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Has a detectorist uncovered part of Charles I’s lost epiphany crown?

49-year-old Kevin Duckett was out with his metal detector when he made the find - Tahreer Photography/Moment RF
49-year-old Kevin Duckett was out with his metal detector when he made the find - Tahreer Photography/Moment RF

On January 30 1649, Parliament cut off Charles I’s head. A year later, his state crown was “totally broken and defaced”. Parliament valued it at £1,100, the jewels were sold, the gold melted for coin. Nothing survived – or so it was thought.

In the vaults of the British Museum lies a treasure handed over by a 49-year-old metal detectorist, Kevin Duckett. He had flipped a clod of earth in a Northamptonshire field on a sunny day in 2017 and poking out, “like a partially unwrapped present”, was the gold figure of a king.

And quite a present it was, for this could be a remnant of Christmas past: the crown Henry VIII wore for processions on the feast of Epiphany, which celebrates the Magi – the three kings – visiting the Christ child.

A recreation of the crown - Bridgeman Images
A recreation of the crown - Bridgeman Images

The figure stands on an antelope, the heraldic beast of the Lancastrian kings. He bears the remnants of ronde-bosse enamelling, used in the 15th and 16th centuries, and his features indicate that it is Henry VI, who became king in 1422.

A pious man who suffered bouts of mental illness, Henry VI’s failed rule had led to the period of civil strife we know as the Wars of the Roses. He was murdered in 1471 on the orders of his victorious rival, the Yorkist king Edward IV. But Henry VI then had a remarkable afterlife.

First, people decided that while he had been a bad king, he had been a good man, and declared him a saint. The base of the gold figure is marked SH – Saint Henry. Prayers to the king led to miracles and images of him appeared in churches and prayer books. Edward IV tried to suppress the cult, then his brother Richard III tried to control it, moving Henry VI’s body from Chertsey Abbey in Surrey to the royal chapel at Windsor. But the cult was to prove useful to his half-nephew, Henry Tudor.

The future Henry VII was of illegitimate Lancastrian descent, with no blood right to the throne. But after he defeated Richard III at Bosworth in 1485, he announced that his holy uncle had prophesied his rule as divinely ordained. Under Henry VII, the tomb of Henry VI at Windsor became the most popular pilgrimage site in England.

The fixing at the back of the gold king suggests it was attached to something. Perhaps a type of girdle belt. Perhaps a miniature devotional altarpiece or a casket for Henry’s VI’s relics. Pilgrims prayed before his hat, spurs and a piece of his bedstead, while other “riches” adorned the altar dedicated to him. The British Museum believes it is an upmarket pilgrimage badge – usually made of cheap metal. But this year Kevin came across a more startling possibility.

Historic Royal Palaces (HRP) had made a video about a replica they had made of Charles I’s crown. There were crosses and fleurs de lys encrusted with jewels. There were also indistinct figures of three kings, attached to the crown with a similar fixing to the figure Kevin had found. He went to see the crown exhibited at Hampton Court and saw, to his shock, staring back at him, a cruder version of his gold king.

The crown was first described in 1521 during the reign of Henry VIII. On the five fleurs de lys were fixed three figures of Christ, one of St George and one of the Virgin and child. But in a later inventory, at Henry VIII’s death in 1547, the figures of Christ have been replaced with three kings. There are possible reasons for such an exchange. Where Henry VI had worn his crown on at least six Holy Days, in the Tudor “Ryalle Book”, which covered household regulations, it was decreed that the king should be processed in his crown on only one: Epiphany. HRP believe the royal figures representing the Magi could have been the three saint kings of England: St Edmund, Edward the Confessor – and Henry VI.

But how did this little gold king end up in a Northamptonshire field? By the time Charles became king in 1625 the Reformation had ended the cult of saints. Henry VI’s tomb and relics had vanished, and his name was no longer associated with piety, but with failed rule and civil war. Still, the Tudor crown survived. Charles was described as doffing it to his MPs at his first parliament – the high point of their relationship, which broke down entirely in 1629 to be followed by 11 years of personal rule.

Charles I as he appears in a painting by Daniel Mytens - Hulton Archive
Charles I as he appears in a painting by Daniel Mytens - Hulton Archive

The replica at Hampton Court is based on a portrait of Charles painted by the artist Daniel Mytens in 1631. He stands in a velvet suit alongside his crown, upon which you can see the figure of the Virgin and child on the front fleurs de lys. Charles’s court was then enjoying what the poet Thomas Carew called its “halcyon days”, a time of idyllic peace. But there is a very different image of Charles painted by Van Dyck near the end of this period, in 1639, as he faced a Scottish rebellion against his “Popish” religious reforms.

As Charles prepared to go to battle, Van Dyck painted the king in armour, next to his crown – as seen from the back. It is an ugly view, so why use it? You cannot see the Virgin and there are no visible kings. Was Charles anxious to avoid further accusations of Popery? Had the figures been removed even before the civil war broke out in England in 1642? If so, did Charles keep the three saint kings with him?

The gold found in Northamptonshire
The gold found in Northamptonshire

There may be a thousand reasons why this gold king ended up in a Northamptonshire field, but it is notable that the site of the find is on the route that Charles took as he fled from Cromwell’s cavalry after losing the Battle of Naseby in 1645. Charles lost his pistols as he charged through the Roundheads to escape. Several royalists following in his wake were killed at a spot known as Bloodyman’s Ford. The king’s baggage was captured and there was a massacre of up to 400 women in the baggage train on the road to east Farndon.

The “middling sort”, who had fled in wagons, were described as “full of money and rich apparel”. Many were mutilated with the whores mask – their noses cut off, mouths slashed into a horrible grin. Some reached Market Harborough. The gold king was found by a pond near the main road to Market Harborough, east of East Farndon and south of Bloodyman’s Ford.

The figure of Henry VI seems a strange talisman for Charles to have kept, except for one thing. Charles’s chaplain, Henry Hammond, was born at Chertsey, Henry VI’s original burial place, and educated at Eton, the school he founded. Did Hammond encourage Charles to discover a personal connection with the martyr king? Like Henry VI, Charles was destined to lose a civil war and his life. Like Henry VI, he would also go on to be named a saint. When his crown was being prepared for destruction in 1649, the gems and pearls were bagged up and eventually sold, but there was no mention of the figures of the three kings.

The true story of the gold king remains for the British Museum to unravel, pending its valuation and consideration for Kevin. Then we can hope to see it on display in all its mystery and magic.

Leanda de Lisle is the author of Tudor, The Family Story and White King: The Tragedy of Charles I. The British Museum welcomes legacy gifts, either in a will or donations in memory