The Last Journey of the Magna Carta King

Ten days...

From King of England to death and ruin.

This is the last journey of King John,

the Magna Carta King.

Through the treacherous flatlands of East Anglia...

..to the great cathedral at Worcester...

Here we are, looking at his face and it..

I mean, it's almost overwhelming.

It is, it is.

'..rediscovering the landscape of Magna Carta...'

I can show you what it looked like in John's time.

These are the old fossil creeks,

this salt marsh that extended far inland.

And that's the marsh that King John would have been confronted with.

Nine great necklaces with many precious stones.

'..searching for the King's lost treasure.'

This is buried in the area where I'm standing.

'Is it really still hidden somewhere in the Fens?'

CLANKING

About two, two-and-a-half foot to my right.

'A legend still alive after 800 years.'

What do they say around here?

At the abbey, he's...

poisoned by the monks, by poisonous toad.

'A story told in the King's own words.'

'We can actually show where the King was every single day of his reign.'

'A lasting legacy.'

It's the first, original will of an English king to survive

-through to modern times.

-An extraordinary thing.

This is the last journey of the Magna Carta King.

People have come to Bury St Edmunds, in Suffolk, to mark something

that happened 800 years ago.

A group of rebellious barons, fed up with the tyrannical

behaviour of their king, met here, in 1214,

to plan their demands.

It was the opening scene in a drama that led to the

making of Magna Carta, one of our most important medieval documents.

Magna Carta inspired our modern democracy,

but it would lead to the invasion of England,

the country ripped apart by Civil War,

and the King dead.

We're setting out from Bury St Edmunds,

where the rebellious barons met.

Before we start this final journey,

we're going to get to know the King.

Travelling with me is Professor Stephen Church,

a leading expert on John.

Since becoming King, John had earned a reputation as a ruthless tyrant,

a king who constantly travelled the land,

asserting his control.

Whoever you were,

you'd know about it when the King arrived in town.

He takes everything with him because government is done on the hoof,

and that means the King's writing office,

it means a part of the...

the way in which the King collects money,

it means his knights, it means his sergeants, it means...

Actually, it means things like the royal hunt,

which can include 300, 400 dogs,

plus the huntsmen and all the accoutrements

that go with that, and you have to have

the material to maintain this household,

so you have to have the bakers and the cooks

and the stewards, and wine has to be collected.

So, in other words,

we're talking about something that is actually extremely complicated.

The King has his own man who is responsible for carrying

his own bed around the country.

-That's just like taking a small town around.

-Yes, it is.

-Actually, quite a large town.

-Quite a large town, yes, indeed.

'It must have been an astonishing sight.

'Hundreds of people travelling with the King,

'from bakers to prostitutes.

'Imagine this whole marketplace on the move.

'The procession would have been over a mile long.'

What a sight this must have been.

For people who weren't used to seeing people in such great numbers.

To see this great population moving through an area.

And it is quite clear, we get some contemporary accounts which

suggest it is a terrifying sight.

We know so much about the King's journey from hundreds of letters,

and Stephen has realised that they are actually the King's own words.

For the very first time in English history,

we can actually show where the king was

every single day of his reign.

Each of these letters is dated,

it's dated with the place that it's issued from

and the date that it's issued from, and so you can tell -

that's where the King was at that particular moment in time.

And when it says "witness myself", it really means the King has

written these words - or spoken these words

and they've been written for him.

And it's in John's reign that for the first time, the chancery,

the King's writing office, records his outgoing correspondence.

So we don't have it for Richard I,

we don't have it for Henry II, but we do have it for John.

So this is actually the voice of the King,

this is as close as we get to a medieval tape-recording.

Absolutely, it is. That's precisely what it is.

We have some wonderful examples.

This particular letter from 1214,

when the King is writing to the seneschal,

who is his officer of Angouleme,

ordering him to find for his huntsmen and dogs

their reasonable expenses, and then he goes on to say...

HE LAUGHS

-Pretty specific stuff, isn't it?

-Very specific.

But what about these great matters of state,

all these momentous events that were going on around him?

Well, they are there too. So, letters to the Pope,

letters to his officials,

directing their activities. They are there too.

So, this particular letter, for example,

which comes from early on in the reign, but it gives you a flavour.

"The King to all the citizens of Canterbury and the men

"of Middleton and all the knights and free tenants of the whole of Kent."

So it is a big letter. "Greetings, hello..."

So it was a really quite threatening letter addressed to all

the men of Kent, and the focus is on the big picture there.

It's menacing behaviour. And not only that, John upset the wealthy,

demanding money with a new 13th century style mansion tax.

The rebels hoped to curb that with Magna Carta, in June 1215.

Extraordinarily, an English king agreed to limit some of his

God-given powers, but it wasn't long before he broke its terms.

Civil war followed, the rebels declared the King deposed

and invited Prince Louis of France to take the throne.

The King fought back, travelling the land, crushing his enemies.

By spring 1216, he'd reached East Anglia.

It was the run-up to his final journey.

We follow the King to Framlingham, in Suffolk,

stronghold of Sir Roger Bigod, one of the leading rebels.

So this is what King John would have been confronted with,

this incredible castle. It was built about 1190

and it uses this naturally defensible location

on a valley side. It accentuates it,

this great mound here, onto which this huge curtain wall

has been constructed and a deep ditch gouged out.

These are incredible defences.

There's a serious purpose here, but also it is a sort of visual signal.

"Don't mess with us, we are big, we are powerful."

You can just imagine the troops scurrying around there,

poking their heads from around the battlements

and loosing off the arrows at an attacking army.

The prospect of taking this place must have been really intimidating.

But King John wasn't intimidated.

His campaign was going well, he's on a roll.

From October onwards, he's just redistributing the lands

of those who have rebelled against him,

redistributing them to his supporters.

He's very much trying to break them on that wheel of poverty.

And he's here at Roger Bigod's castle of Framlingham,

because Roger Bigod is one of the guarantors of Magna Carta,

one of the enforcers of Magna Carta,

and he wants to break Roger Bigod on that wheel of poverty, too.

And yet there was no great battle.

The constable of the castle decides to hand over

the keys of the castle to the King.

But that seems absurd, because this castle is almost brand-new

and it's packed full with these state of the art defensive features,

and they just open the gates and let him in!

They sort of stared out at this, the assembled King's army,

with his siege engines, his hundreds of knights.

I mean, we know he has got miners and ditchers,

whose job it is to undermine the walls.

Would you want that to happen to your nice,

brand-spanking-new castle, here at Framlingham?

Maybe, then, it was just a simple, pragmatic decision.

If the castle isn't stormed, it's not destroyed,

we get to hang on to it, maybe for when the wind changes.

For fairer times. We get to keep this great possession.

And perhaps also to keep your own life as well.

Because if you stand up to the King, then perhaps the King would

have a reason for having you hung outside the walls of your castle.

The King gave most of the rebels' land to his supporters

to keep them on side,

but his letters tell us he wanted Framlingham for himself.

He tells the knights and free tenants of the fees

of Earl Roger Bigod...

He's taking the castle, the home of the Lord,

he's taking all his lands.

And he's putting his own guys in charge.

Very much so, very much so. And this is such a swanky, nice castle

and such a rich holding,

that he wants to hold it in his own hands.

Every day for a year,

John the tyrant was taking land from the rebels.

He was 49, fearless and at the top of his game.

No-one could have predicted what was going to happen next.

He'd brought the north of England under control,

and now the east was being brought to heel.

Only London was holding out against him.

A commentator looking at the scene then would think this was

a king who was about to crush the rebels.

But that was about to change.

From Framlingham, in Suffolk, we travel north-east

to the coastal port of King's Lynn, in Norfolk,

to see how fortune begins to turn against John.

The critical point came in the spring of 1216,

when Prince Louis of France actually arrived in the country

to claim the throne.

On October 9th, John comes to King's Lynn,

where he still has support.

Little does he know it, but his final journey has begun.

He's about to fall sick and has just ten days to live.

Ten days to save his dynasty from oblivion.

By now, the country was a mess.

King John and his entourage came to King's Lynn,

where the people welcomed him with open arms,

and this is because, a few years before,

he'd given the town a great gift, a charter.

It gave the townspeople economic, commercial and legal freedoms.

It allowed trade to thrive.

John left his mark on the town.

You can see its wealthy past.

Just look at these great buildings.

Like the guildhall,

built by the men who owed their power to King John -

the merchant guild.

800 years later, the town hasn't forgotten King John's gift.

Gary, you've got a fantastic collection here in King's Lynn.

The borough regalia is just fantastic.

-Superb, isn't it?

-And you've got items here that are associated

with King John, or people thought were associated with King John.

I think the King John associations are really important.

The one thing which we know is definitely King John

-is the 1204 charter.

-Yes.

Which is the charter which gave

Lynn its rights, basically.

You can see it is a grant in perpetuity.

so it is granting those rights forever.

It also grants them a...

..merchant guild as well. That's up here.

Oh, yes. Yes.

This is really the beginning of the borough council, isn't it?

-This is townspeople governing themselves.

-Yeah.

From the 12th century, Lynn was a thriving town.

After London and Southampton,

King's Lynn and Boston were the two main ports.

So this area was extremely wealthy, and this was what was needed to give

them those rights. It's what set off the town upon another 100 years of

thriving, commercial success.

And it was still being referred to in the 19th century,

when people were given freedom of the borough.

They're still referring to the charter of King John.

Intriguingly to me, you've also got items here which are said to be

associated with King John,

but are actually later, they belong to later centuries.

There's a very strong tradition of the association with King John,

which shows the importance of King John to the borough.

This here is the King John cup.

Dates from about 1325.

It's a... Well, it is pretty unique standing cup.

What's so special about it is it's a secular item.

You associate chalices with church,

but this clearly isn't a church item, because if you look at it,

every scene on it relates to hunting. At the top here, we can see

a lady with a bow and arrow and hunting dogs.

On the bottom, we can see hounds chasing hares.

I mean, one theory is it was used by the merchant guilds,

here in this building, as part of an annual celebration for King John,

because he is so significant to the town, because of the charter.

This cup would have been used and passed around, perhaps,

for people to drink out of,

as part of that ceremony of a big feast.

And here we have King John's sword, so-called.

There is a very strong tradition that King John

took the sword from his side

and presented it to the town of Lynn.

In fact, there is an inscription on the blade, in Latin,

which says just that. But...

there is a lot of doubt as to the date

and how much of the original sword may have survived.

Clearly, most of it has been added at a later date.

In fact, there is an inscription referring to Henry VIII.

But again, there's a very strong tradition

of this sword being associated with King John.

It shows the importance of King John to Lynn.

In fact, it is still used today in ceremonial functions. 12 times a year

it is taken out and used in procession,

so again that keeps that tradition still very strong within Lynn.

And so, in October 1216, no doubt King John was lobbying,

cashing in on those good relationships with the folk of Lynn.

But the good times were coming to an end.

We think it was here that he began to feel unwell.

October 11th, 1216,

day two of his final journey.

The King leaves the town and heads north through the Fens.

Travelling that way today takes us along the A17

and across the River Nene at Sutton Bridge.

We can have a pretty good guess he was heading back to Lincoln.

Which was his.

The King has already spent a long period of time around Lincoln,

shoring up its defences,

because it is clearly an extremely important castle

for the defence of his lands

during this extraordinary time.

That's his ultimate destination.

Of course, he never gets there, but that's where he's heading.

In 1216, this is a very different and treacherous landscape.

There are no bridges and only rough roads.

The King, his party of hundreds of men with all his baggage,

are making a very dangerous journey.

And disaster is just around the corner.

'Thanks to technology, we can see why.

'We can see back in time to the very landscape King John is crossing.'

-I can show you what it looked like in John's time.

-Fantastic.

There's a bit of kit here. It's wonderful stuff.

-This is a lidar image.

-OK.

And it basically creates a very detailed terrain map,

so a map of the undulations in the surface of the earth.

And we're not looking below the soil here,

but it is giving you a sense of this landscape going way back in history.

And you can see here, this is the modern coast.

-This is the edge of the Wash right here.

-Yep.

Here's the River Nene, coming right out there.

But what you can immediately see...

See all these little, winding...

tree-like, root-like paths coming through?

It is difficult to make these out on the surface of the land now.

They are there, but these are the old fossil creeks,

this salt marsh that extended far inland.

-You can see this is all reclaimed land.

-Yes.

-This area of green.

But you're still seeing a pattern of the underlying, ancient salt marsh,

and that's the marsh that John would have had to confront.

So this is the stuff that they're crossing.

'Today, a high bank protects the reclaimed farmland from flooding,

'but on the other side, we can see why King John's baggage train

'got into trouble.'

Look at this, Stephen.

I think this is precisely the sort of path, causeway,

that King John's baggage train would have been confronted with.

It's fine for you or I to traverse, or somebody with a horse,

but we are not talking about two or three people,

we are talking about hundreds of people who were involved

in the King's baggage train,

that there are these large four-wheeled carts,

which are carrying a huge amount of weight.

It changes from minute to minute, hour to hour.

It's not just a seasonal thing.

This... You have to know it, you have to be able to read it.

I mean, look at that!

Even as we are talking, the tide is sweeping in, and what was

once salt marsh and visible to us is now becoming like a lake.

It's extraordinary, the speed with which that's come in.

Absolutely extraordinary. If we'd been out there...

Well, we'd have been in trouble.

'It appears that the baggage train makes the crossing

'before the tide is fully out and gets stuck.

'That's puzzling because we'd expect travellers to have a local guide

'who knows the dangers.'

It makes you wonder about John's situation,

whether his baggage train actually had a guide or not.

Because the baggage train does get into difficulty,

but it gets into difficulty

because it appears to start to cross

at a point which is too early, before the tide is fully receded.

Low tide is around about midday on the day of

the 12th of October.

And the baggage train clearly sets out too early.

Well, would a fenman have allowed that to happen?

Did a local guide deliberately lead them to danger

so that the locals could pinch the treasure?

Or is there another reason the King's men take such a wild chance?

John is travelling separately.

He's gone ahead to nearby Wisbech.

And he isn't hanging about. He could cover 30 miles a day.

The baggage train would have moved much more slowly,

but it has to make it to the next meeting point with the King.

The pressure is really on.

Whatever the reason, legend has it that gold, silver,

crown jewels and money all go down in the mud.

It's still some of the most sought-after treasure

in the country.

The problem is we don't know for sure where it sank,

so how on earth do you find out where to look?

London barrister Walton Hornsby and his brother-in-law,

Philip Hayden Slayter, began trying to find out in 2003.

As well as looking at ancient documents,

they're using an unusual method to pinpoint the exact spot.

So this is the exact route that..

the baggage train would have taken...

in...1216.

-INTERVIEWER:

-And how are you going to find the exact spot?

Right, that's where Jim Longton comes in.

This is our diviner, our dowser.

And what we need him to do today...

I mean, he's already done it, he's already shown us

exactly where he thinks

the remains of the baggage train is,

but we want him to go right on the spot today,

so that we can get a very precise reading from exactly where

he tells us the...

the treasure is.

We need, really, to know and understand

what the sediments are like,

where the clay level is,

how much water is down there.

And really to be able to understand the conditions

so that we can plan the excavation properly.

It's possible that within these samples...

will be found some of the debris,

or even possibly some of the artefacts that actually went down.

Now if that happens, obviously that would be highly encouraging.

Not to say hugely exciting.

One, two, three. It's either three or four

of those...

-Stand behind the rod.

-..trees.

Stand behind the rod.

Point me to where King John's treasure lies buried.

That would be smack bang dab on where we were last time.

Smack bang dab on where it came up before.

Right, Walton has got the list.

Jim Longton has found other treasure.

The two amateur historians think he's the best hope

of recovering some of our most precious heritage.

I am absolutely convinced that he is a genuine guy, and that

when he says that this is where the baggage train passed,

and this is where whatever went down with the baggage train

still now is, I'm quite convinced that he is genuine about that.

Now, whether it is down there...

is another matter.

The place where the English royal regalia...

..lies buried.

Point to the place in King John's baggage where the English royal...

Once the most likely spot has been identified,

the next step will to be drill down and collect soil samples.

'We are continuing our journey north through the Fens.

'Even though it's eight centuries since the King

'and his men passed this way, his last great journey is alive

'in local folklore and marked in the landscape.

'It's said that he stayed here at King John's Farm.

'He certainly travels from Wisbech across the Fens.

'By October 12th, he reaches Swineshead, in Lincolnshire,

'where he stays with the monks at the local abbey.

'Now the village is surrounded by farmland,

'but here, too, lidar images reveal how this was a tiny island

'in the middle of a huge marsh in John's time.

'The yellow areas are the higher ground,

'and you can just see the site of the abbey and a medieval castle.

'On the ground, traces of those ancient buildings

'and sites have almost disappeared.'

You can see it's actually... Circular bank runs here.

And there where it's clear of weeds and nettles.

So it's a little motte and bailey castle, the central mound,

and it would have buildings in it. Little memorial castle.

This would have been in King John's landscape.

This would have been a feature that he

and his entourage would have seen.

And very close to the abbey grounds over there.

Yes, Swineshead's over there.

Day three of King John's final journey.

Things are not going well.

It's here at Swineshead that the King gets the news

that his baggage train has been lost,

and by now he is very sick.

It's said that travellers came to this very spot in King John's day

to have a drink and pick up a local guide to take them

across the treacherous marsh.

And like us, no doubt, to hear the local gossip.

Has John contracted dysentery?

Or is there something more sinister going on?

We have an account by a man called Roger of Wendover,

writing in the 1220s, a man who was very much a hostile witness

when it comes to King John. He didn't like King John at all.

He actually describes for us the sort of...

Something about his stay here at Swineshead,

and says that

"his sickness was increased by his pernicious gluttony..."

-Well, that's not the story that's told around here.

-There we go.

Excellent.

-Well, let's hear it.

-What do they say around here?

That he stayed at the abbey that night.

Obviously they were monks.

The monks didn't particularly like him. He's, um...

poisoned by the monks.

His food taster was killed in the abbey.

He died there from food poisoning, by poisonous toad.

And, apparently, King John passed through the village on his way

to Newark, and that's where he died there. Um...

Oh, poisonous toad.

-Poisonous toad.

-Why use a toad to poison the King?

-Marshland.

There will be frogs, toads around. You know, um...

Obviously not now, it's a big farming community.

-In them days, it was just marshland.

-Yes.

-You know?

So...it's all hearsay, there's nothing ever been...

..written down, that I know of. It's just stories that have been...

It's a story that finds its way into Shakespeare's King John,

although there is no toad in Shakespeare's King John.

Apparently, John is poisoned by one of the monks

of Swineshead, here,

and...then, as your story says,

makes his way to...

makes his way to Newark, where eventually he's going to die.

So, because it was all marshland, hence the story of his

treasure being lost in the Wash.

Because this was all Wash then.

You dig a hole locally and anybody that is from the area will

ask you if you've found King John's treasure yet.

There were rumours that people had found bits and pieces.

-Nobody has ever said that to me.

-You wouldn't tell me that...

THEY LAUGH

-..if you had.

-I shouldn't think he lost it.

I should think he, or somebody had it away.

If he's out of his mind on poison toad, he's probably given it away.

And nobody is going to say anything, are they?

Now matter how long ago it was, they will have flogged it on.

I don't... As far as I know, nothing has ever turned up.

So you've never had someone come in here, saying,

-"How much for this gold coin"?

-No.

THEY LAUGH

Unfortunately not, no.

But the power of local storytelling turns out to be extraordinary.

After we left the pub, digging deep in the archives,

we find that, in fact, the story of poisoning by toad

goes back to a medieval chronicler...

'The monk found a great toad and put him in a cup and pricked

'the toad thorough with a brooch many times,

'till that the venom come out.

'Then, he took the cup and filled it with good ale,

'and brought it before the King.'

So although the source had been all but forgotten,

local sharing of this legend

has kept it alive in Swineshead for 800 years.

Whether it's true is another matter.

Today is an important day for Walton and Philip's treasure hunt.

Diviner Jim Longton has, they believe,

identified the place where King John's baggage train went down.

The field here was once part of a huge marsh,

but now machinery is needed to explore further.

What we think we're dealing with

is large oak caskets bound with metal.

And these caskets would have sunk down into the quicksands

until they would have hit either bedrock or silt.

And we estimate that that will be at about a depth

of between 15 and 20 feet.

I'm...anxious, expectant and hopeful.

I've got, Jim, a more specific list.

So the first item is a crown with precious stones,

a cross and seven flowers.

This is gold with precious stones.

One last check from Jim that they are digging in the right place.

It needs to be, as the pair are spending

thousands of pounds of their own money.

Philip's knowledge of soil

gained from his background in mining is useful.

With this logging of each section,

we'll be able to find out exactly how each layer behaves

in terms of the water contact,

in terms of the silt, the sand, the sludge...

And hopefully, you never know,

a little bit of treasure might come up.

But even taking the samples is proving difficult.

-You understand the problem?

-No.

OK, the problem is that we are getting these blown sands,

because the pressure down in that hole is so intense.

It's forcing 1.4, 1.3 metres, into a metre,

and so the sleeve that's inside is getting compacted inside the collar.

So it's buckling the plastic collar and forcing it out

and they can't get it out.

I don't think they're going to get that out.

So what I think we'll do is empty it out,

which is what we want to do anyway.

-Nothing at all.

-No.

-Leather and a little bit of wood...

Some bit of bone...

You know...

-Yeah.

-Some little...

-relic might have given us a little bit more encouragement.

-Yeah.

Things are not going well for King John either.

He leaves Swineshead knowing that Prince Louis of France

is stalking the land.

There's a real danger of Louis taking the throne.

John travels on to Sleaford and from there,

he arrives in Newark, Nottinghamshire,

on October 16th, day eight of his last journey.

This is a great way to travel, isn't it, and to come to Newark?

Waterways were really important in the medieval world

for getting people around and goods,

but King John is not coming to Newark via the river.

No, he's not. He's being carried to Newark by his men,

bouncing along, presumably, on those horrible rutted October roads.

We know that he's really unwell, because on the 15th of October,

from his abbey, or from Sleaford,

he writes to the Pope,

and he writes to the Pope in this vein.

"Since we are detained by a serious and incurable illness -

"so much so that there was no hope at all for us..."

"We gathered together our magnates in our presence

"and made provision at that time for our kingdom."

So he's preparing for death even on the 15th of October.

-And his objective is this, the castle.

-It is the castle.

Which is in friendly hands, somewhere he knows he can go.

It belongs to the Bishop of Lincoln

but it's in John's own hands at this particular stage.

The constable is John's man,

so he knows it's going to be a safe location.

So this is the object of his...

This is where he is destined to go.

Here too, in the town where he died,

King John is still remembered by the locals, but it's not a fond memory.

What do Newark people know about the story of King John?

Well, the main history is that we know that the actual castle

was owned by one of the chief clergymen,

or the Bishop of Lincoln,

and Prince John used to come here as a drop-off spot

wherever he travelled.

Do you think he was a bad king

or just someone who's been misinterpreted

and bit unlucky in history?

Well, I'd say he would be rather unlucky in his history.

We all believe in this town that the man died through poisoning

and no other source, but that is open to conjecture.

Do you think he got what was coming to him?

Well...

everybody would say what goes around comes around

and I believe that that man may have got what he deserved.

Incredible that after 800 years,

people have such strong opinions about John.

I guess that's what happens to rulers who overtax

and terrorise their citizens.

The king and his men stay here at Newark Castle.

John is very weak. The kingdom is in crisis.

For his followers, it's panic stations.

A few days earlier, the King had been in good health.

There's been no time to make a plan.

The north of England is held by the rebels.

So are London and Westminster.

Prince Louis of France has laid siege to Dover Castle,

gateway to the kingdom.

On the night of October 18th, John lays in his bed dying.

It must have looked, certainly to those who gave it any thought at all,

as though the regime was going to come to an end.

As though the dynasty was going to come to an end.

And on the 18th of October, there is a great flurry of official letters

that are being sent out,

all of which are related to the needs of the King's royal advisers.

So one of the letters concerns the movement of troops.

Yes, indeed, and this is the very last letter, personal letter,

if you like, that John sends.

And he sends it to a man called Savaric de Mauleon,

who is one of his Poitevin generals,

one of his closest supporters, one of his closest adherents.

And what this letter does is it sends troops to him. So here we go.

So it's as though he's giving up the ghost at this particular moment.

He realises that he has no more need for these 300 soldiers

and he's sent them to his chief supporter,

the one he thinks is going to be able to use them most wisely.

It must have been very distressing.

And you use an interesting word - "incapacitated".

We know he was carried to Newark on a litter.

He is not capable of riding. And yet, issuing letters.

Is there a suspicion that actually someone else is doing this

-on his behalf?

-Well, yes, absolutely.

I think there's a very good suggestion.

There are these eight or so public letters that are issued

on the very last day of his life, supposedly the very last of his life.

And they seem to show a very coherent,

thinking plan as to what is going to happen in the next stage

of the war against the rebel barons

and the war against Louis.

And it's hard to believe that John was actually compos mentis enough

to be able to think through those particular issues,

and it does make one think of those dictators

whose death we hear of only a few days after they die.

So they create a bit of breathing space.

A bit of time to think.

I think they create a bit of breathing space.

I'm sure that's right.

So it's possible John's men hush up his death

while they get themselves sorted out.

When the news does come out, just like politicians today,

they make sure the story is suitably spun in the King's favour.

We have this, I suppose you might call it a semi-official version,

of what happened at the point that John died,

and we are told that John died in the night of the 18th or 19th of October,

presumably in the early hours.

Here the account says at about the middle of the night.

So this dramatic event, the death of a king,

is matched by this strange and dramatic weather and these visions.

It's a moment of real crisis for the English polity.

They don't know who the next king is going to be.

John's son Henry is just nine, too young to rule.

But the other option is a foreign prince. Civil war still rages.

Can the dynasty be saved?

As we'll see, John's last acts before his death prove critical.

Meanwhile, in the field in Lincolnshire, Walton and Philip

are hoping that the soil samples

will hold some clues to their puzzle.

Some sign that they are indeed digging

where King's John treasure was lost.

They trusted a diviner and now it's time to see if that's paid off.

Four foot, five foot, six foot. Within six foot of where I'm stood.

You can do all the research you want.

At the end of the day, you really need a bit of kind of other world

or other dimension sort of capability

in pinpointing where it is that we need to dig.

-You never know.

-You never know.

-There might be something.

-Exactly.

Up the tube, so to speak.

All I want is just a little bit of wood, a bit of leather,

a bit of fabric, a bit of gold and silver, a few jewels would be nice.

But just a little something for the effort. Just...

Just to show willing and give some encouragement.

It looks pretty much like estuary mud, doesn't it? HE LAUGHS

Which is...what it is!

Walton, I'll tell you what, we can have...

We can be the people in London with 13th century sandcastles.

Estuarine sandcastles.

Jim examines the soil samples for traces of anything

that could be significant.

Is there any metal? Give me yes or no. No.

Any bronze, copper, silver, gold, any metal? None at all.

Is there any fabric, any traces of fabric? Any traces of fabric?

Is there any wood in this sleeve?

A good reading. There's definitely wood in this sleeve.

There's 17 to 18 particles of wood in this...in this sleeve.

The samples are sent to the lab.

Just as Jim has said, they contain no metal,

but there's three-quarters of an ounce of wood.

Could it have come from an oak casket?

They never found out.

-Whereabouts on the map are we?

-I can show you exactly...

'In the end, the pair decided Jim's divining alone wasn't enough

'to justify further exploration.'

So this is the old A17. Here is the old causeway.

This is this house here...

'But 12 years later, there's new technology

'that could help. The hunt could be on again.'

We couldn't be sufficiently sure,

based on Jim's dowsing,

that it was exactly here.

We needed a further confirmation.

We had the historical documentary confirmation, we had Jim,

but what we needed is something technical.

You need very sophisticated ground-penetrating radar

or something of that sort.

The time we were there with Jim, in 2003,

there wasn't anything that we could give you a sufficient hit

to be certain, right, this is where we want to dig a hole 30 feet deep.

How frustrating for you, though.

You think you're within touching distance of it but there's no way

of getting the precise location and getting down that depth.

What about now, though?

-Here we are standing approximately on the spot...

-Yes.

Not the exact spot, but somewhere near.

You must be thinking we could actually be standing on top of it.

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

-Are you still in the hunt?

-Absolutely.

Are you still after trying to find it?

If the technology is there, um, why not?

But to this day, archaeologists and treasure seekers

can't be certain where to look.

The chances of finding King John's treasure are very slim indeed.

A lot of people really believe that there is a treasure out there

and I have to say, personally, I think something did happen

and something was lost.

I think the evidence is clear that there must be something there,

there must have been something lost.

The question is, what was lost?

Erm, we know that

John was hiring ships in order to take his baggage to Grimsby,

so clearly a big part of the, of the King's material,

is not in that baggage train.

-So, only part of it is coming across the Wash on foot.

-Only part of it.

That's the first thing and when we're talking about treasure,

we're not, we're not really just talking about gold and silver

-and glittery stuff, are we?

-No, we're not, we're not.

Um, we know certainly from one source, one reliable source,

that we're talking about relics.

Relics of the saints.

Large amounts of cloth.

The King's tapestries, which he carried around with him,

that would make his place of stay comfortable.

So, in fact,

treasure means all sorts of things. It doesn't just mean gold.

It also means, you know, the luxuries that make a life that much

more pleasant for the truly wealthy in this society.

So, it's a mixture of stuff, some of which gets lost.

Some of which gets lost.

-Some of which might get recovered soon after.

-Yeah, absolutely.

And some of the stuff that's lost is, is...is perishable.

It's going to disappear very, very quickly.

And then, one wonders, OK, there's material that's lost

but what are those Fen people doing?

Are they watching it go down and thinking,

"Oh, OK, we'll say goodbye to that."?

or are they saying, "Actually, we want our share of that."?

And they...there must have been some scavenging that went on.

John's 17-year reign had been a disaster.

Since the meeting of the rebels and the making of the Magna Carta, along

with his treasure, the tyrant had lost a large part of the kingdom.

Now, with John dead, Prince Louis of France controlled London

and Westminster and was ready to claim the throne.

And so, we travel from Newark and arrive at Worcester,

the end of King John's last journey.

In his final hours, did he save his dynasty from total destruction?

The answer to that lies at Worcester Cathedral,

the King's final resting place.

King John artefacts kept here attract visitors

from all over the world.

This may or may not be his finger bone but I can't wait to see

a document that we know is the real thing - his last will.

-And here it is.

-Oh, that's fantastic.

Thank you so much for bringing this out.

This is just an extraordinary thing to survive all this time.

-And to be here, to be read by us today.

-It's remarkable, actually.

The survival of it is remarkable.

It's the first original will of a...

of an English king to survive through to modern times.

The surprising thing to me is that it's so compact,

not just in size, but it seems quite concise.

I would expect it to say more about the King's possession

and so-and-so gets this and so-and-so gets that,

but it doesn't seem to say that at all.

No, it doesn't. And you would, wouldn't you?

I think when I first came to this document,

I had exactly the same reaction.

This is a tiny document and it says so little about what it is

the King wants to happen to all his possessions.

But then, when you look at, at other wills that survive from the period,

you realise that, actually, they're not about

getting rid of people's goods.

They are very much thinking about their souls,

what's going to happen to their immortal...?

So the important things?

Back to what really matters. When you're about to meet your maker,

in a sense, the physical bits don't matter.

It's what's going to happen to your soul.

And you can see, there are the slits here.

And these slits are designed for the seals of those people

who are witnessing, so this central one would have been

for the King's seal and then the side ones are for the eight people

who are actually there witnessing the King's final moments.

I'm really keen to hear the King's own words here

and you've transcribed, translated this document,

Give me an idea, a flavour of some of the key passages.

Yes, indeed - in fact, John starts off by saying how unwell he is.

He says he's "hindered by grave infirmity".

And then he goes on to say something about what

he wants to happen to his soul.

But then this is the really important thing,

as far as he's concerned at this particular moment,

and what he does is he asks these executors of his will

to, "Provide support to my sons..."

So it's very much a document that's about the immediate future

of the kingdom, as well as about the immediate future of the King's soul.

The Latin is faltering,

so Stephen believes John spoke these words as he lay dying

and they're being hastily translated by his scribe.

The survival of this precious document is miraculous.

You can see all these fold marks, can't you?

Originally, this was folded up into something really quite small

and, actually, I've got a representation of it here.

That's the size that it would have been

as it sat in the archive from 1216.

So, I mean, how many people would lose a piece of paper like that?

In fact, I've made a representation of that

over a number of occasions, cos I keep losing it.

So, you know, it's so easy to lose and yet it does survive.

That's incred...

To modern eyes, that being a king's will just seems incredible.

-It is.

-Amazing.

But what a miraculous survival.

I mean, how wonderful to have it here in the collection.

But what a responsibility, as well.

It is. It's very nice to have it here in Worcester Cathedral,

and it's something that many of the visitors

particularly come to see in this collection.

So there's still a fascination with it

and people still want to look at the actual document.

That's right. That's right.

And rightly so. I mean, it is splendid.

A CAPPELLA SINGING IN LATIN

And so we approach the final resting place

of a man who must have been terrified.

He squandered the gifts that God gave to him as a king,

and now he's about to meet his maker.

Is this a man who was sorry,

at least for the sake of saving his soul?

-King John asked to be buried at Worcester.

-Yes, he did.

But why Worcester in particular?

Well, I think there are two very clear reasons.

There's the sound practical reason that the kingdom is in chaos -

there's a civil war, there's a foreign prince stalking the land,

much of the kingdom is just not accessible to the King,

so, from a practical point of view, where is he going to be buried?

And then there's a good spiritual reason why he's being buried here.

The most recent saint for this community is St Wulfstan,

who was made a saint by the Pope in 1204,

and it's very clear that John played a really important role

in getting Wulfstan recognised by the papacy as a saint.

In return for that, presumably, one of the things that he hopes

is that the saint is going to look after John's immortal soul.

-So, Worcester was able to look after his body and his soul?

-Very much so.

And, in particular, look after his soul.

They promised to sing masses on a daily basis, which they then

continued to do throughout the rest of the Middle Ages

down to the Reformation.

They promised to sing the coronation song over his body

which, again, they continued to do for the rest of the Middle Ages,

and what they are attempting to do is to massage his soul

through Purgatory on into the everlasting joys

of the kingdom of heaven.

Finally, the moment has come to meet the King himself.

Fittingly for this most controversial of English rulers,

even his choice of resting place caused a squabble.

And here we are at the end of our journey

and here's the burial place, and it is actually almost overwhelming.

It is, completely overwhelming.

I mean, it's a fabulous, fabulous image of our king,

the king we have been following.

I'm looking right into King John's face here,

and we think, actually, it's a pretty good likeness.

Yeah, there's every reason to suppose

that it is a good likeness of this particular individual.

What we know about the way that effigies are created

is that they are created according to the likenesses

of the person who's buried within them.

And this is a place of great honour.

I mean, he's right in front of the high altar here.

This is the position that everyone aspires to.

Very much so, very much so, yes.

And, interestingly, it's not the place that John himself chose.

John asked to be buried at Worcester - that's all he asked.

But this particular location is the location that is chosen for him,

so it's the monks who are deciding to bury him here,

it's the monks who want him in this particular location.

And they want him here because what they're trying to do is

they're trying to persuade John's son, Henry III,

that this is the place that John needs to stay,

because there's a battle going on for John's body.

The Abbot of Beaulieu wants John's body reinterred in Beaulieu Abbey,

because Beaulieu is John's foundation and what he says

is that John promised his body to Beaulieu, in Hampshire.

But the monks of Worcester have got hold of this

and what they want to do is to hang onto it,

so they're going to show Henry III that they are the right people to be

looking after the body and the right people to be looking after the soul.

And the imagery is very, very clear on this.

I can see these things are laden with symbolism,

and I can see he's got two saints flanking him here.

He does, he does, the saints Oswald and Wulfstan.

And Oswald is the 10th century saint of this particular community

and Wulfstan is the saint that John, of course, has promoted.

And here we have them, looking after the King,

looking after the King's soul, and his head is clearly in heaven.

And the lion is supposed to symbolise for us the world.

So here's the King, doing as he's supposed to be doing,

standing on the world, dominating the world.

This is a very, very interesting image, a very unusual image

because, I hope you can see here, his sword is unsheathed.

Kings don't normally go around with their swords unsheathed,

particularly on their effigies,

And this particular sword is, as you can see,

in the mouth of our lion. It's a male lion.

-He's nibbling on the end of it.

-Yeah, absolutely.

It's not just nibbling, it's worse than nibbling.

If you can see, the stonemason has deliberately shown

the sword being bent.

The sword is the symbol of the King's power, the King's office.

This is the thing that's really important because what it's showing

is the King dealing with a world that's in rebellion.

This wasn't just a moment in time straight after his burial.

This is a lasting legacy that descends through generations.

John's association with this place brought such riches

that the monks were able to undertake

a 50-year rebuilding programme.

It turned Worcester into

the magnificent Gothic cathedral we have now.

I've been struck by how King John's story

is still talked about today.

He'll be forever remembered as a true tyrant,

our most disastrous king,

who taxed his people heavily and lost the royal treasure.

But we've got something to thank him for.

Even though it would have been the last thing he intended,

Magna Carta went on to inspire the democracy we enjoy today.

At Worcester, we see a king respected

and revered in his own time because, despite the rebellion

and his sudden death, John's efforts to secure the throne

for his son were successful -

the dynasty was saved.

800 years on, he still holds pride of place in the cathedral,

where visitors flock to see the final resting place of John,

the Magna Carta King.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media