Josh Gates Investigates The Medieval Mystery Of The 800-Year-Old Lost Treasure

Welcome to medieval England. Somewhere  in the northeast part of the country, and these are not happy days. The kingdom  [music] is embroiled in turmoil, facing brutal fighting with the French and a civil war here  at home. Wealthy baronss all over England are rising up against the reign of a greedy and  taxobsessed tyrant by the name of King John.
John’s reign has been nothing short of disastrous.  And he’s traveling the country with a large force, putting down revolts and collecting riches to  fund his military campaigns. But little do his enemies suspect that King John is about  to lose everything. The massive convoy is traveling with the king’s most prized  possessions, including his crown jewels.
[music] But right about now, John makes the  decision to part ways with the carriages, sending them through a dangerous marsh known as  the wash, while he rides around to the other side.
The caravan and its drivers roll on into the  muddy fields, unaware that in a few hours, scores of people will be dead, and the  entire treasure will be swept away by a freak force of nature. A priceless fortune  will be lost right here, buried deep in the pages of history and waiting patiently for the  future. So get ready to hop across the pond on a quest for 800year-old crown jewels so valuable  that whoever finds them can live like a king.
Now, somewhere [music] around here, King John’s  caravan, which would have been made up of thousands of people, [music] a countless number  of carriages, met with a very violent disaster.
The question is, how? Well, it turns out that  the wash is a lot more dangerous than it looks.
To understand what makes the wash so deadly,  I’ve enlisted the help of title expert John Bacon. John. Josh. Pleasure to meet you. and nice  to meet you as well. Thanks for taking the time.
I appreciate it. Yeah. No, you’re welcome.  [music] Let me make sure I understand this.
All of this out here is part of what’s called the  wash. Yeah. Uh the wash forms a muddy estie very typical of the east coast of England. I confess  I don’t really understand fully what it is. I’m desperately hoping you can actually explain this  to me. Yeah. Well, I think we can probably do a bit better than that. We’ll take a craft and  get out there and show you what’s going on.
This model illustrates that during a normal high  tide, even when the water rolls in, some of the wash remains dry and navigable, which is where  the king’s caravan likely tried to cross. But John has discovered that under certain conditions,  the wash can become a much deadlier place. So, one of the things that could have happened was a  spring tide occurring, which occurs when there’s um a full moon and the high tidal level is  slightly higher than a normal tide, right? Another thing could have happened was a storm surge at  that time. It’s possible under a powerful storm, you may get waves up to 15 to 16 ft high. If  all of those things occurred at the same time, then you could have a significantly bad flooding  event. With just the right mix of environmental conditions, the storm surge blows past the  normal high tide with a wall of water that could have swamped everything in its path and  turned the wash into a waterlogged hellscape.
I’m in the city of London, England, deep  inside the British National Archives, pouring over medieval scrolls with historian  Jessica Nelson. These documents were dictated by King John himself not long before his entourage  was lost in a coastal area of marsh and quicksand called the wash. Archaeologist Ben Robinson is  using these historic records [music] to guide his search for the king’s lost crown jewels.  Look at that. This is extraordinary. And it’s written in Latin. Yes. So, it’s written  in um medieval Latin. Medieval Latin, which you can read. Yes. Good. Because I’m a  little rusty. This role is [music] from when?
The whole role is from the last year of his reign.  Okay. And the section we’re looking at here is just the last few days. [music] And he’s issuing  an order to one of his officials here on the 12th day of October. But the crucial thing here is  [music] we we actually know where he is, Josh.
That’s that’s the crucial thing. He’s actually  naming the places where he was. These places still exist. King John’s insistence on recording  the daily workings of his government provide an unprecedented look at his reign. His scribes are  unwittingly providing clues for future historians to follow. In 800 years, the town names written  down on this parchment will provide a treasure map of sorts that describe the king’s caravan’s  route through the deadly waters of the wash.
Okay. And so where does he go? We  see him moving on. And then here he’s at Swines Head on the 13th day  of October. According to the scrolls, King Jon and his caravan travel from Swines Head  Abbey in Spalding to the town of Bishop’s Lynn, where he becomes ill with dysentery. [music]  Jon parts ways with his baggage train and takes a longer route back west through the town of  Whisbe and onto Newark while his entourage is told to take a shortcut through the wash. It’s  somewhere in this area that the caravan is lost.
[music] Now, you might think  that after the waters recede, the king’s men will just come back down  to the wash and recover the treasure, but it’s not quite that simple. The thick mud  here swallows anything [music] and everything that touches it. So, while some of the larger  pieces of treasure might be recovered without future technology, [music] the rest of it will  be impossible to find here in the 13th century.
But after a quick cupa, we get  right back to business looking for the jewel in the rock  pile. Holy, hold it, guys.
What is that? I know exactly what that is. Do  you know what is that? That is the crest of England. That’s a free lion’s cassam. It’s a the  official seal of England. This is a seal. Yeah, that’s a seal. A wax seal. It would stamp  it on documents. Yeah. Wax. Push it onto the document. [music] But not just  any documents. Royal documents. The stamp is made of lead and would have  been used to seal official letters, possibly from someone in a position of great  authority. How old is this? That is old. I mean, that is really old. Yeah. How old stand to be?  That’s like 11, 12. That’s in the time frame.
This is it. Yeah. That’s buried. This is 800 years  old. Yeah. Yeah. Look at that right there. That is history. That’s extraordinary. And for you guys  to give that to me, it’s I mean, the generosity.
I’ll just keep this in here. You King Josh. There  we go. King Josh. And it does have a certain ring to it. The seal is a significant find. significant  enough for us to keep sifting through the freezing muck. And it’s a good thing we do because it’s  not long before I spot something that appears metallic stuck under the grate. What is  that? You see that? There looks metal.
Look at that. A little face. Look at that. Look  at it. See if it’s got like a little face on it, has it? Yeah. I got to that could be way older  even than what we’re looking for. Sort of, you know, maybe 300 [music] years earlier than  what we’ve been looking at. Wow. I mean, look at that face. That’s crazy. What is it? That would  have been the metal strip when you open a purse, right? You know, just like a little money purse,  right? And it’s the same design through the centuries. A little mini piece of that. I mean,  look at the decoration. It’s really something.
To me, the thing that’s really mind-blowing about  this is that we found all this in one day. In one little area as well. This is just in this little  area. So, you think that we could be on top of part of the treasure from the from the carriage  accident? I really do. Yeah. I think these are serious clues. [music] Do you think that this area  could be the crossing in question? You can’t doubt it for one second that the fact this this is a  some sort of causeway. It’s just got all the right answers for us. and got these roads leading to  different locations which somebody like John and his caron would have to use, right? And we also  have rich finds like that. So yeah, absolutely.
We have a location which fits, I think, [music]  the story and so a lot more work to be done here.
Absolutely. This is just the beginning. It’ll go  on. It’ll go on for many seasons to come, I think.
So watch this space. More to come. Awesome work,  guys. With the sun disappearing over the horizon, my quest for King [music] John’s lost caravan  comes to an end. I’ve explored the deep end in search of the [music] treasure and perhaps  even hovered on the brink of an epic discovery.