In the ruins of Basing House in Hampshire, burnt by Oliver Cromwell’s army in 1645, drinking glasses from Venice and a Yoruba ivory cup from west Africa have been found, but little else of its fabled buried treasure. Many more modest items have been discovered — the leather sole of a child’s shoe, lead shot, the severed skull of a young man — poignant and grim reminders of the two-year siege of the Royalist stronghold during the English Civil War.
The treasure had belonged to Basing House’s owner, the fabulously rich John Paulet, Marquess of Winchester. It was known as Loyalty House after his motto, Aimez Loyauté (“Love Loyalty”), although Parliamentarians had other names for it. Winchester was a Catholic, his house a “limb of