Forbidden History - Medieval Autopsy: Mystery of the St. Bees Man - Pt. 2

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

Who was the St. Bees Man? In this episode, we continue exploring the incredible story of the Cumbrian Knight who was discovered in a lead shroud in 1981. This second instalment to the story has us trying to figure out exactly who this man was... Cast List: Tim Sutherland: Archaeologist, University of York Chris Robson: Local Expert Dr Robin Darwall-Smith: Magdalen College Archivist Ian McAndrew: Local GP Tim Guard: Author, Chivalry, Kingship and Crusade David Nicolle: Author & Historian Eric Meyers: Narrator Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. In part one, we uncovered the remarkable discovery. A medieval man preserved in near perfect condition beneath St. B's Priory in North England. Now the focus shifts. Who was he?

Why was he buried this way? And what can the clues scattered through history, ritual, and science reveal about the man behind the mystery? Once the man in the lead was re-interred at St. B's, where he still lies to this day, local historian John Todd began diving into the history. Who this man was remained a mystery. John said about finding a named individual, important enough to be buried in a prestigious. prestigious place in the South chancel. Could he have been a clergyman like the other burials?

It seemed unlikely given that he was buried alongside a woman and the clergy were forbidden to marry. It seemed he had to be from one of the noble families in England, probably in the mid or late 14th century. But which family? The first choice was a man called John DeHarrington who died, I think 1298, who was the first option for St. B's man. As well as the Harrington's, John Todd also favored the DeLucey family.

Sir Anthony DeLucy was known to have owned lands around St. B's, and he became the prime candidate. The problem was the lady. The vault had been extended, and therefore the lady had died after the man. Harrington's wife, in fact, pre-deceased him, so that was a real problem. But DeLussie, his wife, was known to have died in London, aged 70, so she didn't fit either. Anthony's wife remarried, and so would not have been buried with him. This led John Todd to think, what if the bones were of another family member?

Anthony's daughter died as an infant, but his sister Maude DeLucey was one of the the richest and most powerful women in the north of England at this time. Her remains weren't reburied with St. B's Man. Now she's known simply as Skeleton S.K. 100. Another important discovery made by local researcher Doug Sim now seems to back up John Todd's theory. Among the stones at the Priory was a fragment of heraldry. It showed the arms of the DeLuces quartered with the Persis. another prominent family. The only time this could have happened was when Maude, heir to the DeLucy fortune,

married into the Persies. S.K. 100, it seemed, was Maude. In which case, St. B's man, it seemed, was Sir Anthony DeLucy. DeLucy was known to have died in 1368, fitting the profile of an important man buried in the South Chancel before 1500. before 1500. He owned large estates elsewhere, yet St. B's seemed important to him. Perhaps a spiritual home? As a knight, he was no stranger to action. He'd fought the Scots on the English borders,

where he might possibly have sustained his last injuries. It seemed the trail would lead no further. And then, very unfortunately, almost at the same time, John Todd had a heart attack and died very suddenly. It was an enormous loss to the, or to everybody. You know, he was missed a history. Chris Robson carried on the research John Todd had begun. He knew there was one problem with confirming once and for all the man in the lead as Anthony. DeLucey was recorded as having died overseas. If this was true, how could he be buried at St. B's in England?

In the medieval period, he just, don't send people home over a long distance from overseas. The impracticalities of it are just immense. Obviously, you would need a huge amounts of money. So unless you were a king or a very important person, it just didn't happen. And of course, they didn't have refrigeration units. You couldn't send a body home in deep freeze.

They would have to be sent home wrapped in a condition that they would stand at least some chance of arriving home intact. The body was wrapped in resin linen inside the lead. But it hadn't been deliberately embalmed for preservation like an Egyptian mummy. The intestines were not removed. How could the body have survived weeks or even months on such a long journey home? There were many questions to be answered. A clue lay in something else found by the pathology.

At the time, it caused Ian and the others some alarm. Over the whole of the internal organs, there were sort of little yellow granules. This caused a certain amount of concern because there is a condition called millary tuberculosis, and it does produce the superiors of little yellow dots all over organs. And of course, the concern was, well, if the bodies survived this long, what about the bacteria?

So it did give it a little bit of worry at the time. It turned out to be crystals of atipus here. This was found out later on. Adiposea occurs in archaeological bodies when certain conditions combine. Moisture, trapped within the resin shroud, reacted to a change in temperature, stopping decomposition. It kept St. B's man almost in suspended animation,

preserved as if his death had only just taken place. It was plausible, after all, that he could be Anthony DeLucci. Chris's curiosity was renewed. After John's death, I felt that were the aspects of the strength. which were incomplete, and it was question of tidying up loose ends. And then what happened was the loose ends is her being tidied up, unraveled, and spread in all sorts of different directions. John Todd had found that DeLuCy may have died on Crusade,

but the days of the Palestine Crusades were long gone. By the 14th century, a crusade just meant wherever Christians fought pagans. DeLuze went north to Prussia. Financial records detailed DeLuces' preparations for the Crusade with a party of other English knights, including one named John DeMulton. John DeMulton and Ante DeLuci both borrowed money from the same person within a week of each other.

He was stated that John DeMulton was going to Prussia. It was not stated where Anthony was going. It was thought they were probably going together. And John Todd thought, well, it's almost probable, but certainly you can't prove it. It was then that one of the amazing twists that characterized the story happened. Among papers relating to John DeMulton was a letter, and at last Chris found what he had been looking for.

And then suddenly this letter turns up in Muldlin College, Oxford, written by John DeMulton to his wife in November 1367, saying, dear wife, I am going with my friend. Anthony DeLuci to Prussia. And you think, wow, where's that been? Suddenly you have written evidence that the two were going. The letter was a major leap forward.

For the first time there was evidence that DeLussie made a journey abroad in the year before his death, 1367. At Maudlin College, Chris meets Robin Darwall Smith. He's come to see for himself the letter carefully preserved among thousands of other documents. Welcome to Maudlin's Munement Room, and so here it is.

And it's a letter from Sir John DeMulton to his wife, written in 1367, just before he's going off on Crusader Prussia. This is extraordinary. This is... This is, this is almost, I think this is almost the first time that somebody from, who is associated with St. B's, has actually come in direct contact with the letter, which tells this extraordinary story.

Now it's all in medieval French, I'll try to translate it, so share companion, I do like that way he talks to his wagons, rather than that's a extra and formal manner all at once. It is in fact very personal, isn't it? So Sashay know that Anton de Luce and me and all our company are taking our journey to the parts of Spruits. But that's Prussia, too. So that's the important thing. They are on their way to Prussia.

Yes. With, of course, a date. St. Clement's Day, the 23rd of November. The letter proves Anthony DeLuci was heading for Lithuania. For John DeMulton, it was a last goodbye to his wife and a home he would never see again. For Chris also, the letter is tinged with sadness. Our local historian John Todd was searching for this documentary evidence

for year after year after year, thinking it must be somewhere. And he's not here to see it. Oh dear. But he died, sadly, some years back. Always thinking, sometime this documentary evidence will turn up. So there's a sort of double sadness. Chris now had the strongest case so far to believe the body in the lead was Sir Anthony DeLucey. Now as he delved deeper into what was known about the man,

he found DeMulton and DeLucey and their party would not have been alone when they reached Prussia. They were with the most renowned fighting men in Europe at the people. At that time, the Order of the Brothers of the German House of St. Mary in Jerusalem, the Teutonic Knights. For Chris, the story had become even more intriguing. And I then get in contact with the people who, the historians, say, I think we've got the possibility of, you know, somebody called Anthony DeLucey who might have joined the Teutonic Knights.

I get hold of Tim Garde, who's written his book. And he says, oh, Anthony DeLucci, I'll look him up in my notes. I thought, wow, you know about this guy. I thought he would say, who? Chris contacted me with an email asking if there was a connection, he felt there should be connection explored between what he'd discovered and what was known about the St. B's man and my work on the Crusades in the 14th century. 40th century. And at first I was skeptical. I wondered deeply whether this was just a sort of a romantic

attachment, but having looked into it and agreed to go and talk to the Zunbi's History Group, the evidence started to pile up and the connections I felt were strong enough to warrant really serious investigation. Tim Gard has made a careful study of the accounts of 14th century English nobleman who fought for Christianity. It's given him an insight. as to why apparently so many of these knights found it compelling to join the campaigns in the Baltic, in what became known as the Northern Crusades. Since the 1190s, when the Crusades to Palestine and the East began to falter, Christians had taken the fight closer to home.

Northern Europe and the Baltic, where paganism still flourished. The Teutonic Knights, with a dominant Christian force, propagated. propagating the Crusades, but by the 1360s they were overstretched and relied on knights from different Christian countries to bolster their ranks for chivalric honor, spiritual well-being as they sought, or simple military experience. Especially for English knights like DeLusie, in times of relative peace closer to home, when there was little prospect of war with France. For men like DeLucey, who perhaps had not had the chance to fight in the grand campaigns like Cresset and Poitiers, the 1360s are a still time.

You're fully aware, you're fully conscious of the reputations that have been built under Edward III and his famous armies, and you're itching for an opportunity yourself. Sometimes they went off to join the Teutonic Knights, almost as a holiday, I think, in the sense that they'd go out there possibly for six months, simply to join in the fighting. They would come back with a prestige of being a crusader. Some of them went off for spiritual reasons, but some went off for the pride of the family,

and in some senses to come back with a ticket, saying, of course, I've been a crusader, and therefore, in fact, I have less time in perjury. There's a nice letter from somebody, a French knight, saying, in fact, he went to join the Teutonic Knights for a particular time, because at that time, he wrote, the fighting is good. Anthony DeLussie, with his background fighting border skirmishes with the Scots, may well have looked forward to his time with the Teutonic Knights with the same relish.

He probably arrived in Lithuania by boat, along the Neiman River, sometime in early 1368. In fact, it was made easy for them to travel. The fighting was in fact in the winter when it was frozen and you could go across marshlands without too much difficulty. You then had a break for Christmas and then fighting took place in the summer when it was nice and dry and again you didn't get bogged down because the geography in that area is quite awful. Heading out into the Lithuanian wilderness on a raid, DeLussie was probably on horseback with other knights, supported by dismounted infantry as they searched for pagans to attack,

either soldiers or any civilians unwise enough not to have fled. Pitched battles were very few and far between. Mostly the fighting was in short, vicious skirmishes, or most often sieges. Sometimes the fights were arranged by the Teutonic Knights for the martial enjoyment of their guests, whose financial support they desperately needed. Most of the time they did not expect to lose. But as Anthony DeLucey found out, sometimes a crusade did not go according to the divine plan. I think it's great that after 30 years, Chris can go back

into the footsteps of a man who visited Lithuania 700 years ago and see the same sort of places that he saw get the same sort of feeling about the landscape and what it was like to exist. fight and potentially die there 700 years ago. Chris travels to Lithuania. From what historians have pieced together, it's here that De Lucey and the other English knights came.

Kaunis, Lithuania. 30 miles west of Vilnius, Kownis Castle guards the confluence of two important rivers, the Neiman and the nearest. In the 14th century, this was the front line, strategically important to both sides. And it's here somewhere that DeLuci met his fate. Ante DeLuci was here in August, possibly September. We think he died in August, and here we are in August. We get a feel for him. We can't see his footsteps, but we can sort of think about it.

And I think that's absolutely fascinating and also enormous privilege. The castle was besieged and changed hands several times during the 1360s. neither side ever being able to fully break the deadlock as the war on the frontier stalemated. The result was attritional warfare, bad enough for the combatants, horrendous for the local population. David Nicole has written many books on medieval warfare. He's traveled to Kaunas with Chris to help understand what DeLusie may have experienced here. The castle is now a museum. From archaeology carried out during the restoration, it's been possible to put together an accurate idea of the scale, detail, and sheer savagery of the fighting.

After a month-long siege in spring 1362, the Kaunus Stone Castle was taken by the Teutonic Knights. Of a garrison of hundreds, all but three were killed. But the area was too important for the Lithuanians to give up, and a few years later, they established another castle just three miles away. New Countess Castle was of timber and earth rather than stone and brick. Once more, the Teutonic Knights vowed to attack. From their base on the Neiman River, they launched another siege campaign. Surviving accounts suggest it's this campaign, in which Duluci and the Ineusie and the Inche, English knights took part alongside their Teutonic brothers.

What actually happens? What's the rules that it were? I don't think there are any rules at all at this stage, certainly not when you're fighting against pagans, because siege warfare was always the most brutal. And because there was least possibility of honour. Seage warfare, the equivalent of French warfare, for their period.

The closing stages of the medieval siege, if the garrison of the castle, does not surrender, are going to be the most brutal and bloody time, because that's when the two sides come hand to hand. If they fight on until the enemy, the attackers, break in, then by the laws of war, and there were no laws as such, but the customs, the accepted code of behaviour, is if you had to actually fight your way in,

you didn't have to give quarter. they had sacrificed their right to surrender, because they hadn't surrendered before you broke in. They'd left it too late. It's nasty, it's brutal. There are people with bones getting broken and limbs cut off, and if the crusaders, the Teutonic Knights, break in, there's going to be slaughter.

Medieval warfare, in all its forms, was lethal. There's no way to be sure exactly how Dulousey received his fatal injuries. So, given the injuries which we know he had, it's a severe blow to the side of the head, or to the side of the face breaks his jaw. He has a high-status man, he's going to have a really good helmet. Now, whether he has a visor to protect his face is debatable because they always had to choose between protection of the face and not being able to see practically anything,

or good visibility but you're open to facial injury. He gets a bash to the side of his head. Now that either he falls over onto something from some height breaks his ribs, punctures his lung, eventually dies. Now if he's wearing armor or a coat of plates, that could well prevent a cut but would not prevent the break. Because a coat of plates is like a modern bullet arm. The plates, the actual armor itself, can still go into you and break your ribs. What happened that day won't ever be known for sure, but it ended in the deaths of De Lucey and two other English nights, and very likely many more on both sides.

Chris's research has helped him draw some kind of understanding of a story which he and others have been researching for decades. When I started trying to understand the De Lucey story, I thought that it was a few strands to be wrapped up together. And as you wrap up the strands of the story, you realize in fact it simply unravels on you. And it keeps on unraveling. So I suspect it will continue to unravel. I don't think we'll never get to. I was thought there will be at some point a final full stop. And then we'd say finished. But I was told firmly by my wife, history never has a full stop. More than 30 years after the initial excavation in the 1980s, we can piece all this information together

and we can tell the original story about what happened to St. B's Man. Sir Anthony DeLucey, an English knight of the mid-14th century, who'd fought in skirmishes against the Scots, who'd mortgaged land or property to join the Northern Crusades, either for his soul, for the military experience, or simply the honour. But there was little glory in the bitter siege fighting at Kaunas. In a landscape blasted by years of war, he heard he was to take part in an attack on a new pagan fort. From the injuries on his body, he may have been in the thick of the fighting, perhaps eager to break through the defenses.

Be the first one over the wall. But the defenders are too strong. They know they'll be slaughtered if they don't hold out. And they're fighting for their country on home soil. The attack stalls. De Lucey is hit. A heavy blow fractures his jaw. A fallen armor breaks his ribs and punctures his lung. Brother knights or infantrymen drag him away,

shielding his body as the fort's defenders rain down arrows to Harry the retreat. He is evacuated by boat back down the Neiman River. Perhaps he makes it. Perhaps he dies on the water. He's a foreign knight who sacrificed his life for the cause. The Teutonic Knights perhaps intend to bury him with honors. Yet his surviving friends or servants honor a pledge or a last request. The body is wrapped in a linen shroud, sealed with resin,

then encased in lead. He's then returned home across the sea back to the beautiful wild hills of the north of England, where once again, he lies to this day. Thanks for exploring the past with us today. If you like this episode, please be sure to follow for more. We post new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Don't forget to leave a comment below,

and feel free to leave us a rating or review, your feedback helps us reach more listeners like you. And for more from the Like a Shot Network, check out where did everyone go, Histories of the Abandoned, a deep dive into the incredible stories behind forgotten places, available now on your favorite podcast platforms. Thanks for listening.