The Mystery of King John's Treasure

By Shirley Charters

A study of the final ten days of England’s King John in East Anglia and the truth about what might have happened to his missing treasure.

Sunday evening, October 9th, 1216. King John is facing continued civil war and a devastating French invasion—treacherous times. We discover him crossing the tidal marshes of the Fenlands of East Anglia. He is about to lose England’s crown jewels, his gem collection, and sackfuls of silver coins with his image on them: a treasure trove.

What happened? What was he doing in that remote and windswept place? Why did he take the crown jewels with him? And why did he die so soon afterwards?

Eight hundred years of searches by Fenfolk, academics, newspaper magnates, Victorian eccentrics and even an American research company have found nothing. No golden chalice, no pearl studied casket, no coins. Why?

We follow King John at that vulnerable time, day by day, and reveal for the first time some surprising and interesting answers to the many questions posed by the mystery of his lost treasure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781526715517

Book preview

Preface

King John’s cup is a fifteen-inch high, silver-gilt, enamel and bejewelled goblet that resides in the Museum of King’s Lynn on the Norfolk coast of East Anglia (front cover). It is the oldest and one of the finest pieces of secular medieval English craftsmanship to still exist. For centuries, it was believed to have been a piece of John’s vast treasure trove which shortly before his death was supposedly lost in the marshes of the Wash, and which someone, somehow, somewhere, retrieved. However, it has now been shown to have been made in the mid-1300’s, more than a hundred years after his death.

First recorded in the Hall Book of King’s Lynn in 1548, the cup was listed as the prime item of plate to be delivered to the then mayor. Then, as happens in so many centuries of history, the passage of time subsequently wound John’s name around it until it became accepted. However, if the cup has a misguiding title, more wishful thinking than reality, then the inaccuracy inevitably leads on to the thought that perhaps the whole story of King John’s lost treasure might itself be similarly questionable. Or would it?

Over the past eight hundred years, there have been endless folk tales, academic papers, false leads and vastly expensive explorations concerning the mystery of the treasure. Lost, when it seems, he was taking a secret short-cut across the Fenlands of East Anglia known only to certain local guides, and when the crown jewels of England and ‘... all the things he most valued ...’ were sucked into the unfathomable morass of the Wash. But so, far nothing has ever been found.

Nevertheless, the quest has continued and has been looked into through many and varied magnifying glasses; a search so wonderfully tempting for archaeologists, for readers of monthly metal-detecting magazines and for online valuers of recently discovered medieval artefacts.

Every year now in Britain more than seventy thousand ‘finds’ both large and small are uncovered. Think of the recent discoveries of the Tudor hoard of jewellery hidden in a Cheapside cellar, or the Viking gold ornaments found in a Staffordshire field, or the cache of gold and silver coins dug up from under a busy street corner in Cambridge. These were all surprise finds, happened upon, and made with no knowledge of what lay hidden below the thick layers of history.

But the search for John’s lost treasure is quite different. The contents of the treasure are known from contemporary lists. And the designated location of the loss, is the Fenland of East Anglia. What more lead for a search could one ask for?

A hundred years ago, the pace of that search quickened. Shortly before the First World War, Lord Northcliffe, proprietor of the Daily Mail formed a syndicate, the Wash Committee, to obtain licences and make Fenland searches of nearly one and a half thousand acres. Then in the Thirties an American professor of John Hopkins University set up The Fen Research Ltd. Company, with a backing of £40,000 to search a further 5,500 acres. After the Second World War, an engineering company, Evershed and Vignoles, followed. They were designers of earth-testing instruments and they moved in with their resistivity survey equipment to take many thousands of readings, working over several years. Nottingham University followed them making bore-hole tests. And in parallel, there has been a continuing flurry of private explorations by hopeful dowsers and detectorists. Many hundreds of thousands of pounds have been spent, yet always without success.

Why has there has been no hint, no sign, no evidence at all of John’s treasure, no fragment of a knight’s armour, no precious jewel, no golden chalice or crown from England’s crown jewels, no stirrup from a saddle, or heraldic pendant from a bridle or barrel of silver short-cross coins with his image on them? And why indeed, did a Plantagenet King of England find himself with the crown jewels and all of his vast treasure in such an inhospitable place as the medieval wilderness of the Fenlands?

Here lies a mystery, hidden in a strange landscape, put to sleep by time, which this book now resolves; unravelling the answer from the spider’s web complexity of the last ten days of John’s life.

CHAPTER 1

Sunday 9 October 1216; Late Afternoon at Lynn

John is late arriving towards the port of Lynn. It has been an awkward day’s ride from Spalding in Lincolnshire; starting just after cockcrow and skirting some forty miles right round that seemingly endless, demon-ridden Fenland. He’s chilled by nagging gusts of an easterly wind that whips up unimpeded from the sea. It pierces the marrow of his bones. He can taste saltiness in the bite of it as he dismounts, dragging himself off his horse with the heaviness of a man burdened by woes of more years than he has managed to live. Oh God, so much yet to be done… so much still left undone. Does he already sense that the Fates in charge of his thread of life have gathered together, Clotho spinning and Lachesis measuring? Does he already suspect their final conclusion: that his woes will remain unresolved, at least they will remain unresolved by him? For in ten days’ time, he will be dead.

At West Lynn, stretching out over an ill-defined river bank to where a line-up of flat, fenland ferries await, is a long landing stage, and he follows as his sodden horse is led onto the first. The creature’s flanks steam gently and quiver from the effort of having carried his weight. A damp piece of sacking has been flung rather uselessly across the saddle to protect against the drizzle and his escort of household knights stomp alongside him as they and their squires struggle to edge their own horses into place. John is particularly fussed about the line of pack horses. And no wonder. Slung across their backs they carry panniers of fat pouches that contain not only the carefully packaged contents of England’s exchequer, but also the crown jewels of the country, together with the crown jewels and regalia he had inherited from his grandmother, the Empress of Germany. Even his own notable collection of gemstones is there. He is transporting a veritable treasure trove. Yet no matter how perilous that might be, at a time fraught by the dangers of civil war, it consoles his clearly desperate sense of insecurity. He testily notes every move those pack horses make.

The weary animals too, are tense and uneasy, ready to panic on the landing stage’s rackety woodwork and with the unstable motion of the ferry on the water. They toss their heads fretfully. Overheated breath is snorted into the chill evening air. They are the first group of his entourage to cross the river Ouse to go downstream towards Lynn on the far side. The ferrymen have been waiting for the ebb tide; always in servitude to the tide. Distantly they hear halyards slapping like scolds against the masts of the many boats anchored off the staithes of the port; a chaos of masts and ropes and rigging as an early dusk descends upon the scene with a melancholy dreariness. What an irritable end to a long day, only dismounting to changes horses with the spare animals that the page boys had been leading alongside their own mounts. And with nothing more than a campaigning bite of cold pork and biscuit.

John is attended by a handful of his closest, supportive, fast-moving and above all faithful household knights, plus a few mounted sergeants, his chaplain, chamberlain, herald, clerks, scouts, and messengers. Although moving at speed, at the typical hand gallop of John in a hurry, even this small column, has the aspect of a travelling miniature township. Yet it is necessary, not only for his own protection, but also because wherever he is, John continues his essential daily grind, the administration of the law and government of his country.

He is forty-nine years old and this circle of friends and advisers have long been remarking that he is too rapidly becoming old and weary, and, with an increasingly bad temper of the mind, as they put it. Sometimes they went further and described him as having a distempered mind. He’s a short man, five foot five, and that lack of height emphasises his increasing weight that somehow has accumulated despite his active life, feverishly ranging about his realm.

He’s desperate to contain and control the country’s never-ending discontent and these are times when royal political power is maintained, or threatened, on the battle-field. His presence is ever necessary. His hands are the calloused hands of a leader who always rode in gauntlets, seemingly ever ready for a skirmish and he’s crippled with gout, as well as the usual warrior woes of constant sweating under even the lightest chainmail. Suspiciously uncomfortable saddle sores, too.

Few other kings spent so many hours on horseback, touching three thousand miles a year. A pitiless way of life. Rest and recuperation are unknown options for him and anyway he is not a man to take contemplative pauses for his soul to catch up with his body. Soul-searching is not a Plantagenet family characteristic. But he is certainly physically quite sick, possibly with a touch of dysentery, so often present given the ever-suspicious water supplies and dubious cleanliness of the day. Above all, he is wearied by the exhaustion of stress and anxiety in handling his warring rebel barons as they ceaselessly fire up problems all about him. Already more than thirty of even his own household knights have turned from him to the rebel cause. He finds himself the hated centrepiece not only of a grinding civil war, but now, also a French invasion, which is creeping determinedly across his realm. And there is treason to be staunched. Nevertheless, he has the resolute mind-set of his ancestry that refuses even to contemplate the possibility that he might be vanquished. Having those treasures of his in hand is an essential boost for him; to affirm his iron will.

CHAPTER 2

What Might Be in the Treasure?

In the continuing turmoil of civil war just before, and just after, the negotiations concerning Magna Carta in June 1215, John began gathering together his treasures from various locations. He issued writs to seventeen different abbots and priors as follows:

‘We command you that, immediately on view of these letters, with all haste send us by two of your monks and by others of your people in whom you have confidence all that you have of ours in your custody, both of recent and ancient commending, such as vessels, jewels, golden and silver and others.’

As a result, on 26 March 1215 the Knights Hospitaller released to him a set of crown jewels and royal regalia. These, and goods collected from twelve of the religious houses, were almost certainly immediately relocated together, at his favourite castle, Corfe, which was, for the time being, his west-country stronghold, said to have the safest dungeons in the land.

On 28 May, the Knights Templar handed over the German royal regalia he had inherited from his grandmother, the Empress Matilda.

On 15 June, at Runnymede, the day on which he set his seal to Magna Carta, John wrote asking the Knights Hospitaller and Knights Templar to return all the remaining royal possessions that were in their custody.

On 29 June, a letter which concerns conducting the queen to his presence, orders ‘…bring to us so much of our treasure as we spoke of…’.

Between 12 and 17 July, he removed what he could from Corfe Castle and from 15 to 16 August he returned to Corfe again to remove everything else stored there.

Most of these items were carefully listed at the time and, importantly, were not ever noted again as a complete collection.

They were the state and personal valuables that had been stored in hitherto secure strongholds for their safe keeping, but which he no longer trusted to be in any hands than his own. He needed to keep them with him, under his own eye, and easily accessible. After all, money and securities were needed to run the country and, not least, to pay his mercenary supporters.

Twenty days after John’s death, with civil war still rife, his nine-year old son was hastily consecrated as Henry III, in the abbey church at Gloucester. He had only a gold band belonging to his mother for a crown. So the assumption has to be that nothing in this list was available for him. At a more complete ceremony at Westminster Abbey four years later, the young Henry wore full ceremonial dress but, again, nothing from this list was noted, so these following items were then, and remained, missing.

From his inheritance of German royal regalia from his grandmother the Empress Matilda there was: the great crown, known as the German Crown; a gold brooch, a great gold sceptre, a gold wand with a dove at the tip, a gold cross of 3 marks 7oz weight; a gold cup of 8 marks 2oz weight and a golden spur; a crown with a cross and seven flowers set with precious stones; a collar set in the middle with diamonds and surrounded by rubies and emeralds, and nine great necklaces set with precious stones; the sword of Tristan, another sword, and a precious stone, (this seems odd since the romance of Tristan and Isolde was a Cornish myth, not German, nevertheless, it is in the list); a purple tunic and sandals, a belt embroidered with precious stones, shoes and gloves, a dalmatic of dark purple (a long, wide-sleeved vestment to be worn by a king at coronation); a robe, and silk cloth.

From his English royal regalia, some possibly dating from the ninth century, from King Alfred’s reign there was: a full set of crown jewels, sceptre, and gold wand; a red belt of precious stones and several other belts; a jewelled collar, a red samite jewelled tunic, sandals and gloves; various items of jewellery; 26 pairs of basins, gold or silver-gilt, these were huge, decorated platters (there is a wonderful example in the Rothschild Collection at the Fitzwilliam Museum, in Cambridge) 143 cups, of which ten were silver-gilt, one jewelled with sapphires and the remainder of white silver; goblets, 14 dishes, and 8 flagons, all in gold or silver-gilt; a further 40 belts, 6 clasps, and 16 staffs which were studded with rubies, sapphires, diamonds, pearls, garnets, topazes and emeralds; 52 rings and two gold crosses; two pendants, three gold combs and a gold vessel ornamented with pearls, a present from the Pope; four shrines: a small one of ivory, another of silver set with onyx, and a red jewelled one, all from Reading Abbey and containing relics… the fourth was from Ford Abbey and was bejewelled gold with a cross containing three sapphires; two candelabras and two incense containers; three gold amulets, and various other silver and jewelled items; plus possibly, four missing gold rings set with emeralds and sapphires, garnets and topaz, given to John by the Pope.

Of his Plantagenet continental royal regalia, and of the inheritance of his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine there is no information. Also, assumed lost