Gone Medieval - Saint Edmund: England's Lost King

Episode Date: June 29, 2021

From Danish Archers using him as target practice to a wolf towing his perfectly severed head, King Edmund has a wealth of tales attached to his name and a healthy cult following… but how much of these tales are true? Cat is joined by Dr Francis Young, a historian and folklorist specialising in the history of religion and supernatural belief, author of Edmund: In Search of England's Lost King. We take a look into the fascinating life and death of Edmund the Martyr. Can we find the lost King? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Dr. Kat Jarman and I'm very happy there if you've joined me today. Did you know that before England's main patron saint became St George of the dragon slaying fame? We actually had several others as well. And the most famous of them all was probably St Edmund the Martyr. Edmund was an early medieval king best known for his gruesome death at the hands of invading Vikings. And later, our cult

sprung up around him, rather bizarrely because he was venerated by the descendants of those very Scandinavians who caused his martyrdom in the first place. And for several centuries, Edmund's bones have been lost, but now there's a possibility that we may have a pretty convincing clue as to where they might be. They could be hiding under a tennis court in Suffolk. So to find out more about Edmund and the search for his remains, I'm delighted to welcome Dr Francis Young to the Gone Medieval podcast. Francis is a historian and a very prolific author who got his PhD in history.

from the University of Cambridge, and he's a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and he now teaches at the University of Oxford Department of Continuing Education. And I can very highly recommend Francis's book about this very subject. It's called Edmund in Search of England's Lost King, and that's exactly what we're going to be talking about today.

So I was hoping just to start us out, Francis. Could you begin by sort of setting the scene for us a little bit, so where we are in the world, and what the political situation, was in the 9th century in England. So where we are is the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of East Anglia, and that's a fairly small kingdom in the east of England, the very furthest east part of England that sticks out into the North Sea,

which today is Norfolk, Suffolk and parts of Cambridgeshire. And that small kingdom was ruled over by a man called Edmund. He was a member of a dynasty known as the Wuffings, who took their name from one of the early Germanic, invaders, whose name meant something like Little Wolf, so they're the people of the Little Wolf. And it's a prosperous kingdom. It's got a large trading emporium at a place called Gipperswick. Today is what is known as Ipswich. There are a number of significant monastic sites, very holy sites in that kingdom, possibly at Dunnage, for example, which has now been lost to the sea,

possibly at a town called Diodric Swith, which is now known as Beryst and Edmonds. it's a good place to be alive really compared to a lot of places in the world in the middle of the 9th century. But then something changes, doesn't it, in the 860s? Because we have the arrival on the scene of what becomes known as the Great Heathen Army, as we know from historical record. And that has some quite serious implications for the East Anglians. So tell us about Edmund then, who was the king. And what happened to him when the Great Army arrived?

We don't know a great deal about the historical Edmund. We know that we have coins with his name on, which gives us a clue that he probably becomes king around the middle of the 850s. And so he's ruling for around about 10 years by 865 when we have the arrival of the Great Heathen Army. And they come by ship to the East Anglian coast. We don't know exactly where they land, but probably the coast of what's now Suffolk. And they do what they usually do in this kind of. of situation. They demand money with menaces and essentially they require protection money from Edmund Daingeld which will allow them to set up a base in his kingdom making a kind of temporary alliance and Edmund agrees to this which again was quite normal for the time that kings their first instinct would be to make some sort of settlement of this kind rather than to fight and the exchange is essentially that the Vikings the great heathen army won't attack his kingdom provided that Edmund supplies them with horses. And so he does that, gives them horses, allows them to set up a camp at Thetford on the border between Norfolk and Suffolk. And then they use those horses that they've obtained

from him to go into the Midlands of England, into the Kingdom of Mercia. And that's where they really carry out their main raiding in the late eight-60s. So they go up north in the eight-60s. And then at one point they move south again and they come back to East Anglia. And that's really where we see the end of Edmund and where really what he becomes best known for is is his death rather than his life. And can you tell us exactly what happens and what we think happened from the sources?

Well, the Great Heathen Army engages with the army of the King of Wessex at Nottingham and it's possible that Edmund was part of that as well. But we don't know that. That's in a much later source. What we do know is that the Great Heathen Army makes its way back to its winter quarters at Thetheatham. through the Midlands, to the East Midlands, burning and looting and committing sacrilege at holy sites and monasteries on the way, including Crowland and Peterborough and Thorny, until they

arrive back at their camp at Thetford. And it's at that point, this is in November of 869, that Edmund decides to attack. And the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is clear that the attack comes from Edmund. It's not from the Vikings themselves. So clearly, in Edmund's view, The Vikings have done something to break that original treaty or agreement. It may well be that it was the sacrilege that triggered Edmund to decide that he was going to break his side of the bargain and attack them. The battle, however, doesn't go in Edmund's favour. And so at the Battle of Thetford, Edmund's army is defeated. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, we have a very simple account which simply says that the East Anglians were defeated, the Danes had the victory and killed the king.

However, we have a much later source, which dates from over a century later from the 980s by a monk called Abbao of Fleury. And he claims to derive this from an oral source. He says that it was told to him by Archbishop Dunstan, and Archbishop Dunstan heard it from an old man at the Court of King Athelstan, who of course was the later King of Wessex in the 10th century. And this old man at the court of King Athelstan said that as a young man, he was a court of King Athelstan, said that as a young man, had been the armour bearer to King Edmund and had personally witnessed what happened. And according to this armour bearer's story, Edmund at the Battle of Thetford decided that he wanted to spare his people further slaughter. So he leaves the battle because he knows that it's

really him that the Danes are after. And he makes his way south to a royal manor, a royal house, which is known as Hegeldun. We don't know exactly where that was. And there he waits for the Danes to arrive. Now at this point, the two Danish leaders, Hingwar and Huber, as they're called in this source, they still want Edmund to carry on ruling as a sort of puppet king. And so they ask him, will you be king under us? And Edmund says, well, only if you convert to Christianity. And they refuse. And so at that point, Edmund is bound.

He's scourged. Then he's bound to a tree. The Danish arches, use him as target practice. at that point he's still alive, and so he's cut loose from the tree and he's beheaded. And so that's how Edmund meets his death. But there are further indignities in store for him. His head is taken by the Danes and thrown into the undergrowth of the surrounding forest, presumably as a form of desecration of the body,

so that it's not possible for the body to be buried in its entirety. And so this is a pretty gruesome end to this king. How reliable do you think that account is? There's been a lot of different opinions on the reliability of this source. It is a pretty late source, but then on the other hand, it does have this oral testimony within it, and the lineage of that oral testimony is described. And so I think what we've got in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is an account from a scribe writing in Wessex, who wasn't really interested in East Anglian Affairs. But we do have that chronology within the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, that the Danes were victorious, and then they killed the King. whereas what you'd normally expect, if the king were killed in battle, you would simply say that, you know, the king was killed and the Danes were victorious, because normally the victory would happen as a result of the killing of the king. So that suggests that the killing of the king was a separate event. And then we have, I think, the basic credibility of this account resting on the fact that it's passed on by Archbishop Dunstan to Abbeau of Fleury. But Abbeau of Fleury was also preparing the account for Archbishop Dunstan. And clearly if Abbeau Fleury was taking liberties with this account, he wouldn't want to contradict what Dunstan himself had said. And I don't see any particularly compelling reason to doubt what Dunstan is saying. So I think really we're relying on the truthfulness of this armour bearer, if indeed the armour bearer existed.

It's impossible to say, but I would say that there's a reasonable likelihood about 50-50, that this is probably an account that gives the general gist of how Edmund died. And so, yeah, I think we can probably trust it to some extent. Great. Now, that's not necessarily the most remarkable part of the story, though, is it? Because something else happens to his body afterwards, and this is really what propels him to fame. So can you explain what actually happens? His body after he's been killed by the Vikings. Well, this is where the story veers into the miraculous and the realms of legend, because what we have is an account of how shortly after Edmund's martyrdom,

some of his followers, some of the East Anglians are searching for the king's head. They've got his body because it's simply been abandoned by the Danes where he was killed. But they realise that the Danes have thrown away the head and they're looking through the undergrowth. And it's at this point that they hear a voice shouting here, here, here, three times. And they follow the sound of the voice and they find, in a clearing in the wood, an enormous wolf holding between its paws the severed head of King Edmund. which is also incorrupt. It hasn't decayed since the time of the king's death.

And so they take the head back to the body. The wolf follows. It's suddenly become miraculously tame. And when they reach the king's body, they put the head and the body back together and they miraculously join, leaving only a thin red crease showing where the king had been beheaded.

And the whole body of the king, from that moment on, is incorrupt, according to legend. And so the king is then buried on the site where he was martyred and a little wooden chapel is erected on that site. And that's how it remains for a number of years. But then, after that point, because the number of pilgrims to the little chapel in the woods has become so great, the king's body is removed to a nearby town, Beodricswath, which in the course of time becomes known as the Boeuf of St Edmund, Bearer St Edmunds.

It's a misconception. A lot of people have that bury St Edmunds, the berry bit. It's about Edmund being buried there, but actually it's from the old English word book, meaning a town, a fortified settlement. So he's taken to the Church of St. Mary, which is still there in Bearer St Edmunds, although at that time it was a previous wooden structure. And there a shrine is established, and that shrine is served by a woman called Oswin, who cuts the hair and nails, the martyr that continue to grow, and by a group of secular cannons, you know, priests who run that shrine. and it's not at that stage a monastery. Now, what's quite important to understand here in terms of what happens next is that this part of the country

becomes part of what's later known as the Dane Law. And in fact, the very Scandinavians who are essentially the descendants of that great army and their later generations, they become really quite instrumental in what becomes quite a significant cult. So can you tell us a little bit about how that comes about? How come Scandinavians become interested

in somebody they essentially murdered themselves? Yes, that's right. The cult is essentially part of the culture of Dane or East Anglia. The Danes are victorious. They establish a kingdom of their own under Guthrum, who later makes an agreement with King Alfred and establishes the division of England between the English and the Danes.

And so we have the development of a kind of composite Anglo-Dainish culture within East Anglia just as much as you find in York and in the Northeast. It's during this period, during this Dane Law period, that the cult of St Edmund begins. And the first signs we have of this in the archaeological record are the appearance of a remarkable set of coins that are minted in East Anglia, but also find their way as far north as York to the, really the capital of the Danish kingdom. and they are mimicking, they are replicas of coins that Edmund had minted in his own lifetime, and they have on them an invocation, Saint-Eadmunde Rex, Oss and Edmund the King. And these appear in around 890, so that's less than 20 years, potentially, after Edmund has been killed.

And that's an indication that Edmund has already been acclaimed as a saint. Now, at that time, being acclaimed as a saint, usually made. that your body had been translated, a saint's body had been taken out of the ground and moved into a shrine, which was known as translation. There wasn't at that stage a formal procedure of canonisation where the Pope would declare somebody a saint or anything like that. And so it may well be that Edmund was translated in around the year 890 to Berescent Edmonds, or it's possible that it took place in the early 10th century. But either way, it takes place long before the reconquest of the Dane law in nine-sendomers.

at the Battle of Thamesford when the Danes defeated and that area is reabsorbed back into England under the rule of the House of Wessex. So it is part of that Anglo-Danish culture and the most striking example that we have of a Scandinavian ruler paying honour to St Edmund takes place in the 11th century when Canute, who is the son of King Swain of Denmark, who is supposedly killed by the ghost of St Edmund that Canute decides that he will found a great Benedictine Abbey at Beres St Edmunds staffed by monks rather than the priests who previously been looking after the shrine. And that takes place in 1020. And in fact, it's founded on the day commemorating Canute's victory at the Battle of Asundun, which is when he defeats the English and establishes himself as Danish King of England.

So it does seem that the cult of St Edmund is very much bound up with Danish as well as English identity. And this isn't altogether uncommon, although it sounds really strange that the people who killed a saint would actually be venerating that saint. It's not unprecedented. And there are cases where people would see it as part of their Christian story, the fact that it was predestined, that they were destined to make this martyr. And by the making of that martyr, they have advanced the Christian. faith in their country. We find that in Scandinavia, in Sweden, in Norway, we find similar kind of stories. And so it seems weird to us, perhaps, but less weird to medieval people. There's even churches in Norway dedicated to St. Edmund in their medieval period, and he's

mentioned in sagas and so on, I think. So that's a really fascinating part. But then this idea of having a patron saint then, so he starts out quite locally, doesn't he? But quite quickly, his importance becomes spread throughout the country and eventually also internationally. What's the first we hear of him as a sort of patron saint of the country? Well, the first indication we have is that Atholstan, King of Wessex, who becomes known as King of England, he names one of his sons, Edmund. Now, it's possible that that's simply a family name within the House of Wessex, but it's also possible that it is a tribute to the martyr and the evidence to support that is that when Edmund becomes king as Edmund I'm the first of England, that's to say.

He does give his patronage specifically to Beres St Edmonds and in 945 there's a charter which did exist, although it was later much elaborated and developed. This often happened in the 10th century, in the 11th century that you would have charters being elaborated from their original. But there certainly was a real charter of King Edmund. And that's an indication that the House of Wessex, guarded Edmund as a royal saint. And then that's the beginning of a series of instances of royal patronage that really carry on right down to Henry VIII, that every English king, with very few exceptions, showed great honour to St Edmund, to the point where making a pilgrimage to St Edmund's shrine was a rite of passage once a king was crowned. And I think also once you have the Normans,

the Normans really make use of Edmund as a way of legitimising their rule. And so we have William the Conqueror paying great honour to Edmund. Richard the Lionheart particularly is interested in Edmund, perhaps because he is perceived by many of his subjects as being a foreigner. He's somebody who also sees Edmund as a way of legitimating his English credentials. And so Edmund becomes this symbol of Englishness. And I think the reason for this is that Edmund's title, his Latin title, and that's on his own coins, and the way that he's known in the liturgy is as Rexanglorum. Now, that can be translated as King of the Angles, which of course Edmund was. He was king of the East Angles. But of course, it can also be translated as King of the English. And so we have very early on the development of this antiphon, this special hymn sung in Edmund's honour, Arve Rex Gentis Anglorum, Hail, king of the English, or King of the Angles, but it's always interpreted as King of the English.

And so he becomes this explicitly English saint. And even in the liturgy in honour of St Edmund, England and Englishness are two to the four. So he becomes certainly by the end of the 11th century, partly down to the campaigning of the abbot of Beres, Edmunds, Baldwin, he is recognised in a number of different places by foreigners as the patron of the whole English people he's described as. So yeah, he's the first saint who ever receives that kind of recognition.

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and that story because that's a really fascinating part of it, that you've been part of as well as we'll get back to in a moment. And one thing I was struck by when I was reading your book was this idea of his fame spreading throughout different places and different countries. And you made the point that very often when these saints cults spread around, they are literally being moved around by their relics, parts of their relics or parts of their bones being taken to other places

that you could have a finger bone or a leg or something in whatever church. But as you were saying earlier, when Edmund's body was discovered, his body was complete. And of course, that means that there would be no bones to take out and separate because that's part of the point there. So one Abbott then was able to come up with a solution to that, to sort of spread his sort of fame around. What exactly was that?

So this was, again, Abbott Baldwin. This was a French abbot who's appointed before the Norman conquest. He was the only French abbot in England at that time. And because of that, he actually escaped being replaced at the Norman conquest. So Baldwin was uniquely placed to advance the cult of St Edmund with Norman Patronage. And what he does is he takes a collection of blood-stained clothing that had been removed from the body of St. Edmund by his predecessor, Abbott Leibstam, and uses that to create what are known as contact relics. Contact relics are essentially pieces of cloth, maybe clothing, items that were owned by a saint that had been in contact with the saint's body. it might include things that are stained with blood.

And so he cuts those up and sends them around Europe. And he does that by going on the standard pilgrim route that goes through France, into the south of France, into Italy, to the city of Lucca, which is a great pilgrimage centre, and then onto Rome itself. And we know, for example, that Baldwin leaves a relic of St Edmander at Luka. We know that he spreads relics throughout various places in France. And so, yeah, we've got the spread of. of his cult as far afield as Damietta in Egypt, where Crusaders presumably take some sort of

of relic of St. Edmund. We also have the spread of Edmund's cult into Ireland. There's a miraculous statue of St. Edmund in Ireland. We don't know whether there are any relics. There might have been. There's a supposed relic of St. Edmund in Norwich, at St. Edmund's Church in Norwich. We have another shrine of St. Edmund in Norfolk, in Norfolk, at a place called Ling. We have cults of St. Edmund in Thetford. And of course, there's also, as you've already mentioned, there's a cult of St. Edmund in Scandinavia. So we've got great popularity of St. Edmund in Iceland. We've got in Norway, right next to the city of Oslo, there's a monastery called Hervedoya, which is on an island near to the city of Oslo that's dedicated as an Edmund. In Sweden also, we have the spread of dedications to Edmund.

So, yes, throughout northern Europe and also Western Europe, we have the spread of this cult, although at slightly different times and for slightly different reasons. Okay, so let's go back to his actual body then and his remains and what happens to them. So there are a few written records going up to the 12th century. Could you talk us through some of those, what we know about his actual physical remains? There's first of all a document called the Life and Miracles of St Edmund by Herman the Archdeacon, and that describes some of the things that took place in the early days. So we have the body of St. Edmund in the very early days lying in the Church of St. Mary and Barry and being cared for by this woman called Oswin.

Then we have the construction of a more permanent kind of monastery and a rotunda chapel, a round chapel is created to house Edmund's body, which was modelled really on the mausoleum of Charlemagne at Arkin, which in turn was modelled on the mausoleum of Constantine in Byzantium, in the Church of the Holy Apostles. So this is really a very sort of imperial kind of way to honour Edmund's body, And his body is placed there and perhaps displayed to pilgrims, so we don't really know how often that took place. And it's not really until the end of the 11th century that we get the body being moved to a great Abbey Church, a great Norman Abbey Church that's been constructed by Baldwin.

And at that point, a formal translation takes place. The body is put on display to the faithful. There's a story of a sacrist called Tolly who shows, insufficiency. respect for the body and as a result of that, St. Edmund punishes him when a piece of masonry falls down from the building site and knocks him on the head and kills him. Edmund is a very vengeful saint. He's always killing people who disrespect him in any way. And that really is the last time that Edmund's body is seen until in 1198, a serious fire occurs in the presbytery of the Great Abbey Church. And this is during the reign of Abbott-Samsson, probably the best known of

Berries Abbots because there's a very vivid account of his reign by Jocelyn Braclond, which has been translated into English several times and is widely read. But yeah, one incident that takes place is we have a night-time fire because the shrine attendants have been inattentive and have left pilgrims' candles alight and it's caught light to part of the, essentially the beer of St Edmund that's part of the shrine. And so Abbott-Samsson has to check whether the body of St. Edmund is still intact and has been burnt. And so there's a detailed description by Jocelyn De Braclon of how the coffin is opened and the body is inspected. And that's the last time that the body of St. Edmund is seen. Another severe fire

takes place in 1465 that nearly completely destroys the Abbey Church. But what happens during that fire is that the stone lid that's held by ropes above the shrine, the fire burns through the ropes and the stone lid slams shut before it's possible for the fire to get to the body of St Edmund. So that gives some protection. So we don't really know what the state of the body of St. Edmund was by the time of the dissolution in 1539. So at that point then, what happened? Because after some point, after these records were made, his remains are essentially lost to us and we don't know what happens. But then he also seems to turn up in France, according to one account, which you believe is not right.

So what happens there? Why would he be in France? This is a curious tradition at the Basilica of Saint-Cernan in Toulouse in the south of France. From the middle of the 15th century, we find records that they believe that they were in possession of the body of St. Edmund, or various garbled names,

Amond, King of England, who turns into Edmund, King of England and is established eventually in the Toulouse legend as being Edmund. My own interpretation of what was going on here is that it was similar to what happened at Looker. We know that Baldwin left a contact relic at Looker and by the 12th century that was interpreted as St Edmund's head. This is what's called relic inflation where a church is in possession of a small relic or a contact relic. But over time, it's in the interests of the relic keepers to exaggerate the status of the relics that the church has.

And so it may well be that Toulouse was in possession of some kind of very minor relic of St. Edmund, but over time it becomes inflated due to laziness or due to the marketing, if you like, of the relic keepers, that it becomes inflated into the entire body of St. Edmund. But what then happens in the 17th century is that a plague takes place in Toulouse, and someone decides to invoke the patronage of St. Edmund, just in case, because it's worth trying anything in a plague. And it turns out that after the patronage of St. Edmund is invoked, the plague ceases. And so the entire city of Toulouse decides that St. Edmund is its heavenly patron

and that the body of St. Edmund needs to be translated into a splendid new shrine and that a life of St. Edmund must be written. And so this is given to a lawyer by the name of Pierre de Casner, this task of writing a life of St. Edmund. And so Casner comes up with this theory, oh, I know how this could have got here, the dofan of France, who later became Louis VIII, was in East Anglia in 1216. This is at the time of the Barron's War after King John has refused to ratify Magna Carta. And so the barons have joined forces with the French.

And they're attempting to depose John and install the dofan of France as King of England. And we know that at this time, there was a French raid on Beres and Edmonds. And so Kasner says, well, clearly, yeah, this must be the moment. when Louis took the body of St Edmund and brought it to France because Louis then went to Toulouse in order to wager a crusade against the Cathars. Now, there's absolutely no evidence this is true. It was just a rather clever piece of historical speculation by Pierre de Casner. But there have been various people at various times who've taken it quite seriously this story.

But in my view, it's clearly not true. We would have some account from England from a berry source from an English source, from an English source of a serious French attack on Berry in which the Abbey was raided and the body was taken. We don't have, you know, we don't have any account of that sort. So no, that didn't happen. What we think did happen, what I think did happen, is that at the dissolution, the body that was in the shrine, whether or not it was St. Edmund, we just don't know, but whatever relics were in that shrine were taken and hidden by the monks of Barry. And we have an account that dates from the late 17th century, but a bit like that original account by Abbeau Fleury of the death of St. Edmund.

It's something that was written over a century after what happened, but is based on a chain of oral evidence. And there was a man called William Hitchcock, who was prior of a monastery dedicated to St. Edmund, a Benedictine monastery of English monks in Paris. And Hitchcock said, my great-grandfather was a monk of Barrison Edmonds. And of course, that was perfectly possible, because the monks went on to, many of them went on to get married and have children after they stopped being monks after this solution. So my great-grandfather was a monk of Bearer St Edmonds, and he and the other monks took the body of St. Edmund and put it in an iron chest and hid it, buried it somewhere. And that was all that Hitchcock could remember, because the chronicler,

who was describing this, said, oh, I need to get back to Father Hitchcock and ask him to give me a bit more detail about this fascinating story. But by the time he got back to Hitchcock, he was dead because he was very, very aged at this point. And so that's all we have. We have this story from the 17th century of the body of St Edmund being hidden in an iron chest. No indication of where that might have been. And so the real puzzle that I've been grappling with is what that really has to tell us about where the body of St Edmund might be. And you think that it didn't actually move very far from its original location, don't you? So tell us where you think he might be buried. Well, I think all we have to go on really is is common sense. And given that we know that the body was put in an enormous iron chest,

it would have been extremely heavy and difficult to move. My own view is that the iron chest was probably one of the muniment chests from the cloisters or the sacristy. We know that there were a great big iron muniment chests. And I think what might have happened is that the shrine was opened, the coffin of the saint was removed, and then the wooden coffin, which at that time would have been in an advanced state of deterioration because it was an Anglo-Saxon coffin, would have been placed in one of those munament chests. Now, at that point, you have to ask how far could they have realistically moved that iron chest? What we do know is that the monks were under lockdown in the monastery. They couldn't leave the monastic precincts. There was an outbreak of plague, but also since

1538, they'd been forbidden by the king's commissioners to leave the monastery, because the monastery was already doomed at that point. It was being prepared for dissolution. So given that they couldn't leave the precinct and they couldn't go very far from the presbytery, it makes sense that they would have taken it out of the abbey church. And the nearest place that they could have discreetly buried that chest is the monk's cemetery. Because there was an outbreak of plague, lots of monks were dying and were being buried in that private cemetery. And that was located behind the east end of the abbey church. And that's where much later a set of tennis courts were erected by the Marcus of Bristol. And it wasn't until spring 2020 that those tennis courts were finally removed.

And so now that area is a nice little grass over, raised area at the east end of the Abbey Church. And that's where I believe it's the most promising place that it would be a good idea to look for, St Edmund. So we might have a lost king under a former tennis court, which is a very intriguing prospect. And there's not really been any archaeological investigations of that part of the Abbey, has there? I mean, I know there have been some in the crypt of the Abbey. Nobody found any suitable burials. That could be Edmund, I believe. But the actual monk cemetery has never been investigated.

Is that right? That's correct. And I mean, a large part of archaeology is finding out that the answer is no. And one of the great things that we have at Bury is that the crypt and the abbey church have been excavated and investigated. And it was M.R. James, the great archaeologist and writer of ghost stories, who usually had a pretty good instinct on these things. And he said, oh, I think that the body of St. Edmund is probably in the crypt. And he died before he had a chance to investigate that. But it was investigated between 1959 and 1964 and nothing was found. So therefore, that's been eliminated as a possibility. So that really leaves another place that is very close to that East End. And that's, that would be, in my view, the monk's cemetery. It's not the only possible site, but it certainly would be at the top of my list. And I think the other great thing that we've got in our favor

when it comes to the possibility of finding Edmund is that we have certain diagnostic signs that we could look for to determine whether this is Edmund's burial or just another monastic burial. And that, of course, is that we've got a burial in an iron chest. And even if that iron chest is completely degraded, you would expect some sign in the soil that such a thing had been buried. The other diagnostic piece of evidence that we may well have, if it is the case that the entire coffin of Edmund was placed in that iron chest, which I think is very likely, a similar sort of thing took place with the body of St. Cuthbert. The entire coffin was taken out of the shrine and re-buried. And it's just very, very difficult to remove a body from a coffin, you know, when it's

so ancient, it's much easier to just take the whole coffin out. If that coffin was taken out and reburied, then in that coffin would be any objects that we know from other sources were in that coffin throughout the Middle Ages. And one of those objects was a gold, a figure of the Archangel Michael, which is set as a protection over the body of St. Edmund. Now, gold, of course, does not degrade. So therefore, if we have some of those grave goods, then that would provide unambiguous evidence. that this is the burial of St Edmund. So it's not like Richard III. We don't need DNA evidence to prove that it's Edmund.

We wouldn't know what that would be anyway. But we do have these potential pieces of evidence to look for that might help us to identify whether this is an unusual kind of burial. That sounds very promising to me. And as you very rightly point out, even if we did want to do something like DNA and analysis, we wouldn't have anything to compare it. We don't have any known descendants.

So actually to use the science for that would be very difficult. But I think one of the exciting prospects here is using something like geophysics, so using a radar survey or magnetometry survey, if we really do have a big burial with an iron coffin, then that should be possible to pick up. So I'm quite excited about this prospect. I know there's been some ideas of trying to get this off the ground, and hopefully we'll see something come out of it.

I definitely would love for you and I to go out there and do some surveys and have a look. If we did find him, and if we could somehow, or at least, you know, beyond reasonable doubt, that this might be the bones of the relics of St Edmund. What would that actually mean today? And why would that matter to anyone in 2021? I think it would be a national event of enormous significance to actually find the body not only of a king

who was so important to English royalty throughout history, but also to find the body of a patron saint of England, even if he might not be known today to every, everyone as the patron saint of England. I think it would be a defining moment for English national identity. Brilliant. Well, definitely, if anything happens, we will report back and let everyone know. I hope we will be possible to do some of these geophysical surveys, at least. So if there are any developments in the search, we will definitely keep you updated. But Francis, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. Don't forget that if you want to hear more about this story,

and there's a lot more detail that we haven't been able to cover today, do take a look at Francis's book, Edmund in search of England's Lost King. I can highly recommend it. And you can also follow Francis. He's on Twitter. So just search for his name there, Francis Young, and you can find more. And thank you so much again for coming on the podcast. So if you enjoyed listening to the podcast today, subscribe, see if you haven't already. And please tell your friends, family, colleagues and even the postman to do the same to help us spread the word. And you can leave us a review as if you want to it as well. I'm Dr. Kat German and I will be back next week on gone medieval from history hats.