2. The route followed by the King himself can fortunately be absolutely ascertained from the fact that every day he made grants which are registered among the Patent and Close Rolls, and each is marked as made at a certain place. We at once learn, therefore, that the King, who had swept much of Norfolk clear of its gold and silver treasures in revenge for the revolt of the Barons, left King’s Lynn on October 11, 1216, for Wisbeach, went thus round the head of the great indentation of the Wash, and journeyed thence on the fateful 12th to Swineshead, in Lincolnshire, where he ordered his baggage to join him by a direct route northward from King’s Lynn across the Wash at low tide. All this is ascertained fact, and we learn already that the King himself was never in danger, but only his baggage train, and its guard and the attendant forces. 3. There is no question of the great changes in the coast line during the last seven hundred years. Whereas the sea used to cover what is now flat and fruitful meadow land, almost as far as Wisbeach, the water is now kept out by the silt it has deposited and by embankments. The accounts of later writers on the disaster, Camden, Brady and local antiquaries, mention the old lines of embankment and with this help they can still be traced. Thus emerges the important fact that there was a definite ford of no great width straight across the Wash and across the Well stream, now called the Welland; the route to the ford is marked by a road and a line of old churches and villages. 4. Next, military historians were asked to estimate the probable amount of baggage and the numbers and composition of the train and its guard. It was estimated that the whole cavalcade would be something like three miles long, not capable of moving more than 2½ miles an hour at best, the crossing being not less than 4½ miles, from Cross Keys northward to Long Sutton, and the channels, where the long and narrow ford encounters its chief difficulty, not far from Long Sutton. 5. On the great day, October 12, 1216, what were the tides? An official of the Nautical Almanac Office specially worked out the problem, with the result: Low water about noon, high water about 6 p.m., the sunset being at 5.15 p.m. It was a spring-tide, favourable for crossing, as so much of the route would be uncovered at low water, but it is clear that the available time for crossing the long ford and the mid-stream of the Welland would not be more than from about 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.—barely time enough, even if all went well.