King John’s Lost Treasure

The treasure King John is said to have lost in the Wash in 1216

A king’s treasure lost to the tide. King John died at Newark in October 1216, most probably of dysentery, and the story told ever since is that in his last days part of his baggage train, treasure and all, went down in the tidal sands of the Wash. Much of that old shore has since been reclaimed from the sea, so if the treasure is anywhere, it is under dry land now. In 1963 a 30-foot borehole under a causeway in the reclaimed Wash, between King’s Lynn and Wisbech, brought up fragments of gold and silver that Professor J. Holt of Cambridge connected with King John’s treasure. They proved undatable, and eight centuries on nothing has been found that anyone can prove was his.