Because Charles died without any legitimate children, the throne passed to his brother, James II. Remarkably, one of his acknowledged illegitimate children with Louise de Kerouille, Duchess of Portsmouth, is a direct ancestor of Princess Diana and her children, Princes William and Harry. If Prince William is one day crowned king, he will be the first direct descendant of Charles II to sit on the English throne.
See also:
Epsom Horse Harness Boss
Hawking Vervel
Seal Matrix of Stone Priory
A stamp of authority from a lost priory
Date: 1260–1300, Medieval
Where, when and how found: Cobham, Surrey; 2011; metal detecting
Finder: Tony Burke
Where is it now? On display at the Church of St Michael & St Wulfad, Stone, Staffordshire
www.stmichaelschurchstone.co.uk
We give our seal of approval, we seal things with a kiss, we seal the deal. And the origin of these phrases is from a very literal act our medieval forebears used to perform. Much like the pin numbers and certified signatures we use now, our ancestors used wax seals to prove their identity and authenticate official documents. Seals are still used today – the Great Seal of the Realm, Queen Elizabeth II’s seal, is put on official documents such as new peerages or Royal proclamations, and is considered to be more official than her personal signature.
Seals came into common use in Britain under the administration-loving Normans in the early 1100s. A blob of beeswax would be melted and a personal identifying imprint would be made into it. The seal would then be fixed to the document to prove it wasn’t a forgery.
The item used to make the imprint in the wax is known as a ‘seal matrix’. Wealthy families and institutions would commission unique engraved seal matrices which they would protect carefully. Just like now, identity theft was a worry and if you lost your seal, it could be misused by others.
That makes the findspot of this treasure a real mystery.
Tony Burke was metal detecting in a field in Cobham, Surrey, in 2011, when he discovered a large lump of metal, 74mm long, 45mm wide and weighing 84g. Tony immediately recognised the pointed oval as a seal matrix of some kind and reported the artefact to his local Finds Liaison Officer, David Williams.
On one side of the copper alloy matrix is an impressively detailed depiction of the Virgin Mary with the child Jesus on her knee. The child holds a book in his left hand and points upwards with his other hand. Mary is holding a flower in her hand, and around the image is an inscription:
S’ECCE SCE MARIE ET SCI W(V)LFADI MARTIRIS DE STANIS
The Seal of the Church of Saint Mary and Saint Wulfad the Martyr of Stone
At first Tony and local archaeologists thought that the seal might have something to do with Staines, a place name meaning ‘stone’ that was relatively close to the findspot. But St Wulfad was not a local saint, and an online search immediately revealed his connection to an Augustinian priory in Stone, Staffordshire.
The destruction of the monasteries
The priory at Stone was founded in the mid-12th century, but in the 1530s it was one of the first victims of Henry VIII’s Reformation of the Church and Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Henry aimed to destroy Catholic authority in England and to reclaim the great wealth held within the religious houses. He ordered that monasteries, priories and abbeys be disbanded, their property be reallocated and all the proceeds be paid to the Crown.
The King’s agents first targeted small religious houses with an income less than £200 per year, and it’s perhaps at this point, in 1536, that the Stone seal matrix was moved. It’s possible that a monk from Stone moved to the Newark Augustinian Priory in Surrey (which survived until 1540), taking with him the most portable and important possessions he could. If they were left at Stone Priory they would almost certainly be destroyed or sold. At this point, the seal matrix would already have been more than two hundred years old and as an emblem of the authority of the doomed Priory it would have been one of the most important items to try and save.
The Stone Priory buildings were quickly dismantled and destroyed, but the main church building was saved by local parishioners. They continued to use it as the parish church until 1758 when it was eventually demolished and replaced by the current church of St Michael & St Wulfad.
Anglo-Saxon saints of Stone
The legend of Stone and St Wulfad tells that when the great Anglo-Saxon King of Mercia, Wulfhere, heard that his sons Wulfad and Rufin had converted to Christianity, he flew into a horrified rage and struck them down where they stood. The boys’ mother, distraught with grief, ordered that her murdered sons be buried and the grave marked by a stone cairn. Thus, the town that grew up around the spot took the name Stone. When King Wulfhere also eventually converted to Christianity around 670AD, he had a church built on the site of his martyred sons’ graves, in tribute and penitence.
The truth of the matter is a little less clear – certainly there was a pagan King Wulfhere who converted to Christianity and founded a number of religious sites in Mercia. But there isn’t any further evidence of his sons Wulfad and Rufin, despite there being local churches dedicated to both names.
Nonetheless the quality and detail of the engraving on the Stone seal matrix makes it very special. It would have been used to authenticate transactions of land and money by the Priory, for levying taxes and accounting for donations.
Incredibly, the Stone seal matrix can still make a very clear impression in wax, over 700 years after it was first used. Tony Burke, the finder, the landowner of the field in Surrey, and the parishioners of Stone were all keen to see the seal matrix return home permanently. The seal matrix is now on display at Stone parish church.
See also:
Baldehildis Seal
Raglan Ring
Beddingham Nose
A false copper nose
Date: 1500–1700, Post Medieval
Where, when and how found: Beddingham, East Sussex; 2009; metal detecting
Finder: Ray Wilson
Where is it now? Returned to finder
Visit: Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons, London
www.rcseng.ac.uk/museums;
Wellcome Collection, London
www.wellcomecollection.org;
Science Museum, London www.sciencemuseum.org.uk
Ray Wilson was metal detecting on grassland on the South Downs when he discovered a copper alloy nose. Finely moulded with two nostril slits in the base, a flattened rim around the sides and broken attachment holes at the top and on the sides, Ray assumed it must be part of a sculpture or a suit of armour.
But investigations by the Local Finds Liaison officer, Laura Burnett revealed that if the nose had been armour, it would have been cast from iron rather than bronze and if it were sculpture, it probably wouldn’t have nostril slits and attachment holes. Experts at the Hunterian Museum and the Science Museum ultimately identified it as a very early prosthetic nose, used in place of one lost through accident or illness. The Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe lost his nose in a sword duel in 1566 and was famously recorded as wearing gold and silver false noses. Copper staining on his skull suggests he may have worn a copper alloy nose as well, and perhaps only worn his precious one on special occasions.
The most common cause of nose loss was disease, particularly syphilis, a bacterial infection that is usually sexually transmitted, but can also be passed from mother to foetus. The final stage of syphilitic disease results in bone destruction, and additional lumpy growths. One of the first areas to show signs of bone loss are the delicate nasal bones and the cartilage of the septum. Many people in the 1500s and 1600s were left severely disfigured, and the social taboo and shame of venereal disease added to the victim’s trauma.
Syphilis was very common throughout the post-medieval and modern period across Europe, and it’s estimated that more than 12 million people still suffer from the disease around the world today. Syphilis can be treated
with the simple antibiotic penicillin, discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928, but millions of people still suffer from the disease because of a lack of access to medical care.
Treatment was certainly not available when the Beddingham Nose was commissioned and worn, and a prosthetic would have been the best resolution of the facial disfigurement. It’s very possible that if the owner of the Beddingham Nose didn’t lose it in an accident or fight, he or she may have lost it to syphilis.
The findspot is near to a historic path, so it’s possible that this was an accidental loss. The nose is difficult to date, but similar prosthetic noses made from ivory and silver at the Hunterian Museum and the Science Museum, both in London, suggest a date around the 1500s or 1600s, extraordinarily dynamic times in our nation’s history. The Beddingham Nose find overlaps with the Daventry Visard Mask – it’s interesting to imagine two of our ancestors meeting, each wearing their personal face apparatus.
See also:
Daventry Visard Mask
Hackney WWII Hoard
Eighty gold coins lost in the Blitz
Date: 1940, Modern
Where, when and how found: Hackney, London; 2007; found while digging a garden pond
Finders: Two residents with a volunteer and care worker, Terry Castle
Where is it now? Privately owned after auction; one coin and the jar are in Hackney Museum
www.hackney.gov.uk/cm-museum.htm
Also visit: Jewish Museum, Camden, London
www.jewishmuseum.org.uk
Terry Castle was helping residents dig a frog pond in the garden of a block of flats when one of their spades hit a glass kitchen storage jar in the mud. The heavy contents of the jar were wrapped in greaseproof paper, and as Terry and the others emptied the jar and unwrapped the paper, they were amazed to find they’d struck gold. Inside the jar were eighty large gold coins with an image of Liberty on one side and an American Eagle on the other – 33g each (a modern £1 coin is just 5.5g), and made of 90% gold, these were beautiful, impressive and obviously very valuable.
Terry immediately reported the coins to Kate Sumnall, the Finds Liaison Officer at the Museum of London, who took possession of them for safe keeping.
The coins
The gold coins were all American $20 coins of a type known as the Double Eagle. ‘Double Eagle’ isn’t a nickname for the coins, but their official title, and they were produced from 1850 until 1933. Most of the Hackney coins had been minted in San Francisco, and dated between 1854 and 1913.
The immediate challenge was to find out how the coins had ended up buried in a Hackney garden. A possibility was that the coins might have been left by an American serviceman posted to the area at some point after 1913, but research on residents during that time drew a blank – no US servicemen had lived there. For three and half years the coins remained at the Museum of London, and in one final attempt to locate the owner, the British Museum put an advert in the Hackney Gazette under the headline ‘TREASURE MYSTERY’.
Local historian Stephen Selby was intrigued by the headline. In an inspired hunch he searched the national newspaper archives and discovered an article in The Times dated 13 March 1952, entitled ‘GOLD COINS IN GARDEN’: Sixty years ago, a gardener had also found a glass jar in the same garden – it had contained eighty-two $20 gold coins, and the hoard was claimed by a man called Martin Sulzbacher.
An online search revealed that Martin had died, but his son, Max, was still living in Israel. Max was able to fill in the blanks of this treasure mystery story. In 1938, Martin Sulzbacher, a Jewish banker in Oberkassel, Germany, decided that he needed to get his family out of Nazi Germany. He began smuggling money out to his brother Fritz and parents who were living in London, including a large number of $20 gold coins. Quickly following, he moved with his wife and four children (including Max) to the safety of England. Just two months later on 9 November 1938, the night that became known as Kristallnacht – the ‘Night of Broken Glass’ – Nazis across Germany burnt synagogues, destroyed Jewish shops and homes and rounded up Jewish civilians who would later be sent to the death camps.
Martin used some of his smuggled wealth to purchase a house in Hackney, into which he, his family and parents moved. The rest of the coins he stored in a bank safety deposit box.
In May 1940, the Germans invaded France, and the war was suddenly at Britain’s door. One immediate response from the British Government was to interview all German and Italian foreign nationals and detain those considered to be a risk to national security. Those who were a ‘risk’ would be sent to Britain’s distant colonies – Canada and Australia. Martin Sulzbacher and his wife were detained and on 30 June 1940, Martin was forced to board a liner, the Arandora Star, at Liverpool, bound for Canada. Their children were evacuated to the countryside, but Martin’s parents, his brother Fritz, and his sister-in-law remained at the house in Hackney.
Off the coast of Scotland, the Arandora Star was torpedoed by a German U-Boat. Incredibly, Martin was rescued from the water and taken to Greenock, Scotland. Shortly afterwards, he was deported again, this time successfully reaching Australia aboard the SS Dunera, where he remained until 1941.
In London, Martin’s brother Fritz thought his brother’s gold in the bank deposit box was at risk, and would be lost if the Germans invaded Britain. Fritz decided to withdraw all the coins bar one from the bank, and hide them elsewhere. He wrapped them up in greaseproof paper, placed them in two glass storage jars, and buried them in the back garden of the house in Hackney. But although the German troops never landed on British soil, the Blitz bombing raids destroyed plenty. The Sulzbacher house in Hackney took a direct hit and Martin’s parents, his brother Fritz, and his sister-in-law were all killed, the house and garden were destroyed, and the whereabouts of the gold coins was lost.
Martin returned to Britain in 1942 and was reunited with his wife, his four children, and Fritz’s four orphaned children. He discovered just one solitary coin in his safety deposit box, and learned that Fritz had buried the rest, but no one knew where. The family were left with nothing and suffered years of hardship, along with many other distraught, war-torn families. The hoard was lost and the Sulzbachers started from scratch.
The government eventually paid compensation to Martin for his destroyed property. It was a decade before the site was redeveloped and a workman found the first jar and Martin was reunited with eighty-two of his coins. He died in 1981 without ever discovering the fate of the final eighty. It fell to his son Max, at the age of eighty-one, to fly from Israel to London and prove his claim to the coins in 2011. He gave one of the Double Eagles to the finders and one to Hackney Museum, and auctioned the rest at Sotheby’s to restore the Sulzbacher family graves, and help his living family.
This moving story reveals the set of complex events that resulted in a hoard being lost. We only know the details because it happened within living memory. No contemporary accounts exist, and no further archaeological evidence is available. The Hackney Hoard indicates just how challenging it can be to piece together the story behind an artefact from deeper in the past.
See also:
Nether Stowey Hoard
Holy Island Mason Hoard
Spanish-American Gold Doubloons
Epsom Horse Harness Boss
The find that points to a night of Royal partying
Date: 1603–1664, Post Medieval
Where, when and how found: Epsom, Surrey; 2009; metal detecting
Finder: Mark Davison
Where is it now? Finder has given on long-term loan to Bourne Hall Museum, Ewell
Get involved:
www.epsomandewellhistoryexplorer.org.uk
Journalist Mark Davison was with members of his local metal detecting group in Epsom, the heart of racehorse country, when he got a strong signal near a gate. He thought he’d found an upturned ashtray, but when he turned the item over, it took his breath away. A bright, shiny, gold-coloured decoration bearing a Royal Coat of Arms.
This
large and impressive horse harness decoration is made of a gilded copper alloy and shows the Arms of the Royal House of Stuart, an ancestry which includes the 17th century Kings James I and II, Charles I and his son, Charles II.
The shield in the centre is supported by a lion and a unicorn, a crown sits above the boss, and at the base is a scroll with the motto:
DIEU ET MON DROIT
It’s French and literally means, ‘God and my Right’, referring to the divine right of the monarch to govern. It’s sometimes translated as ‘My Divine Right’, or alternatively ‘God and My Right [shall I defend]’. A second inscription, on a belt shaped around the inner circle, is:
HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE
which translates as ‘Shame upon He who thinks Evil’.
The back of the harness boss is a dished hollow and has incomplete fittings that would have been used to attach it to the horse’s harness, either on to the sides of the bridle bit, perhaps on a chest or rump band, or possibly to a carriage. A horse wearing such a high-quality decoration was certainly part of the Royal household.
Which Royal household?
The 1600s were times of incredible change in Britain, with foreign wars, international trading and philosophical debate challenging ideas that had seemed to be the unquestionable cornerstones of the country. Most fundamentally, thinkers began to challenge the idea that kings and queens had been given the right to rule by God, rather than by Man.
In 1660, with Oliver Cromwell and the ideals of a Republic now dead, Charles II’s supporters recalled him from Europe and restored him to the throne. Indebted to the noblemen who supported his claim to the throne, Charles II was keen to bestow land, titles and his Royal favour upon them.
Britain's Secret Treasures Page 6