Treasure hunt in England to seek out the jewels of John Lackland | EUROtoday
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VS'is the story of a sunken treasure that might nicely resurface… The British newspaper Eastern Daily Press proclaims that large-scale archaeological excavations might be launched in a previously marshy space of Wash Bay, a number of kilometers from the northeast coast.
Around twenty trenches might be dug like so many cuts in a mille-feuille of land gathered and reclaimed from the marshy estuary over 800 years, proper the place it’s believed that King John Lackland misplaced his treasure in 1216.
Furniture, relics, chests of gold…
At the time, Jean owed his crown to the early demise of his illustrious brother Richard the Lionheart, killed by a crossbow bolt seventeen years earlier. The youthful brother has nothing to match along with his sensible elder, like his vile and grasping character within the fictionalized variations of the lifetime of Robin Hood.
John Landless – so known as as a result of he didn’t obtain any land as an appanage at his delivery – is a violent, unjust and unscrupulous sort and should face each a revolt from the barons in addition to fixed stress from the king of France Philippe Auguste on Normandy, who ended up confiscating it for his personal profit.
In October 1216, King John, whose well being was failing, arrived within the city of King's Lynn, which was favorable to him. But he most well-liked to succeed in Lincoln, reputed to be safer, and to take action, he needed to cross the Wash, a big bay which separates the area of East Anglia from Lincolnshire.
He should take a causeway, accessible at low tide, which permits a shortcut of round ten kilometers. The king managed to cross on horseback, however this was not the case for his baggage prepare carried by carts and mules which ended up getting slowed down earlier than being coated by a powerful rising tide.
The treasured cargo was misplaced within the quicksand: furnishings, numerous objects, relics, paperwork, but in addition chests of gold, silver goblets, a part of the crown jewels… Some estimate the treasure at practically 70 million euros, an unverifiable determine.
Iron nails and official seals
According to the chronicles, the king didn’t handle to seek out his chests and his baggage, regardless of lively searches. Where did the stagnation truly happen? What precisely did the chests comprise? Many doubts and mysteries stay. Especially because the sovereign ended up dying, most likely of dysentery, a couple of days later in Newark Castle, the final act of the poor reign of the ultimate offspring of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II Plantagenet.
All this doesn’t discourage British archaeologists, who hope someday to seek out traces and artifacts of this formidable treasure. Several searches have already been carried out, with out success.
In 2016, the King's Lynn & West Norfolk Archaeological Society (WNKLAS) excavated a supposedly strategic location from which iron nails and official seals have been recovered.
But no gold cash… It should be stated that the precise location of the catastrophe stays unknown, lengthy since coated by land reclaimed by farmers on the estuary, creeks, mud and sand banks, as soon as crisscrossed by a number of streams…
“A needle in a haystack”
This time, analysis will begin once more following the venture to construct an enormous photo voltaic farm in a neighboring space. The builders obtained permission to construct, on the situation of letting specialists perform excavations close to a marsh, with the digging of a number of trenches to investigate the layers of sediments and embankments.
“When you're looking at something this big, it's pretty exciting,” WNKLAS president Clive Bond instructed the native newspaper. “There might be something there, certainly,” he enthused. But to seek out the precise location, when all of this was deposited in a altering and dynamic river system, is like on the lookout for a needle in a haystack…”
According to him, we will definitely have the ability to discover medieval or post-medieval artifacts, however we should dig deep, no less than 5 meters beneath floor stage.
For Paul Richards, historian of the city of King's Lynn, we must always not count on a miracle: “Nothing has ever been found,” he remembers. Not to say that King John most likely didn’t journey with such an vital treasure, as a result of he had spent most of it combating in opposition to the barons and the French…”
This signifies that the probabilities of coming throughout a couple of chests filled with gold stay, at this stage, greater than unsure. And too dangerous for Charles III if he counted on it to spherical up the crown’s nest egg…
https://www.lepoint.fr/histoire/chasse-au-tresor-en-angleterre-pour-retrouver-les-joyaux-de-jean-sans-terre-06-04-2024-2556934_1615.php