. Loads of theories about its course have been put ahead, however maybe essentially the most influential was proposed by W.H. St John Hope in 1906. In accordance with him, the bags prepare adopted the street west from King’s Lynn to the village of Walpole Cross Keys, which then lay on the banks of the Wellstream. From there to Lengthy Sutton, on the opposite aspect, the estuary was round 4.5 miles extensive. At low tide, nonetheless, there was a slender path over the sands. If led by an acceptable information, horses and wagons might simply make it throughout. The plan was little question to have continued westwards in direction of Holbeach and Spalding, and meet up with John in Lincolnshire. However on the way in which the bags prepare ran afoul – both by being swept away by a sudden, surprising tide, or by wandering off the trail at an inopportune second and getting trapped within the sucking mud.
This principle loved an amazing vogue for some time. By 1913, nonetheless, doubts had began to be raised. Engineers and hydrographers argued that, whereas St John Hope’s primary thought was right, his proposed path didn’t tally with what was identified concerning the historic panorama. However earlier than any additional research could possibly be completed, the First World Conflict intervened. Not till 1972 did G.F. Tagg handle to select up the threads. Utilizing resistivity surveying, Tagg and his staff had been in a position to determine what gave the impression to be a pathway, some three miles lengthy, a little bit additional to the south.
However the place on this path did the accident occur? There have been some promising leads. In 2016 a dig at Tydd St Giles – midway between Wisbech and Lengthy Sutton – turned up just a few minor artefacts; and in March 2024 the deliberate building of a brand new photo voltaic farm close to Walpole Marsh necessitated a bigger and maybe extra promising excavation led by the West Norfolk and King’s Lynn Archaeological Society. Thus far, nonetheless, no gold or jewels have been discovered.
This doesn’t imply that the treasure received’t flip up some day – maybe in essentially the most surprising of locations. After all, it wasn’t so way back that Richard III’s physique was discovered beneath a carpark. However for the second, the thriller of King John’s misplaced treasure stays a riddle for the sands.
Alexander Lee is a fellow within the Centre for the Research of the Renaissance on the College of Warwick. His newest guide, Machiavelli: His Life and Occasions, is now out there in paperback.
