(soft music) ♪ (Tori) Human bones can hide the most shocking of secrets.

(Carla) Oh, my God, she's been killed.

(Tori) Stories of slaughter, sacrifice, and disease.

(woman) Success was built on the broken bodies of children like these.

(Tori) Crimes covered up for hundreds or even thousands of years.

Somebody could've committed this murder and then jumped ship and maybe his murderer was never brought to justice.

I'm Dr. Tori Herridge, and I'm leading a team examining some of the UK's most mysterious archaeological burial sites.

There are so many unanswered questions.

Let's cut to the chase, is it a fertility ritual?

With bones as our only witnesses, I'm joined this week by forensic scientist Dr. Helen Meadows, who will help discover what happened to the bodies.

(Helen) From a forensic point of view, that's consistent with sharp force trauma.

(Tori) While archaeologist Raksha Dave gathers crucial evidence from key experts.

(Raksha) A line of small children's heads, that's absolutely bonkers!

(Tori) Across the length and breadth of the UK, we will reveal how our forebears lived, loved, and died.

(Helen) It makes it all the more difficult to understand how he died.

It just seems so tragic.

(Tori) People long forgotten... Makes you wonder what brought her here.

...until now.

♪ (orchestral music) ♪ When work began in 1971 to excavate the site of a medieval priory in Cheshire, archaeologists were not surprised to find human remains.

What they weren't expecting to find was evidence of brutal violence.

♪ A man buried here who was murdered more than 800 years ago.

Who was he and what can his bones tell us about his life and his death?

♪ The site is in Runcorn in Cheshire in the northwest of England.

It was a medieval Augustinian priory.

-What is it nowadays?

-It's actually a museum to the priory itself, because am I right, Ellie?

Norton Priory is the most extensively excavated monastery -in the whole of Europe?

-You are!

Over 130 skeletons have been excavated from Norton Priory.

It's an amazing site of not only archaeological but also scientific importance.

I was fortunate enough to start working there six years ago, and I've brought three of the most interesting cases with me today.

And we're gonna start by having a look at this skeleton here.

(soft music) (Helen) This looks like an adult male to me, Ellie.

-Would you agree?

-Yes, so these are the remains of a man who died between the ages of 50 and 60.

♪ We were lucky enough to be able to have him radiocarbon dated, and he died between 1150 and 1250 A.D. (Helen) Wow, that is incredible!

This level of preservation is just remarkable.

(Tori) Yeah, and from, what, 800, 900 years ago, which was a really turbulent time in British history.

You've got the Crusades going on, King John, Magna Carta?

Yeah, that was signed in 1215, so interesting times when this man lived!

(Ellie) One of the really exciting things about this individual is that we have cut marks on the bones.

Have a look at these three vertebrae.

So your vertebrae are your backbone, and this is just between your shoulder blades, and can you see here on this side -compared to this side?

-Yeah.

-Wow.

-You are not kidding when you say "cut marks."

That has gone straight through the vertebra!

Could that have killed him?

Do you think this is cause of death?

We think it's quite likely that it was cause of death.

There's no evidence of new bone growth, and it hasn't been rehealed, so it does indicate it happened at time of death.

(Tori) It's not just damage to that one vertebrae, was it?

It was how many did you say?

So it starts on thoracic-1 and goes all the way down to thoracic-8, so if you can see here, along here, that's where the cut is going down.

(Helen) It seems unlikely to me, based on what I've seen before, albeit in more modern remains, that this happened by accident.

That kind of force needed to cut through the bone like that, you'd need to fall on a very sharp blade, and the force of your body weight, I don't think it would cause that level of damage.

(Tori) Could it have been an execution?

Very, very unlikely it was an execution.

Most executions would be going across, whereas this is very much a cut going down the spine.

(Tori) Okay, so it's not an execution.

He's died a violent death, he's been killed, but he was buried in a monastery, so is there something we can say about him from where he was buried?

(Ellie) So he was buried within the nave, which was where the high-status burials were usually found.

(Tori) So he's a high-status person.

He's been buried in Norton Priory.

If he's important, maybe we can find out who he was, and if we can find out who he was, maybe we can gain some insight into why he was killed.

(solemn music) ♪ It's huge, this place, but what are we looking at?

(woman) So the green space that we've got over here, that's the cloister.

To the south of that would've been the refectory where the canons would've had their meals, and obviously very close by is the kitchens, and then at the bottom of the slope here, we would've had the dormitory.

(Tori) This is your basic floor plan of where the monks living here would have lived?

(woman) Where the canons would've been, yes.

What's the difference between a canon and a monk?

(woman) So the basic difference between the two is a canon would have much more to do with its local community whereas a monk would've led a very solitary, very cut-off kind of life.

(Tori) So it's like everything to the south seems to be the domestic sphere, and then you enter this section, we're in the ecclesiastical.

And this is the long-axis of that typical cross... -Yeah.

-...of the church, yeah?

And you'd have been looking down this huge, long nave, and the floor would've been spectacularly tiled.

(Lynn) The floor would've been very cleverly laid, so the geometric patterns would've made one of the longest naves in the country at the time look even longer.

The visual effect and the way the artistry came into play in the nave really would've been quite spectacular.

♪ (Tori) Everything you're saying speaks to something which is trying to make a statement.

It must've struck awe into anybody who walked into it.

(Lynn) It was the same effect that you would get if you went into any of the major abbeys or minsters that we have in this country.

You feel quite small given the scale of things that you've just walked into.

♪ (Tori) The man, the skeleton we've been looking at was buried in this nave, and he must be one of these three coffins here, yes?

(Lynn) Yeah, he's the chap in the middle, the complete coffin in the middle just there.

-It's a pretty prime spot!

-Yeah, very close to the altar, so really quite a significant location.

(laughing) (Tori) Well, this is a nice piece of stonework!

(Lynn) It's beautiful.

A lot of the coffins at Norton Priory are really quite well-preserved.

(Tori) But it just seems to be the most important thing -has to be the location.

-Yeah.

(Tori) He must've been an important person.

(Lynn) He must've been to have been given a place of such significance within the nave, as you quite rightly say, but don't forget that a lot of people at Norton Priory would have been able to afford to have paid for their burial.

Ah, so you don't have to have been a canon or a prior or even an abbot to have have been buried somewhere like this, but if you were a layperson, what would you have to have done to get such a prime spot?

(Lynn) You would had to have done something really quite remarkable to have helped the priory, whether that be in terms of influence or even stone-hard cash.

(Tori) So you're talking like benefactors?

-Yes, absolutely.

-Were there key individuals -in the records that you know?

-Yeah, so we know that the Dutton family, they were a local family, lived in the village of Dutton.

They were able to afford their own private chapel, which is the northeast chapel.

(atmospheric music) (Tori) So who do you think this man was?

(Lynn) I think due to the fact that, as you quite rightly say, he's in such an important part of the priory, he would've been a person of very distinct note to the canons here.

And there's a possibility, archaeologically, that there's a link between our individual here and the Dutton family.

♪ (Tori) This is where our man was buried in the nave of the church, although "church" does not do justice to the kind of imposing building that Norton Priory was.

It would've really stood out in the landscape.

But now, our man wasn't a member of religious order, though.

(Tori) No, no, he wasn't, he was probably a layperson.

Lynn mentioned a family called Dutton who were the major benefactors to the priory.

They even paid to have their own private chapel built here in the northeast, and you can see a number of their graves in that chapel.

(Helen) But he wasn't buried in this particular chapel.

(Tori) No, no, he wasn't.

This chapel was built after he died, and in that earlier period, someone important, like a member of the Dutton family, would have been buried in prime spots within the church, and there's nowhere more important than the nave.

(somber music) Could this man, in fact, be a member of the Dutton family?

To investigate the link further, Raksha has come to Norton Priory Museum to meet historian Andrew Abram.

♪ (Raksha) This is the original part of the priory, isn't it?

(Andrew) Yes, it is, it's called the screen passage.

And anybody coming, particularly anyone of a decent status, would come through the door and sit here on these benches almost like a waiting room.

It's those people that I'm particularly interested in, the people with the high status.

I mean, I'm really interested in the Dutton family.

-Who are they?

-They're quite important people here in North Cheshire in the medieval period.

They can trace their history back to a man called Odard, who was one of six knights in the court on the retinue of the Constable of Chester.

Where did they come in the pecking order then?

(Andrew) Well, they're knights.

The constables and the earls are members of the nobility, which is the next group down from the king.

But the next group down from them are the knightly class, so that's where the Duttons sit.

So they're pretty prominent, and they're quite rich, so what's their connection with this priory?

(Andrew) The Duttons themselves are benefactors.

They give something, land, money, to the canons so that the canons will pray for their souls.

But there are other benefits as well, so that might include being buried at the priory, which means that benefactors then is physically, literally next to that community, not just at the time of burial, but until the day of judgment, forever.

(Raksha) I'm really interested in a man that was buried in the nave, and that seems like quite a prominent place for somebody to be buried.

Do you think that he was a Dutton?

Yes, I think there's very good evidence that he is a Dutton.

(soft music) The east end of the church is considered only for the religious community, and the nave is meant for the laity.

From his burial, from his physical remains, and particularly his grave cover, or grave slab, we certainly know that he's a member of the knightly class.

His grave slab would have cost a huge amount of money.

It's all hand-done by a mason with a floriated cross, as it's called, in the center, and space for two coats of arms, which denotes a member of the knightly class like the Dutton family.

What I wanted to show you particularly is this representation of the Dutton coat of arms.

It's in four quarters on the shield.

This is a reproduction of three life-size depictions of knights that would've been located in the northeast chapel, which has been called the Dutton Chapel.

(Raksha) So, can we narrow down the person that's buried in the nave?

Have you got a contender?

(Andrew) I think Geoffrey Dutton is a very good contender.

He fits the bill on a broad range of things, really.

He's a knight, we know from documents that he's an active knight in the Earl of Chester's military retinue from around 1210 to 1220.

He is born around 1190, and he dies, perhaps, in his mid-50s.

Well, actually, that fits our evidence that we currently have.

So the radiocarbon dates fit him into that time period, and also, the osteoarchaeologists think that he dies at about 50 to 60 years old.

All those strands of information, they all seem to tie in quite neatly together.

It's all so compelling!

I really want it to be him.

(mellow music) (Helen) This is so exciting.

The fact that we have a possible name -is just amazing.

-Yeah, yeah, and we can't be 100% sure, but all the evidence points towards Geoffrey Dutton.

And having that name, having this understanding of who this person was changes everything, because suddenly you've got the context of his life.

And building this picture of how he lived, his family, this Dutton dynasty, and how important they actually were -in Cheshire at the time.

-Yeah, wealthy, powerful, deeply connected to the priory, I mean, religion and power were so tightly intertwined at that time.

And we know Geoffrey Dutton was a knight.

Yeah, and he was an active knight at that.

Maybe that's it!

If he's an active knight, could he have been killed in battle?

Our knight in the nave met a violent and bloody end.

Could he have been killed in battle?

Raksha has come to the Royal Armories in Leeds to meet Andy Deane, who might be able to shed some light on the blow that killed him.

♪ (Raksha) Andy, I want to learn more about knights, 'cause it turns out our man in the nave was a knight, and I also think he might've been killed in battle, so I want to know what he was wearing, what kit he had, what he was up to.

(Andy) Right, well, dying in battle is certainly a possibility for a knight.

Standard kit would've been a garment similar to this, so thickly padded and woven together, lots of layers of linen, and then probably the most famous material of all, chain mail or mail.

So with the padding, that stops the sort of concussive blow, and then with this, this will stop the slashing, cutting attack.

So together, they make a wonderful protection.

-Can I feel how heavy it is?

-Yeah, yeah!

So, here you go, that's a little mail-- (Raksha) Oh!

(Andy) It's really unfair of me to do that!

Because actually, obviously, you wouldn't be carrying it in your hands, it would be all over the body, so the weight's neatly distributed, and it makes it easy.

The other thing is, the person who's wearing this in battle has been wearing it since he was 11 or 12, or aware that he's going to, so this is second nature and a second skin.

(Raksha) Right, well, I wanna know... (Andy) Mm-hmm?

(Raksha) ...how our man got this massive wound on his back.

(Andy) One of the things I can say straight away is he wasn't wearing armor.

It's as simple as that, because an axe or any other weapon, this would dissipate the energy of that weapon.

(Raksha) So what weapon would have made such a sharp blow like that?

(Andy) I think it was the sword.

I think it's not only the sword, he wasn't wearing armor, and he wasn't prepared to be attacked.

I don't think he even heard the chap, because it's such a strange wound!

If he was walking down a path and someone rode past him, it's still gonna come at sort of a strange angle, and it's absolutely parallel.

So I don't think he was at the same height, one, so he needs to be lower than the person with the sword.

(Raksha) Do you think he was kneeling down?

(Andy) That would make sense.

(Raksha) Well, I want to recreate this, 'cause I want to understand the mindset of the assailant.

You're far more pious than I am, and I'm the man with the sword, so you're gonna have to do the kneeling.

So if you're thinking about other things and rectifying all the wrong things you've done in life, perfect.

So basically, the cut would land here.

Now, for the cut to land there, it means that I would probably have to have bent my leg, which to have bent my leg, I would've had to have come with a great deal of force and velocity.

So I suspect it would be a horrible, lonely death, and if he was a pious man praying, I think he would have changed what he was praying for, and it would've been his last prayer.

(soft music) ♪ (Tori) From what Andy Deane said to Raksha, there is no way our man could have been killed in battle!

(Helen) Well, no, because if he was in battle, then he would've been wearing armor, and there's no way that weapon could've penetrated that armor.

So where does that leave us?

What happened to our man Geoffrey?

He was a rich man.

Is it a case of robbery, of standard assault?

(Helen) Well, I think we really need to get back to looking at the bones to figure that out, and I think we need to think more about this wound to the back of the body.

(Ellie) I think I might have something that might shed a bit of light onto that.

So, if you have a look at his skull along here-- (Helen) That looks much, much thicker than I've seen in normal skulls before.

It's got a strange fluffy appearance.

(Tori) Yeah, he's got something wrong with him, hasn't he?

That's definitely some kind of pathology.

So he had a disease called Paget's disease of the bone.

With Paget's disease, the bone is sort of growing too fast, so you have this rapid bone growth that happens, which causes really thick bones, and it would've been quite painful as well.

What effect would this thickening of the skull -had on him?

-It potentially would have been pressing down on nerves in his skull, which could've caused things like vertigo.

Could it have affected his hearing?

(Ellie) I think it would be safe to say that it could've definitely had an effect on his hearing.

-Ah-ha!

-Is this our moment?

Is this our caught unawares because he couldn't hear the person approaching?

The fact that he had this disease may have made him vulnerable to attack!

(Helen) What about how he would have lived the rest of his life?

So I'm seeing this bone pattern in other areas as well.

-Is this the same disease?

-Yes, so he's got it in his femur, as you can see, like you said, there.

He's also got it in his scapula, so in his shoulder blades.

So the bone that's regrown really fast, -it's not smooth.

-You see his thigh bones, his shoulders and his skull.

Would that have affected him?

Would it have hurt?

(Ellie) Definitely it would, he's got it everywhere.

He's got it on his spine, he's got it in his long bones, he's got it in his pelvis, and he's got it in his skull.

(Tori) In some ways, hearing this makes me more interested now in his life than actually in his death.

I mean, his death is one thing, maybe we'll never know who killed him or why he was killed, but in front of me here, I have a person who was a knight, and yet we see his skeleton, evidence of a very debilitating disease.

He must've been living with this disease for many, many years.

How do you reconcile that with the lifestyle of a knight?

How did a man like this live with a disease like Paget's?

(mellow music) Raksha has come to the home of former nurse Linda Fenlon, who has been living with Paget's disease for more than 20 years.

♪ (knocking) (Raksha) Linda, you were diagnosed with Paget's disease.

When did you think, "Something isn't quite right here.

I need to go and see a doctor"?

(Linda) When the pain got so bad, I had to go to my GP, who sent me for an X-ray.

And that's how it was discovered, she would have never, ever thought about me at 44 having Paget's.

(Raksha) And what does it feel like to actually have Paget's disease?

Pain.

Pain in my hip, pain in my back.

It's not an ache like arthritis can be.

I just felt like my hip was on fire.

But when I had a bone scan, that discovered I had Paget's in my skull, and I'm deaf in my left ear because of the Paget's.

It's in my spine, the middle of my spine, and then the base of my spine, in two vertebrae there, and then in the head and neck of my femur.

(Raksha) So what happens if you don't actually get the medicine that you need for Paget's disease?

You would either break a bone because your bones-- the bone becomes either thinner in parts or thicker in parts, so you've got this very uneven, unbalanced bone that would break easily.

It's easy to break a hip, it's easy to break a bone in your back.

And have you ever seen people that have not been treated by any medicine?

(Linda) Yes, one of the people that I've met through the Paget's Association had a very deformed arm, you know, kind of bent like this.

He was elderly and probably had developed it before there was any treatment.

So you feel like, sort of, you've got a bit of a connection -with Geoffrey Dutton.

-Very, very, the poor man.

Knowing what the pain of Paget's is like before it was treated, the pain must've just been-- I don't know how he did it.

I don't know how he put one foot in front of the other, because it's just such a painful disease.

(soft music) ♪ (Tori) Linda talks about experiencing burning pain.

If you put that into the context of Geoffrey, he's showing signs of Paget's over 75% of the surface of his skeleton.

-Yeah.

-And that's not including the fact that it's also deep, deep within his bones.

What would his life have been like?

(Helen) And we can't forget either that Linda will be medicated for her condition to manage that pain.

That medication just would not have been available to Geoffrey 900 years ago.

(Tori) No.

(Helen) Ellie, do we have any more examples of Paget's disease -at the Norton Priory?

-Yes, we do.

This is a man who had Paget's disease.

He died aged 45 to 50, and the time period that he died was the late 1300s.

(Tori) So that's, what, 150 years after our man in the nave, after Geoffrey died.

Yes, but unlike Geoffrey, this man was buried in the chancel.

(Tori) To get buried there, you had to be part of holy orders, right?

You weren't gonna be a layperson like Geoffrey was.

(Helen) So this man wasn't a member of the Dutton family then.

Well, he potentially is a Dutton still.

We've looked at records, and there was a William Dutton who was a canon in the 1300s, so fits the same time period.

(Helen) How has Paget's disease affected this man?

(Ellie) Similar to Geoffrey, he's got Paget's disease of the bone on 75% of his skeleton, and in particular, I'm gonna draw your attention to this pelvis, here's some Paget's, but on the other side, we also have this very interesting tumor.

(Helen) Is that cancer?

Could that have killed him?

(Ellie) Yeah, so the Paget's disease itself wouldn't kill him.

However, there is the potential that the cancer or the tumor did kill him.

(Helen) But this is still unusual, right?

Two sets of remains, both with Paget's disease in one location.

That's a pattern, right?

(Ellie) Finding two cases of Paget's disease in an archaeological sample wouldn't be that unusual.

It's usually found in sort of 1% to 2%.

However, at Norton Priory, we found up to 20% of the skeletons have Paget's disease of the bone.

(Helen) That is extraordinary, 20%.

(Tori) That does feel like a pattern.

One or two maybe not, but when you've got 20% of the skeletons that you've looked at, just the ones that you've looked at, there's something going on at Norton Priory.

Why do so many people who are buried there have Paget's disease of the bone?

(calm music) Four years ago, scientists at Nottingham University studying modern-day Paget's disease were called in to examine the Norton Priory skeletons.

♪ (man) The Paget's disease at Norton Priory is very unusual.

We were absolutely astounded about the differences that we saw.

-Such as?

-The prevalence of Paget's disease or of ancient Paget's at Norton is really high.

Maybe 20% of the adult collection seem to be affected with Paget's-like changes, and that's much greater than you see in contemporary forms, perhaps 1% of the over-55s today.

And also much greater than you see in comparable excavations from the same period.

And what's more, some of the skeletons, maybe 75% of the bones are affected.

Today, it's typical to see one or just a few bones affected.

♪ Another thing we noted was that the complications that we see today with Paget's disease seem to be missing from the Norton Priory collection.

So things like deformities, fractures, pseudofractures in the bones almost completely absent here at Norton Priory.

(Tori) How can you be sure that you are dealing with Paget's?

Was that what you were trying to establish?

We wanted to know, is this Paget's?

And really, we wanted to know, can we apply modern methods to try and diagnose what the disease was?

What we did was we extracted ancient proteins and we sequenced, we catalogued those proteins.

This is one of the first examples of analyzing ancient proteins to try and understand and try and diagnose an ancient human disorder.

(Tori) It's cutting-edge science to tackle actually quite a tricky question, because you're trying to look for evidence of disease in somebody who's been dead for several hundred years.

I mean, how do you go about doing that?

So what we look for are characteristic protein changes that we know represent the disease today, and in this case, what we detected was this sequestosome protein that's diagnostic of Paget's disease, and based on that identification, we really think this is an ancient albeit highly unusual form of Paget's disease.

(Tori) That's so fascinating!

It must have so many implications for your work on modern-day Paget's as well.

Yeah, we're really trying to learn from Norton Priory, really trying to understand why it was so unusual.

It's a mysterious site here at Norton Priory, and really every experiment we do leads to a new set of questions that leave us scratching our heads about the history of disease and the history of Paget's.

(piano music) (Tori) Why Norton Priory has so many cases of Paget's and why the ancient strain is so different to Paget's today is still a mystery.

How badly affected by Paget's was the knight in the nave, the man we think is Geoffrey Dutton?

Did it play a part in how he met his death?

♪ Rob's research really puts the Norton Priory on the map.

This is a site of international scientific significance.

(Helen) But what about the difference between the forms of Paget's disease, this ancient strain and the modern strain?

(Tori) That was a bit of a eureka moment for me, because I had this niggling worry that how could this man be a knight if he was suffering from a very severe form of Paget's disease?

(Helen) Well, our men, they're not weak, they're not fragile, they're really robust.

They lived long and healthy lives, so there is that difference with the ancient strain, but there's also similarities.

Linda describes that hearing loss, and we think that Geoffrey had that same symptom, and that's what's made him vulnerable to this attack.

(Tori) Thinking about that attack, we are actually no closer, really, to finding out why he died.

Ellie, is there anything else about Geoffrey's skeleton that can tell us something about his life?

(Ellie) Well, yes, actually.

Have a look at this groove here on the mandible.

(Helen) From a forensic point of view, that groove would be consistent with sharp force trauma, so he's been struck with force with something really sharp.

(Tori) Is that part of the same attack that killed him?

(Ellie) Actually, we think that this groove here was prior, quite considerably in terms of time because of the amount of healing.

So can you see this lipping going along the line here?

Now, this lipping is evidence of new bone growth, and it goes all the way across.

(Tori) Okay, that's interesting, but it's nothing to do with how he died.

Broken jaw, fractures, they're common today, and they were common in the medieval period.

What's so special about that?

Why note it?

Well, that's what's really interesting about Norton Priory is we don't actually have the levels of fractures that you would expect to see in other medieval cemeteries.

We actually only have 10 cases of fractures.

-Out of 130 skeletons, just 10?

-Out of 130.

One of the reasons we think that we don't have many fractures is because these are canons, these are high-status people.

They're not working with livestock and they're not necessarily working the land, so you don't have that opportunity for fractures.

(Tori) We can only speculate about how this man had his jaw broken, but Ellie has noticed a pattern in the fractured bones of others buried at Norton Priory that may tell us more about the life of a medieval knight.

(Helen) And just looking over the remains, Ellie, we have another adult male?

(Ellie) Yes, so he's in his 40s.

He was also buried around the 14th century.

Similar to Geoffrey, he was buried in the nave.

(Tori) Being buried in the nave means he's a layperson, not one of the canons.

-So possibly a knight.

-Potentially, yes.

-What's special about him?

-So I was talking about the fracture, so I'm gonna start at the top of the body and move down.

So looking at his clavicles, which are your collarbones, can you see the big difference between the two sides?

-Whoa.

-One's shorter.

(Ellie) His right-hand clavicle is dramatically shorter, and the reason for this is a fracture.

So he's got a fracture here, and you can almost see the lump where the two sides have fused together.

We see this type of injury in younger individuals engaging in sports, for example.

Could this have a functional relationship to anything else that's going on in that right arm?

(Ellie) So, yes, also his humerus, if you look here, he's got an avulsion fracture, so part of the ligament through repetitive use has actually pulled part of the bone away and fractured it.

And so you have this fracture here, which is almost like an ongoing fracture.

And to sort of further the right-hand side story, we also have all this additional boney change in here.

-Yeah.

-On his ulna, he's using this so much, and the ligaments are pulling.

He's got all this boney overgrowth and extra bone here.

(Tori) It's all about repetitive and heavy use.

(Ellie) It does sort of indicate an injury that's happened in use.

So he can't be the only one that you're interested in.

No, he's not, we also found a male in the northeast chapel.

-So that's the Dutton Cemetery.

-Yes.

(Tori) So we've got a Dutton there for sure, and therefore probably a knight.

(Ellie) And he has a rotator cuff injury.

So anatomically, that's a destabilization of the shoulder joint.

(Ellie) And again, we're also seeing repetitive use, so he has very similar ligament changes to the bones that we're seeing on this skeleton.

So we've got young males who've got very similar patterns of use and patterns of trauma happening.

(Tori) So we've got two probable knights both showing these injuries that are the result of repeated, repeated use of their arms from a young age.

(Helen) And we know it's not manual labor because of the lives of these men.

(Tori) So what were they doing?

What were these men doing from childhood that could've caused these injuries?

Twenty miles from Norton Priory is Beeston Castle.

It was built by the Earl of Chester in the 1220s, and would've been well-known to the knights of Norton Priory.

(intense music) Raksha has come here to meet historical combat specialists Mike Broadley and Richard Serwall.

♪ (Raksha) Hello there, Mike!

You're looking like a trussed up chicken here.

(Mike) Yeah, I'm nice and protected.

(Raksha) I'm kind of quite interested in what were young boys doing training to get to become a knight like this.

(Mike) From what we can gather, is that from quite a young age, so maybe 10 or 12 years old, being a page.

When you hit about 12 years old, on average, you might become a squire, and that's when you start learning more of the martial side of it.

So sword fighting, if you like, and using the lance or the spear on horseback as well.

It's quite hard to replicate it these days, of course, because not many 12-year-olds jump on horseback and hit each other with swords.

(Raksha) All this stuff, putting it on, it seems really difficult, tying you into everything.

It takes a bit of getting used to, both wearing it and putting other people into it, and this is part of your training as a squire.

To understand how to wear armor, you have to understand how to put people in it.

(Raksha) Nice little cap going on now.

(Mike) The least glamorous part of the piece of armor, unfortunately.

The arming cap, it basically just adds that little bit of padding to the inside of the helm.

And the last bit to go on, actually, after all of this, is the helm.

In fact, if you want to have a hold... -I do, I do!

-...you can feel the weight.

(Raksha) Oh, what?

You're gonna put that on your head?

I actually can't believe that you put that on your head, -it's so heavy.

-Yeah, it's harder when you're holding it, but once you have it on, it's not so bad.

And that's true for the whole armor, actually.

(Raksha) That makes me think about all the wear and tear on the muscles.

Do you feel that as a reenactor?

(Mike) I do, yeah, actually.

I've got strains on my wrist and my left elbow, my knees as well.

It's all part of putting that extra stress on your joints when you're wearing all of this weight.

I mean, the human body isn't designed to wear this weight.

(Raksha) I'm desperate, I want to hold that sword in my hand.

(Mike) Of course, you can.

One thing you might find surprising is the weight of it.

It's incredibly light.

(Raksha) Wow.

(Mike) Is it lighter than you thought it would be?

(Raksha) Yeah, really light, actually!

(Mike) When it comes to training, however, you might choose something a little heavier, so when you get a hold of the real thing, it's not so bad.

You can swing it around for days on end without any issue.

But of course, that is also going to increase the pressure on your joints, on your muscles, and is possibly going to make injuries more and more likely.

(Raksha) It all sounds very romantic, but I think the reality is far more brutal.

If you're training all the time, if you're always fighting, be it in a real battle or in a tournament, you're going to expect to see broken bones and tendon injuries and just that repetitive strain injuries that you've already seen.

(soft music) (Tori) The bones of the Norton Priory knights reveal lives dedicated to training for military service.

♪ Is the same true of the knight buried in the nave, or is there something more to his life story we've still to uncover?

♪ (Helen) So these injuries that we're seeing in our third skeleton and also that we saw in the Dutton knight that you mentioned, Ellie, these are consistent with young men being trained from a very early age -to go into combat.

-Yeah, and it's leaving them strong, it's leaving them battle ready, and they're doing it all with this ancient form of Paget's.

So I think Rob's hunch is right, this Paget's is manifesting differently -on their bodies.

-It does seem that way.

We're seeing male skeletons with Paget's disease who also have really strong bones.

They've got things like strong muscle attachments, they've got osteoarthritis.

They're still using the joint long after they've got Paget's disease.

And none of these men died from Paget's, and the man in the nave didn't die from natural causes.

(Tori) Not at all, someone killed him.

Someone killed him, and actually, I've got some unfinished business with our man in the nave, who we've been calling Geoffrey, because all the evidence seems to be consistent with the idea he's Geoffrey Dutton, but "consistent" is the key word, right?

He's the right age, he died at the right time, he's buried in this prominent, powerful position, but we can't prove it beyond reasonable doubts.

(Helen) We are really close to making this link.

(Tori) We just need to find out some more information.

The Duttons are such an important family in Cheshire in this period.

There must be records pertaining to them that could tell us more about Geoffrey.

(piano music) ♪ If we can confirm that the knight in the nave really is Geoffrey Dutton, perhaps we'll be closer to understanding why he was murdered.

Raksha has come to the John Rylands Library in Manchester, which has an extensive archive relating to the Dutton family.

♪ (Raksha) Andrew, what are the documents that we have here?

(Andrew) Well, these are from a collection known as the Arley Charters, the family papers of the Dutton family of Cheshire dating from the late 12th to the 17th century.

(Raksha) Well, I'm actually interested in a particular Dutton, Geoffrey Dutton.

Do we have our man in these documents?

(Andrew) We do, in two of these three.

So this is the earliest charter that he himself drew up with a neighboring Cheshire knight, and what Geoffrey is doing is making over part of his property in return for a cash advance, because he's about to go on crusade.

(Raksha) I'm completely hooked, tell me more.

Well, we know that this relates to the Crusade, because he says that he's going to Jerusalem.

The Crusades started in 1095 when Pope Urban II tries to encourage the knighthood of Western Europe to win back Jerusalem from the infidel.

We know that Geoffrey goes with John de Lacy, his brother-in-law, who's Constable of Chester, and probably a large group of Cheshire knights ultimately led by the Earl of Chester, Ranulf, who is one of the most important nobles in England at the time.

(Raksha) So there seems to be some kind of pecking order where they are under a nobleman going off to Jerusalem.

(Andrew) Well, this is the Fifth Crusade, which is rather different from previous crusades in that it doesn't directly try to win back the City of Jerusalem.

It's actually launched against Egypt.

Geoffrey seems to have taken part in this.

We don't know whether he's then part of the disastrous march down the Nile delta towards Cairo, which meets its final defeat in the summer of 1221.

(Raksha) Does he actually make it home?

(Geoffrey) He does make it home, and we know that he makes it home because of this document from about 1227.

The document doesn't tell us very much about him, but the seal does, and the seal shows an arm holding a palm branch.

And that's the standard representation of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

So we think that he probably went from Egypt to the Holy Land to complete his pilgrimage vow afterwards before coming back to England.

(Raksha) Does he just sit on his laurels and have a normal life in England?

(Andrew) Well, he lives the life of a quiet Cheshire country gentleman, in a way.

But we know that the crusade has affected him in various ways, so there is a charter, which sadly doesn't survive in the original, but we have this copy, which is a document where he's giving over one-third of his estate in the village of Great Budworth to Norton Priory, to the monks of Norton Priory.

(Raksha) So he does that in order to show that he's pious?

(Andrew) It's partly to show that he's pious, but he's also doing it as a transaction in return for spiritual benefits in the form of perpetual prayers and masses for his soul, the souls of his ancestors, and his descendants.

(soft music) How amazing, our man Geoffrey was a crusader.

Yeah, he went on crusade with the Earl of Chester, who built Beeston Castle where Raksha met those reenactors.

And Geoffrey Dutton probably visited that castle as well.

(Tori) I'm sure he did, I'm sure he did!

The thing is, though, he wasn't just a crusader, he was also a pilgrim.

The seal that he designed for himself when he came back from the Crusades is testament to that.

He left a warrior, but he returned to England a much more spiritual man.

And when he did return, he donated a large amount of his land to the priory, and this wasn't just a financial transaction, this was really cementing this relationship with the Norton Priory even in his death.

For me, now, his death is even more poignant.

I mean, this aging crusader didn't die a warrior's death defending himself.

Instead, he was struck down kneeling like a religious man bent in prayer.

(somber music) There's one more intriguing piece of evidence to connect Geoffrey Dutton with the man given a prominent burial in the nave at Norton Priory.

To find out what it is, Raksha has come to Stonyhurst College in Lancashire.

(Raksha) So Kathryn, why are we in Stonyhurst?

(Kathryn) I wanted to show you this.

♪ (Raksha) So we're looking at this silver cross.

-Why is that so significant?

-Because in the middle is a piece of wood reputed to be a relic of the True Cross on which Christ was crucified.

(Raksha) But is it really a part of the True Cross?

(Kathryn) Well, we don't definitely know, but the important thing is people believe that it was.

Relics are very important as they were venerated by Catholics in the Middle Ages and afterwards, and it was believed that they brought people closer to God, because they were a way to connect to holy people and holy events through objects people venerated.

(Raksha) So where did this one come from?

(Kathryn) This particular piece of the True Cross came from the Holy Land to Wales, and now it's in the keeping of Stonyhurst College, because Stonyhurst cares for lots of relics and important objects that came from Catholic churches after the Reformation.

(Raksha) Why is this relevant to Norton Priory?

(Kathryn) Well, Norton also had a piece of the True Cross, and if I show you this document, this is a document which copies a chronicle written in the Middle Ages, and it recounts two miracles that take place at Norton, one restoring sight to a blind person and another restoring their speech, and this happens in about 1287.

So the relic is given to the priory, and it is obviously venerated by pilgrims who come seeking cures.

(Raksha) So how did Norton Priory acquire a piece of the cross?

Pieces of the True Cross were brought back from the Holy Land quite often by crusaders.

There's a large influx of relics from the East that come back during the 12th and 13th centuries.

It's referred to as a supernatural bounty that they would bring back objects, whether they were pieces of the True Cross or other relics, from the Byzantine Empire or the Holy Land and gift them to religious institutions that they were close to at home.

(Raksha) So, Geoffrey Dutton went on a crusade.

Is there any chance that he actually brought back that piece of the True Cross then?

(Kathryn) Well, we know that he went to Egypt, and it's possible that he acquired it there or that he afterwards went on to Jerusalem and came back with a relic as a souvenir of his visit.

(Raksha) So the piece of the True Cross that's found in Norton Priory, is it placed in a particular place?

I think it would've been built into a rood screen, which was a screen built across the middle of the chapel that divides the nave where people can come in if they are invited, and the part that's used purely by the canons.

(Raksha) That's pretty incredible, because the man that we think is Geoffrey Dutton -is buried in the nave.

-Absolutely!

If he brought this relic back and he was obviously very interested in showing that he'd been on crusade and it was very important to him, when it came to the day of judgment and he rose up, he would have risen up facing this relic of the True Cross, and that would've been very spiritually important to him.

(soft music) (Tori) We may not have solved the mystery surrounding Geoffrey Dutton's murder.

His bones, the archaeological, and historical evidence can't tell us who killed him or why.

But they have revealed so much about his life.

♪ (Helen) Well, Tori, we might not have all of the evidence that I typically see in a forensic investigation, we don't have our crime scene, but I really do think our man in the nave has some valuable information to offer us, even in the absence of something like DNA evidence.

I still think we can say that this man is Geoffrey Dutton.

(Tori) Yeah, well, Kathryn certainly thinks so.

For her, the clincher is his position in the nave.

If he brought back a piece of the Holy Cross, that's the kind of relic that secures you such a prominent burial spot in the priory.

He was a pilgrim, he was part of the Crusades.

It makes it all the more difficult to understand how he died, it just seems so tragic!

What we are looking at is death as a window to how he lived his life.

(Tori) Yeah, Geoffrey's life, but actually all of these men's lives, these medieval knights, these crusaders, these priors, they're all united in a story of male power.

And they're also united by Paget's as well, so Rob's research is really breaking new ground, because he's discovered this ancient strain -of the disease.

-And it could be revolutionary.

I don't think Geoffrey would ever have chosen to die in the way that he did, but I bet he would've gone to his grave confident that he had lived a life of service, service to his king, service to his God, but he would never have predicted that 900 years later, he would still be providing a service, but this time, it's 21st century science.

(solemn music) ♪