ROMANCE OF BURIED TREASURE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19379, 31 December 1932, Page 19

ROMANCE OF BURIED TREASURE

FRUITLESS SEARCH IN TOWER OF LONDON.

Why seek out Cocos Island if the thrill of a buried treasure hunt is wanted? That small dry spot in a very big wet ocean is a long way off, and a treasure hunt is offered much nearer to hand (writes W. G. Bell in the London “Daily Telegraph”). The place? None other than the rowei of London. Here I tell a story which is not fiction, but plain truth. All the characters are historical. I think I have fixed the spot where treasure was buried pretty closely the “signs,” as anyone weaving a yarn would say It begins with John Barkstead. He was Colonel John among Oliver Cromwell's troops, but his fighting days need not trouble us. What is of much more concern is that he was a regicide. While the great Protector lived his life was secure and reward certain. Barkstead was Lieutenant of the Tower of London, next in rank and power to the Constable. Actually the Lieutenant was the chief gaoler, and the many pickings of that office came his way. Regicide’s Fate. Barkstead sensed danger in those new times which followed Oliver Cromwell’s death. He fled to Holland, taking care before he left to bury his private hoard of £7OOO below ground within the Tower. That is the only part of the story for which I cannot vouch. Why, will be revealed. Barkstead’s fate was tragic. He was betrayed while in Holland, with his fellow regicides, John Okey and Miles Corbet, and all three were seized by Sir George Downing, then King Charles ll’s Ambassador to the Dutch —a most high-handed proceeding. Sir George, who built and gave his name to Downing Street, off Whitehall, was a dirty fellow, and this was his dirtiest action. The three regicides went to the gallows at Tyburn, and were there hanged and quartered on April 19, 1662. Samuel Pepys, who at Aldgate watched them go by—“they all looked very cheerful,” he says characterised Downing as “a perfidious rogue, though the action is good and of service to the King, yet he cannot with any conscience do it.” Months passed, and the burial of Barkstead’s hoard within the Tower of London became whispered abroad. Digging the Cellar. Whispers reached Charles’s ears. The upshot was a determination to make search for the hidden money, of which, when found, the discoverers were to have £2OOO, Montagu Lord Sandwich £2OO0 —he was Pepy’s "My Lord,” at the head of the Navy Board—and the King would take the balance.

The- Diary is the chief authority for the search, but the story has been muddled by lack of knowledge of the topography of the Tower of London at the time. On October 29, six months after John Barkstead’s end at Tyburn, there came to Pepys a mystifying letter from Lord Sandwich, to whom he hurried, finding him “Up in his chamber and all alone (and he) did acquaint me with his business; which was that an old acquaintance, Mr Wade (in Axe-yard), had discovered to him £7OOO hid in the Tower . .

and that the King’s warrant runs for me on my Lord’s part, to demand leave of the Lieutenant of the Tower to make search. ... At noon comes Mr Wade with my lord’s letter.” In due course, Mr Wade, who held the secret, and one Evett, his guide, jyith labourers bearing pickaxes assembled at the Tower, the Lieutenant having given them full authority to work.

“So our guide demands a candle, and down into the cellars he goes, inquiring whether they were the same that Barkstead always had. We went into several little cellars, and then went out a-doors to view, and to the ColeHarbour, but none did answer so well to the marks which was given to him to find it by as one arched vault. Where ... we see to it, to digging we went to almost eight o’clock at night, but could find nothing. But, however, our guides do not seem at all discouraged, they being confident that the money is there they look for.”

Elusive Gold. The place was securely locked against disturbance, and on November 1 the search was renewed. For three hours they “dug a great deal all under the arches, as it was now most confidently directed.” But again the search was fruitless, and they “went away a second time like fools.” That did not end the search, or the story; but it is necessary to correct one’s bearings here. The late H. B. Wheatley, to whose Pepysian studies all are vastly indebted, led inquiries astray by a footnote he added to the Diary.

In this he explained that the ColeHarbour which Pepys mentions in connection with the treasure hunt (“ColeHarbour” occurs in many old towns) was the ancient house, or precinct, of Cold-Harbour in Upper Thames Street near by the Tower, over which last century the City of London Brewery built. The ale-house where Pepys mentions that he sheltered has been assumed to be the King’s Head in Tower Street, where once he had “a dirty dinner.” When the Royal Mint was within the Tower and coins were struck there, the straight way from the Byward Tower past Traitor’s Gate was known as Water Lane or Mint Street. The public had free access there, only the inner ward being locked for security. About the curtain wall where the Bell Tower makes the corner, ramshackle tenements and shops clustered, and there were two taverns.

The Duke of Wellington, when Constable of Tower, cleared these away, at the time when he also emptied the water moat. The Tower’s Taverns. One tavern bore the sign of the King’s Head. From high on the Beil Tower an iron bar to this day projects. Of its purpose I had no knowledge, till a few days ago Lieut.-Col-onel Dan Burgess, V.C., the Governor of the Tower, explained that from this bar the tavern sign hung by a chain. Across the narrow bailey, by the Byward Tower, is a similar iron, once bearing the sign of Cold Harbour.

Now there is record that within the Tower of London in Tudor days was a prison cell which was known as Cold Harbour, or Cole Harbour. The name is still borne by a store-place near the Byward Tower, which at one time seems to have served as an alehouse.

With these guides, the place of King Charles ll.’s treasure hunt is, X think, pretty closely fixed by the foot of the Bell Tower; and references to cellars and ban-els make it likely that it was the King’s Head. Pepys later met Wade and Evett. They assured him that their information came from one who hkd it straight from Barkstead’s own mouth, with the guiding signs indicating just where the

treasure lay. They would produce that one. Woman Informer. It proved to be a woman. She came in disguise, when a third effort to solve the mystery was made on November 7, positively asserting that the cellar wherein they had laboured was the place where Barkstead had hidden the money, “and where he and she did put :esulted; nor did a later attempt *' up the £50,000 (so in Pepy’s manuscript) in butter firkins; and the very day that he went out of England did say that neither he nor his would be the better for that money, and therefore wishing that she and hers might.” The growth of the hoard to £50,000 is, as Pepys migln have said, mighty suspicious. Though they dug the cellar right out, shifting barrels and working till seven at night, nothing the Main Guard. Despite all, Pepys has “great confidence that there is no cheat in these people.” Perhaps the treasure still lies underground within the Tower of London. Perhaps it was never there. Who shall say now? At any rate, given the Office of Works’ permission, here *3 opportunity for a renewed treasure hunt in the very heart of London.