Bishop’s Lynn | The History Jar

John’s worst fault perhaps was that he was an unlucky king. The mercenaries he’d amassed to challenge his barons in 1215 were scatted and drowned during autumn storms at sea. Things went from bad to worse for him after that. By the following year John was fleeing from castle to castle with King Louis VIII in hot pursuit. He’d lost London and Winchester. The french seemed to be everywhere and it was the fact that they pursued John into Cambridgeshire that sent John north to Lincolnshire where he followed a scorched earth policy and relieved Lincoln which was being besieged by the revolting barons. John chased them off but failed to intercept King Alexander `ii of Scotland who was making the most of the chaos in England. John’s letter record the fact that he was in Lincoln on September 22nd. He inspected the castle and made its custodian, the indefatigable Nichola de la Haye Sheriff of Lincolnshire in her own right (I feel a post on her coming on even as I type).

From Lincoln John travelled back towards East Anglia via Grimsby, Louth, Boston and Spalding. He arrived in Bishop’s Lynn on October 9th. Historians cannot be sure what John was planning but Lynn was an important port and John arranged to have supplies sent to his northern castles. It is reasonable to assume that he was planning a campaign in the north. John was taken ill whilst in Lynn. Ralph of Coggeshall assumed it was gluttony. Morris makes the very good point that at 49 the king had been setting a ferocious pace. He could simply have been exhausted.

In any event John set out once again for Lincolnshire on the 12th October. He travelled via Wisbech whilst his baggage appears to have taken a different and rather more disastrous route near Sutton Bridge. He spent that night in Swineshead Abbey where famously he ate rather too many peaches, pears and cider becoming ever more ill. Bereft of his household belongings and his treasures he arrived at the Bishop of Lincoln’s castle at Sleaford on the 14th October where he stayed overnight. On the 15th he wrote to Pope Honorius III (Innocent had died in July) that he was suffering from an ‘incurable infirmity.’ John took the opportunity to put his kingdom under the Church’s protection. This was a stratagem that he hoped would save England from Louis for Prince Henry who would shortly become King Henry III.

By then he was too ill to ride, so John was carried by litter to Newark – a journey of some twenty or so miles. He arrived at Newark on the 16th of October. He wrote his will and that night the king died having given Margaret de Lucy who was the daughter of William and Matilda de Braoze, permission to found a Hospital of St John along with land for its foundation in memory of her mother and brother who’d starved to death in Windsor. John’s will along with his tomb can be seen in Worcester Cathedral.

One of English history’s enduring tales of lost treasure is that of King John’s loot lost in The Wash. The year is 1216. It’s October. The Magna Carta has been signed. Pope Innocent III has read it carefully then torn it up. The barons are revolting. The French are invading. In short things are not looking good for John.

John was en route from Bishop’s Lynn (King’s Lynn these days) to Lincoln. He’d already travelled south from Lincolnshire into Norfolk but for some reason turned back. It has been suggested that he was already feeling unwell. There was also the fact that he wasn’t terribly popular in the Fens – though he was well thought of in Lynn because he gave the town it’s charter in 1204 which gave its guilds the right to govern themselves. For whatever reason he turned back towards Lincolnshire.

This meant he had to cross The Wash – a treacherous stretch of coast filled with creeks, quick sands, fast running tides and according to one popular theory an unexpected tidal bore. John crossed via Wisbech. His baggage train containing his ‘precious vessels’ (Roger of Wendover) and ‘diverse household effects’ (Ralph of Coggeshall) seems to have crossed The Wash by a different route, possibly Sutton Bridge. This seems a sensible option as the king could have travelled fairly rapidly by horse whereas ox-carts filled with household effects, chests, beds, the crown jewels and heaps of silver plate would have travelled more slowly. The country was at war – speed was essential. It seems as though the baggage train risked a more direct route in the belief that it would be able to cross The Wash before the tide turned. There is no evidence that the baggage train was attended by local guides.

Equally we don’t know exactly what was lost and what was recovered either officially or unofficially at a later date. We do know that John collected jewellery and precious plate. It is probable that given the state of the country he had collected it together to keep an eye on it. What we do have is a list of his belongings. A Roll inventoried everything including his grandmother’s, Matilda, regalia. Co-incidentally none of it made an appearance for the crowning of young King Henry III. It is generally accepted it was all lost. Charles Dickens paints a picture of the tide coming crashing in and carrying the carts off. Other folk believe that the treasure still lays deep below eight hundred years worth of silt.

Poor John. The 12th October 1216 had not gone at all to plan. In some versions of the story he watches as his belongings are carried away by the waves and in other versions someone has to tell him (rather them than me). He was taken to Swineshead Abbey in Lincolnshire that night where he stuffed himself with peaches, pears and cider. If he was feeling ill before he soon felt infinitely worse. On the 18th October he died of dysentery at Newark.

Where there’s treasure there are always stories. One tale suggests that a local landowner found all or part of John’s treasure during the fourteenth century. Other accounts suggest that it was never lost at all, that either John hid it somewhere safe (so presumably it’s still there or there were some very wealthy members of John’s household shortly afterwards) or else he pawned it to raise an army to fight the revolting barons and the equally revolting french. Whatever the truth, the facts that King John lost France and then lost his treasure do not stand him in good stead with posterity.