JOHN'S TREASURE

The essence of this episode can be stated in eight words, all of which will be grasped immediately by most of today's schoolchildren: King John lost his jewels in the Wash. The rest of the story, however, is cloaked in speculation and argument. Which makes this mysterious occurrence even more intriguing, of course.
It certainly happened, in 1216. But where? Was it near Fosdyke, close to the mouth of the river Welland, as some modern revisionists have suggested; or as most Long Suttonians have long believed, on the Sutton Wash estuary of the river Nene? And what was the treasure? Gold and silver, or ancient books and legal documents? Or was there never any 'treasure' in the first place, as some have speculated, because the King was largely bankrupt?
There are more questions than answers, and what is actually known does not take long in the telling. It is known, for example, that on October 2 John travelled to Grimsby, apparently to arrange for military equipment and stores to be shipped to what is now King's Lynn. He was back in Lynn on October 9, possibly having used one of the Sutton Wash crossing points. And was still there on October 11, reaching Wisbech the following day and arriving in Swineshead later that same day. It was, without doubt, a hard schedule for a very sick man.
The precise details of these daily movements are unknown, and there has been much speculation as to how the schedule was achieved. John may have gone directly from Lynn to Wisbech, crossing the Nene by the town bridge before heading for Spalding and then Swineshead. Or he may have crossed the estuary and ridden to Wisbech before awaiting the arrival of his baggage train.
Naturally, it is the movement of the baggage train which has excited most curiousity, for its attempted crossing of the estuary using the Cross Keys to Sutton route apparently at a time when the tide was about to turn can only suggest either that the baggage train was in a desperate hurry, or that someone must have ignored or over-ruled the advice of local guides. Either way - and it might have been both - and assuming the event did take place here and not Fosdyke, it was a foolhardy decision.
Crossings of the Wash, and between the Lincolnshire and Norfolk coasts, seem to have been taking place at least since the Bronze Age. The Romans almost certainly used the Wash either as an anchorage or supply route to coastal ports, or even inland destinations via the local rivers. And there were certainly other estuary crossing places in addition to Cross Keys.
Precisely when the Sutton-Cross Keys route came into being no-one knows. But we do know when it came to an end. This followed the realignment of the river Nene in the early part of the 19th century, because after this, in 1831, a bridge was built and a causeway opened from Norfolk to Lincolnshire. You can still see it, a grassy and disused embankment on the north side of the A17 close to the present Nene swing bridge at Sutton Bridge. A few years after the opening, when the last of the Sutton Wash guides died, he was buried in Long Sutton churchyard because the church at Sutton Bridge had not then been built.
The whole King John episode has sparked some odd investigations over the decades, none stranger than one shortly before the Second World War when an 'expedition' to find the jewels excited interest and suspicion, so much so that years later, when I was a boy, a story was still current that the searchers were not archaeological experts looking for treasure but 'Nazi spies' mapping the fieldscapes in preparation for later landings by paratroopers.
Interestingly, in 1940 and 1941, during the 'invasion scare' period, defensive preparations for enemy paratroop landings were still high on the list of local military priorities.