THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 19, 1995 TAG: 9511150066
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K2 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: OBSCURE TOUR
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 43 lines
IN THE SOOTHING shade of the Bruton Parish churchyard stand monuments to Williamsburg's 18th century all-stars, their triumphs enumerated on long-worn marble.
Somewhere beneath them may lie the wisdom of the ages.
So claims a spirited cadre of New Agers, who believe that buried beside the church's former parishioners is a cubic brick vault stuffed with treasures.
It was put there, they say, by Sir Francis Bacon, a 17th century English philosopher, politician and scientist whose ideas were so far ahead of his time that he hid them in the New World, hoping they'd be discovered when mankind was savvy enough to appreciate them.
Legend has it that among the swag are original manuscripts of plays attributed to William Shakespeare and proof that Bacon and friends actually wrote them, along with the first version of the King James Bible, Queen Elizabeth I's missing crown jewels, and drafts of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution penned a century before they surfaced among the founding fathers.
All this came to light in 1938, when a California mystic divined directions to the vault by rearranging letters on Bruton's headstones.
Evidence, though, has been elusive. A 1938 dig uncovered the foundation of the original Bruton church, but no vault. Several illegal shovelings produced only holes. And an archaeological exploration, aimed at stopping the illegal digging, came up empty in 1992. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
FILE
Bruton Parish churchyard in Williamsburg harbors a treasure, some
New Agers say: Shakespeare plays, the first version of the King
James Bible, the crown jewels of Elizabeth I, and more.
by CNB