Lynn seems to have paid very dearly for the said king’s favours. Camden, in his account of this town observes, that it enjoys very large immunities, which its inhabitants “purchased of king John with the price of their own blood, spent in the defence of his cause:” alluding, probably, to the powerful assistance they afforded him in reducing the disaffected barons of this county, whose subjugation proved an arduous undertaking, and whom he afterwards severely chastised. The assistance they rendered to this sovereign consisted not only in recruits for his army, or a strong and resolute body of landsmen, but also in sailors and ships for his naval operations: hence Lynn and Yarmouth are mentioned by Carte among the principal places that furnished his majesty with a _fleet_ to oppose that of France on a certain occasion. {396} In short, the good people of this town appear to have assisted that memorable monarch to the utmost of their ability, or in all the ways, and by all the means that were in their power. He, on the other hand, is said to have been very partial to them, and deemed them so trustworthy, and their town so secure a place, that he deposited there, for some time his crown and regalia, and his most valuable treasures; but took them away at his last visit, and lost them all, soon after, in crossing the Wash, at an improper place, or improper time; which he laid so to heart that it hastened his death, which took place a very short time after at Newark. There is indeed no small disagreement among our historians in their accounts of king John after his last departure from Lynn. Some represent him as crossing the _Wash_, or rather the _Ouse_, then called _Wellstream_, at the _Cross Keys_; others represent him as crossing it at _Wisbeach_, and the latter seems to be the truth. Some, again, ascribe the illness which terminated his life, to _poison_, administered by a monk of Swineshead; others ascribe it to _vexation_ for the loss of his treasures; while others assure us that it is to be ascribed to neither of these causes, but that he was ill before that disaster of losing his treasures befel him. Nay, some have alleged, or suggested, that his last illness originated at Lynn, and was occasioned by his intemperate living during his stay here. In accounts different and contradictory, it is no easy task to distinguish truth from fiction. It seems however to be pretty well established that the said king left Lynn on the 11th of October, 1216, was at Wisbeach on the 12th, at Sleaford on the 15th, and at Newark on the 18th, where he died the very next day: but the story of the poison seems very doubtful and even improbable; nor does that concerning the loss of his crown and treasures seem perfectly clear and indubitable. {398}