The Bell of King John / Loch Lomond

Britain’s best-documented royal loss. In October 1216, King John of England lost his entire baggage train, the crown jewels of the Angevin kings among it, in the tidal quicksands of the Wash while fleeing across the estuary. Contemporary chroniclers recorded it. The treasure has been hunted for eight centuries in the silt of Lincolnshire and never found, and it may simply be scattered under farmland that used to be sea. A real documented catastrophe that became a treasure legend.