Dan Snow's History Hit - The Tudor Crown Discovered in a Field?

Episode Date: January 4, 2021

Metal detectorist Kevin Duckett made a remarkable discovery in a field in Northamptonshire. At first he thought it was a bit of squashed tin foil. In fact it was a two-and-a-half inch jewel which experts believe could once have sat atop the Tudor crown of England. To entangle this mystery Leanda de Lisle comes back on the podcast to explain to Dan how this jewel made its way from royal diadem to a muddy field.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Hello everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. We've got breaking news on the podcast. We've got breaking news. A metal detectorist might have found a crown that once belonged to the Tudor monarchs of England.

My daughter's beside me looking. Is this exciting? Yeah. Is this more exciting than what you usually get on the History Hit podcast? I'm not sure. Do you not listen to the History Hit podcast? No. So disloyal.

Anyway, a metal detectorist has found in a field what could be the lost treasure of King Charles I. After he defeated the Battle of Naseby, much of his royal baggage train was taken by parliamentary soldiers and much of it would have been lost in the kind of anarchic flight from that battlefield and a 49 year old metal detectorist called kevin duckett may just have found a piece of the crown of charles i which of course as every good history student knows charles i reigned just after the tudors didn't he yeah he? Yeah. Who was his dad? King Charles.

Yeah, who was his dad? Henry. No, his dad was James, Henry's older brother. Almost, almost. Who was the last Tudor king or queen? It was Elizabeth. Nailed it, nailed it. Well done, girl.

So this is a very interesting story. We've got Leander deisle back on the podcast. She has been on before talking about Charles I. She tried to convince him that Charles I was not an absolute idiot, the author of his own misfortunes. And she, well, she kind of pretty much did that. She was very persuasive. So she's back on talking about Charles I.

She's back on talking about this potential crown. Kevin's crown he found at a field. It's very, very exciting. Breaking news here on the podcast. If you want to listen to former episodes of this podcast, including the one with Leander Lyle and Charles I, you can do so at historyhit.tv. Why don't you tell me this stuff?

It's really cool. You never tell me this stuff. I just heard it now. I'm telling you right now. You should listen to the podcast. Anyway, you could be like my daughter. You can listen to the back episodes of the podcast. If you just go to historyhit.tv, use the code January.

Take advantage of this January sale before it comes to an end soon. And you get a month for free and then 80% off your first three months. Zia, I will give you a free subscription. That's how much I love you. Okay. That is the sound of unalloyed happiness. Go to thehistoryhit.tv, use the code January, and yeah, you get the whole thing, super cheap.

In the meantime, everyone, here is Leander Delisle. Leander, good to have you back on the podcast. Thank you. It's good to be back on. Do you know what? Your robust defence of Charles I is one of the classics. Everyone often talks about that podcast and how, you know, you put me right. Good. I'm glad to hear it. You put me right. Anyway, you've got a bit of a mystery. I like this. You've got a bit of a mystery here because in January 1649, Parliament shuts off King Charles's head. It is a republic.

They abolish the monarchy. So what's the plan with the crown jewels? They want to have them melted down, break them up, turn them into hard cash. And that's exactly what they do. By the end of the year, orders have gone out for the crown to be melted down, turned to coin, for the stones to be taken off it and sold. And they're bagged up like little sweeties and sold off over the next couple of years. They didn't all go to one particular collection, like some of the great sort of art collections in the French Revolution and things? No, no, they went sort of hither and yon. And the only survival of the great medieval regalia

that we still have today is an anointing spoon, a 12th-century anointing spoon. It's the only intact part of the regalia that's left. And we have got some stones back, like the black ruby. So there are one or two bits some stones back, like the black ruby. So there are one or two bits that came back, individual stones. Isn't it interesting, like most of the British, the panoply, the sort of impression of British state life, you assume it's all rooted back in the early Middle Ages. But in fact, the crown jewels are quite recent. Yes, no, they are.

Absolutely. They're all post the reign of Charles II. As I said, apart from the anointing spoon, I was getting confused with the ruby. I mean, the Black Prince's ruby. Gosh, sorry. Gaga. Not hardly. So and it was thought so the anointing spoon. That's I mean, what is an anointing spoon? Let's just let's start with that just quickly. on the head of a king as he's been consecrated. And there's that great line in Shakespeare, isn't there, about how you can't wash it off, an anointed king. You can't wash the balm off an anointed king. Once he's king, once he's been crowned and anointed, he's always king, whatever you do.

You can put him in prison, you can claim what you like, but he is forever an anointed king. OK, so the anointed spoon, I mean, that's important, but it doesn't sound like the most exciting piece of the crown jewels, to be absolutely honest with you. Well, I think crowns are the most exciting pieces, aren't they? So what happens to the crown? Well, we're talking here about the state crown, because believe it or not, there was more than one crown. The state crown, which had been created during the early Tudor period. Not only was it used for coronations, but in the case of Charles

I, he also used it for his openings of Parliament. And he's described actually at his first, the procession of his first opening of Parliament and at the official opening, where he doffs it to his MPs, like a man doffing his hat, to show respect, you might say, for his MPs. hat to show respect, you might say, for his MPs. So it's quite ancient. It's 150 years old or so. Yes, yes. It dates back possibly to the reign of Henry VII. And until very recently, we thought nothing survived of this crown. Exactly. Apart from individual stones, which were sort of rescued. But otherwise, the crown was just destroyed. It was thought that nothing survived this crown. So what big news have you got for me? Well, a chap called Kevin got hold of me,

and he said that he had found what he believed to be part of the Tudor crown in a field near Market Harbour on the Leicestershire, Northamptonshire border. And so, of course, I was very intrigued to hear about this. And he sent me an image of this exquisite gold figure of a king. And it's clear from the image, which has sort of has this gold king with a crown in a sceptre and is standing on an antelope, that it's the symbol that it is, in fact, a figure of Henry VI, who was king before the Tudors, during the Walls of the Roses. Well, he helped bring about the Walls of the Roses, you might say. He was the Lancastrian king. And what on earth is this crown? And why is it ever picked?

Hang on, if we think the crown stretched back to Henry VII, why have we got Henry VI on this crown? Yes, well, so who is Henry VI? OK, so Henry VI was the son of Henry V, the great victor of Agincourt. But he was a very different kind of king. He had mental health problems, serious mental health problems. And where his father had won France, he lost France. and where his father had won France he lost France. He was from the House of Lancaster, the Royal House of Lancaster, and his failings triggered the

ambitions of the rival Royal House of York which brought about what we remember as the Wars of the Roses. Poor old Henry VI, after the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, was murdered in the tower on the orders of the Yorkist King Edward IV. But what Edward IV hadn't expected was the English who of course English loved nothing better than a good failure decided that although poor old Henry VI had been a failed king that he was a good and decent man and that he was in fact probably a saint, in fact definitely a saint. And they started praying to him, like one person had a bean stuck in his ear and he prayed to Henry VI and the bean sort of shot out. Somebody else later on was

being hanged unfairly and he prayed to Henry VI and Henry VI magically appeared and put his hand between the rope and the man's neck and saved his life. And so this great cult of Henry VI grew up, which Richard III tried to, well, Edward IV tried to take control of by moving Henry VI's body from Chertsey Abbey to Windsor to the guard you know to the to St George's Chapel Windsor to try and take control of the cult still not particularly successfully and then of course you have Henry Tudor coming along who is Henry VI's half-nephew he kills Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. Now, Henry Tudor's problem is that he has no blood right to the throne because he's of illegitimate Lancastrian descent. So what he does is he says, I'm king because God chose me and my saintly half-uncle, Henry VI, prophesied my reign and said, you know, essentially it's divine providence.

And so he encouraged the cult to Henry VI, which became enormously popular. It became more popular, the most popular cult in England, more popular even than Becket at Canterbury, which was the third most popular pilgrimage site in Europe. So you can imagine how many people were flocking to Henry VI's tomb at Windsor, where you had all these relics kept. People would pray with the relics. He had Henry VI's hat there. People would put the hat on to cure their headaches. They had tremendous riches on the altar. That was how it was described. And people would buy, you know, sort of tourist tat when they went, like little pilgrim tin, sort of lead alloy pilgrimage badges and things like that,

little images of Henry VI, which they would, you know, pin on themselves. And so the first question that came to me was, was this gold king anything to do with the cult of Henry VI? Was it part of a reliquary? It's you know it's pilgrimage badges. The British Museum believes it might be a pilgrimage badge but all the pilgrimage badges have been found are you know tat basically. Whereas this is a solid gold figure with a rhombus enameling in red and green. Very rare, very expensive. An example is the Dunstable Swan, which is in the British Museum, for example, which is made around 1400. These are incredibly rare items.

So I wondered if it could be part of a reliquary, something that kept one of Henry VI's relics, or perhaps part of a miniatureiquary, something that kept one of Henry VI's relics, or perhaps part of a miniature devotional altar. There's an example of such a thing in the V&A, for example, a little virgin, which is rhombus, enameling, and gold. But Kevin was doing some research on connections between Henry VI and the Tudors, Saint Henry, because his figure of this gold king is marked SH for Saint Henry so we know it must post-date his death. And he discovered that historic royal palaces had made a replica of the Tudor crown for exhibition at Hampton Court which they had based on a picture done by Daniel Mittens of Charles I in the 1630s.

He saw a YouTube video about it and it mentioned that it had figures of three kings on it. And then he went to Hampton Court to have a look at this crown. And to his absolute amazement, he saw a slightly cruder version of the king that he had found in a field on the Leicestershire Northamptonshire border staring back at him. That is extremely exciting. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History,

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who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. But so what on earth? So this is what he thinks. You guys think this might be part of the early Tudor crown. And if so, what on earth is it doing there? Well, Kevin is convinced it is. I think it's certainly an interesting, a very interesting possibility. I think it's certainly a very interesting possibility. So first of all, I suppose we ought to think about why historic royal palaces have put this figure of Henry VI on the crown.

And it's because they've been looking back at the Tudor inventories of the crown. And they saw that in 1521 there was an inventory which described the crown as having an image of the virgin on it and having three images of Christ and one of Saint George. But then at the end of Henry VIII's reign, when Henry VIII just died in 1547, there was another inventory which describes instead of the three Christs, there were three kings and they believed they were the three saint kings of England, Edmund, Edward the Confessor and Henry the sixth, hence the figure of Henry the sixth on the crown. I suppose what happened next? Well the picture by Daniel Mittens of Charles the first, the image of the crown, still has the Virgin on the front and so the supposition

is that everything else was still there as well until the crown was destroyed. However, I did find a later image of the crown painted by Van Dyck in 1639. This was just at the beginning of the Charles I wars with the Scots. The Scots were complaining that Charles I was too popish. And so Charles had himself painted in armour because he was about to go to war with the Scots. And you can't see the image of the Virgin on the crown anymore. And you certainly can't see any kings either. And I wonder if they were removed because he didn't want to be perceived as too popish. And these were rather popish symbols.

That's interesting. I've never thought Charles the First is a man to do that much trimming in his fashion choices, but maybe, maybe it is. One doesn't know exactly. But anyway, it is very interesting. The fine site is very interesting. We'll come to that. So what happened next? Well, Parliament was destroying lots of royal stuff and selling off royal stuff already during the Civil War, although not the crowns at this stage. However, this figure was found very intriguingly on the King's flight path from Naseby, the Battle of Naseby. There's quite a lot of metal detecting around. They've really reimagined how that battle went, those metal detectorists on that battlefield, haven't they? Yes, it is absolutely on the flight path. And Charles lost the battle and he's described having to charge through enemy lines to escape. And it said that he dropped his pistols. I mean, maybe he dropped more than just his pistols.

They found lots of incriminating letters and things in their baggage, didn't they? Yes, they did. They made good use of those. They edited his letters, particularly to his queen, Henrietta Maria, which they edited and used as propaganda very successfully. In fact, some of the things that they claimed then, which was that Henrietta Maria entirely wore the britches in the marriage, is still sort of believed now. It's the sort of Carrie Simmons-like thing. It's the same sort of sexist tropes used against Henrietta Moriah entirely wore the britches in the marriage is still sort of believed now it's the sort of Carrie Simmons like thing it's the same sort of sexist tropes used against Henrietta Moriah and Carrie Simmons you might say but anyway the baggage was captured there was a horrendous massacre of the women in the baggage train so could this could this gold king have been part of the in the baggage could could Charles even have been wearing it when it fell?

We just don't know. But it's certainly a very intriguing thought. It was quite well known. There was looting, wasn't there? And there were women or something who were disfigured and called like it was said to be a brothel. But it wasn't. There was quite a scene. but it wasn't. There was quite a scene. That's right. So Parliament claimed that they were Irish and Catholic and gave them, well, they either killed them, because they killed a great many of them.

Those they didn't kill, they mutilated with the whore's mask, i.e. they cut off their nose and they slashed their mouth with a sword to give them a kind of ghastly grin. In fact, they were neither Irish nor Whores, although doubtless there were a few of those following an army. We know, for example, that one of them was an old lady who used to do the flower arranging in the royal palaces and one of her little grandchildren was killed with her. There was certainly plenty of the middling sort, as they were described at the time,

who were supposed to have been carrying quite a lot of wealth with them that was captured. So the sense is that this could have been dropped during that rout? Yes, it could have been. I mean, it is just exactly in that area. That's what's so intriguing. I mean, it could just be i mean it could just be coincidence could just be coincidence maybe somebody dropped this thing you know late in the 15th century we can't be certain but it is it is it it is very intriguing that's been found

exactly there his crown was dropped or someone had already got the crown chopped up what i'm saying is that if these figures were still on the crown in 1631, you can't see them in this image in 1639. So perhaps they were removed before the Civil War, which began in 1642. The battle took place in 1645. If it was part of the crown, it could have been, as I said, part of a reliquary or a miniature devotional altar. Some other thing that Charles had decided to keep with him. And it's such an intriguing choice. Why would he choose to keep an image of Henry VI with him? Because by the time that Charles became king, the cult of saints had long been ended by the reformation and Henry VI, who had been one of the great saint kings of England, was now regarded as a failed king associated with civil war.

But his chaplain at this time, Henry Hammond, was born at Chertsey Abbey, where Henry VI was first buried. He was educated at Eton, which was founded by Henry VI. And there's another sort of connection. I think I mentioned earlier that one of the miracles associated with Henry VI was that he'd saved an innocent man from a hanging, that Henry VI had put his hand between the rope and the man's neck and saved him from death. Well Charles I believed firmly that all his misfortunes were God's punishment on him for signing the death warrant of the Earl of Stratford, his servant, who he believed to be innocent of the treason of which he had convicted. Charles had nevertheless signed his death warrant and he believed that God was

punishing him for that and he said this often, he said this when he was at Carisbrook Castle, he even mentioned it, alluded to it on the scaffold. So it could be that Hammond had encouraged some kind of connection in his mind that meant he decided he wanted to keep this figure with him. So even if it's not the Tudor crown of England, it's very likely, though, that it is something from the jewels, the possessions of a fleeing Charles I. is something from the jewels, the possessions of a fleeing Charles I. It is possible. I think whatever it is, it is something incredibly rare and exciting because over 90% of religious art was destroyed during the Tudor period. So we just don't have many remnants of reliquaries or devotional altars.

As I said, if it is a pilgrimage badge of some sort, there's never been one found that's gold and rambos enamelling. And it could indeed even have been part of the Tudor crown. So it is a very exciting find. Amazing. Has Her Majesty been in touch to try and get it back into the collection? Well, I think the British Museum is going through the treasure process at the moment when they evaluate it and they give some sort of compensation to the person

who found it, in this case, a reward, I think it's called, in this case, Kevin. And then when it's gone through all that process, it will be put on display at the British Museum, I sincerely hope for us all to see. And whatever we discover about the story of this little girl figure of Henry VI, it does unite the story of these two kings, both of whom were responsible to some extent for civil wars, both of whom died violently. And of course, Charles I was also to be named a martyr king, like Henry VI, in his case, by the Church of England. So you have these two saint kings as well, which is quite interesting both anointed indeed by the same spoon that is the only complete survival of the ancient regalia amazing thank you so much just amazing what else we're going to find over the years the technology improves are we going to find king john's crown

jewels in the wash or in the reclaimed land of the norfolk broad who knows Who knows? Can't wait to find out. Yes, it's all very exciting. I agree. Because there have been some other finds even this week reported. There was one of a badge, a white ball badge of Richard III found in Devon, and some Tudor coins. So all very exciting stuff. All very exciting. Your biography of Charles I is called? White King, The Tragedy of Charles I. Now we may have a little bit more information

about that aftermath of Naseby. Fantastic. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you. I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history,

our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished and liquidated. One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world. He tells us what is possible, not just in the pages of history books, but in our own lives as well.

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