The position is now clear. Probably the whole train crossed the Lynn
stream (the Ouse) from King’s Lynn the day before, and camped as near
their supplies at Lynn as possible, in fact just across the river. In
the fogs and mists of October, the train would hardly start on the 12th
till about 8, and would reach Cross Keys a little before noon. For so
unwieldly a cavalcade that was too late. When the Welland was reached the
tide would be in full flow, and when the long train of baggage wagons,
men, soldiers, mules and horses, excitedly endeavoured to turn back all
would be in confusion. They were like the Egyptians in the Red Sea. As
none escaped, the whole train must have been on the sands; the ghastly
scene of turmoil and death in the quicksands and swiftly rising waters
must be left to the imagination; no circumstance of horror was absent.
The King probably watched the scene from the northern bank, and saw the
hideous tumult and disorder, and the struggles for life.
6. But the treasure fell into soft, shifting quicksands, silt and mud. To
what depth? Sir William approached the Great Northern Railway Company,
who built in 1887 a new swing-bridge over the river near the spot, and
found that probably at 23 feet, certainly at 32 feet, the slowly sinking
gold, silver and jewels would be stopped. The composition of every foot
of depth, whether silt, clay or sand is known.
7. The fact that the Welland stream, _now_ 240 feet across and 27 feet
deep, had in old days no one definite channel, but roamed divided over
the wide delta, with much less force and depth than now, completes the
enquiry. No part of the treasure would be carried out to sea, but all
would sink slowly down to its present place.
A trench cut in those meadows from East to West on the line of the old
ford would encounter mules’ bones and human bones, which could be thence
tracked with certainty both North and South. On that line will certainly
be found, uninjured and secure, Edward the Confessor’s Crown, all the
other contents of the King’s movable Chapel and his other portable
treasures, with countless pieces of plate and relics and jewels from the
rich abbeys and churches of Norfolk.
Such is an outline of a successful application of method to the vague
accounts of a great disaster.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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