Get the latest tech news

King John's Lost Treasure

’s Lost Treasure The loss of his treasure on the road to war was said to have brought about King John’s demise. What happened to it? In October 1216 King John met with disaster in the Wash.

The king, nevertheless, having barely escaped with his army, passed the following night at an abbey which is called Swineshead, where, as it was thought, there befell him so great grief of mind on account of the things swallowed up by the waves that he was seized with sharp fevers and began to be grievously sick. Matthew Paris tellingly observed that, in addition to ‘arms, tents, and victuals’, the baggage train contained ‘the things which the king, next to his life held too dear in the world’. In 2016 a dig at Tydd St Giles – halfway between Wisbech and Long Sutton – turned up a few minor artefacts; and in March 2024 the planned construction of a new solar farm near Walpole Marsh necessitated a larger and perhaps more promising excavation led by the West Norfolk and King’s Lynn Archaeological Society.

Get the Android app