One of the most marvellous and scarce of these Romances, and one, the principal passages of which were frequently wrought into Tapestry, was the “Roman du Saint Greal,” which is founded upon an incident, to say the least very peculiar, but which was perhaps once considered true as Holy Writ. St. Joseph of Arimathœa, a very important personage in many romances, having obtained the hanap, or cup from which our Saviour administered the wine to his disciples, caught in the same cup the blood which flowed from his wounds when on the Cross. After he had first achieved various adventures, and undergone an imprisonment of forty-two years, St. Joseph arrives in England with the sacred cup, by means of which numerous miracles are performed; he prepares the Round Table, and Arthur and his Knights all go in quest of the hanap, which by some, to us unaccountable, circumstance, had fallen into the hands of a sinner. All make the most solemn vow to devote their lives to its recovery; and this they must indeed have done, and not short lives either, if all recorded of them be true. None, however, but two, ever see the sacred symbol; though oftentimes a soft ray of light would stream across the lonesome wild, or the dark pathless forest, or unearthly strains would float on the air, or odours as of Paradise would entrance the senses, while the wandering and woeworn knight would feel all fatigue, all sense of personal inconvenience, of pain, of sickness, or of sorrow, vanish on the instant; and then would he renew his vows, and betake himself to prayer; for though all unworthy to see the Holy Grayle, he would feel that it had been borne on viewless pinions through the air for his individual consolation and hope. And Syr Galahad and Syr Perceval, the two chaste and favoured knights who, “after the dedely flesshe had beheld the spiritual things,” the holy St. Grael—never returned to converse with the world. The first departed to God, and “flights of angels sang him to his rest;” the other took religious clothing and retired to a hermitage, where, after living “a full holy life for a yere and two moneths, he passed out of this world.”
But wide as is the range of the Romances of the “Round Table,” they form but a portion of those which solaced our ancestors. Charlemagne and his Paladins were, so to speak, the solar system round which another circle revolved; Alexander furnished the radiating star for another, derived chiefly perhaps from the East, where numbers of fictitious tales were prevalent about him; and many Romances were likewise woven around the mangled remains of classic heroes.
“The mightiest chiefs of British song
Scorn’d not such legends to prolong;
They gleam through Spenser’s elfic dream,
And mix in Milton’s heavenly theme;
And Dryden in immortal strain,
Had raised the ‘Table Round’ again.”
The Stories of the Tapestry in the Royal Palaces of Henry VIII. are preserved in the British Museum.[94]
These are some of them re-copied from Warton:—
In the tapestry of the Tower of London, the original and most ancient seat of our monarchs, there are recited, Godfrey of Bulloign; the Three Kings of Cologne; the Emperor Constantine; St. George; King of Erkenwald; the History of Hercules; Fame and Honour; the Triumph of Divinity; Esther and Ahasueras; Jupiter and Juno; St. George; the Eight Kings; the Ten Kings of France; the Birth of our Lord; Duke Joshua; the Riche History of King David; the Seven Deadly Sins; the Riche History of the Passion; the Stem of Jesse; Our Lady and Son; King Solomon; the Woman of Canony; Meleager; and the Dance of Maccabee.
At Durham Place were the Citie of Ladies (a French allegorical Romance); the Tapestrie of Thebes and of Troy; the City of Peace; the Prodigal Son; Esther, and other pieces of Scripture.
At Windsor Castle the Siege of Jerusalem; Ahasueras; Charlemagne; the Siege of Troy; and Hawking and Hunting.
At Nottingham Castle, Amys and Amelion.
At Woodstock Manor, the tapestrie of Charlemagne.