Camden’s account of the discovery is in these words: “When Henry II, King of England, had learned from the songs of the British bards, that Arthur, the most noble hero of the Britons, whose courage had so often shattered the Saxons, was buried at Glessenbury between two pyramids, he order’d search to be made for the body; and they had scarce digg’d seven feet deep, but they light upon a cross’d stone (cippus) or a stone in the back part whereof was fastened a rude leaden cross, something broad. This being pulled out, appeared to have an inscription upon it, and under it, almost nine foot deep, deposited the bones of the famous Arthur. The letters have a sort of barbarous and Gothic appearance, and are a plain evidence of the barbarity of the age, which was involved in a fatal sort of mist, that no one was found to celebrate the name of King Arthur.” The most detailed account of all is given in Joseph Ritson’s scholarly work on King Arthur, and the famous antiquary’s outspoken comments on the records “and other legendary rhodomontades” of the monks of Glastonbury can be read with amusement as well as with profit. It is a sufficiently remarkable fact that none of the chroniclers agree in their details, and Matthew Paris distinctly declares that the letters inscribed upon the tomb could “in no wise be read on account of too much barbarism and deformity.” Antiquary Leland was sceptical as to the coffin, and William of Malmesbury (1143) said “The sepulchre of Arthur was never seen”; but, despite all contradictions and doubts, the discovery seems to have been generally accepted as genuine, while for many reasons it was gratifying to the people of that and subsequent ages. Caxton would have regarded it as “most execrable infidelity” to have had a doubt upon the subject. At Glastonbury we indubitably seem to get nearer the real Arthur than we are able to do in any of the other localities mentioned by Geoffrey and the later chroniclers. Whether he was the monarch described in the romances or a semi-barbarous chieftain leading the Britons to a final, though only temporary, victory against the Saxons, there remains the same likelihood of his connection with the first Abbey raised in the land.
On the authority of Gildas, we learn that when the Abbot brought about peace between Arthur and Melvas, both kings made oath never to violate the holy place, and both kings gave the Abbot much territory in token of their gratitude. If, however, it is hard to reconcile the death of King Arthur with Merlin’s prophecy, it is harder still to account for the discovery of his bones and his grave in face of the ancient triad which declared his grave to be unknown, and remembering which Tennyson related—
“His grave should be a mystery
From all men, like his birth;”
while the older poet tells how he “raygnes in faerie.” There was, however, a substantial reason for the finding of King Arthur’s tomb by Henry of Blois, for at that time the revenues brought by pilgrims to the shrine were not sufficient to provide funds for the building. The contest between Wells and Glastonbury had also begun, and the discovery of the bones of a saint was one of the surest methods of obtaining an advantage. According to Stow’s Chronicle, the body was found “not enclosed within a tomb of stone, but within a great tree made hollow like a trough, the which being digged upon and opened, therein were found the bones of Arthur, which were of a marvellous bigness.” This circumstantial evidence seems almost irresistible, and no doubt there was a conscientious belief in the discovery at the time it was reported to have been made. Stow has further details to give on the authority of Giraldus Cambriensis, “a learned man that then lived, who reporteth to have heard of the Abbot of Glastonbury that the shin-bone of Arthur being set up by the leg of a very tall man, came above his knee by three fingers. The skull of his head was of a wonderful bigness; in which head there appeared the points of ten wounds, or more, all which were grown in one seam, except only that whereof he died, which being greater than the other, appeared very plain.” Such, then, are the records of this wondrous discovery.
Modern Glastonbury has its museum in which may be seen some pottery from “King Arthur’s Palace at Wedmore,” and a thirteenth or fourteenth century representation on the side of a mirror case of Queen Guinevere deserting with Sir Lancelot, the only two relics, I believe, which in any way recall the connection of King Arthur with the place. There are evidences of the antiquity of the Abbey in abundance; though pilgrims’ staffs, leather bottles, palls, grace cups, roods, “counters” made by the monks to serve as coin, and even the reliquary containing a small piece of bone supposed to be of St. Paulinus, sent or left by St. Augustine himself for the purpose of establishing the modified form of the Benedictine rule, do not quite take us back to the sixth century. Though the actual date of King Arthur’s death is not known, and though his age is variously given from just over fifty to passing ninety, and though there is no consensus of opinion as to the length of his reign, we never hear of him at a later date than 604; and unfortunately all the Glastonbury relics take us back at most to the tenth century. Yet enthusiastic Drayton might well be carried away with the theme with which Glastonbury supplied him; and remembering the marvels of its past and the splendour of its aspect in his own day, he asked what place was comparable with the “three times famous isle?”
“To whom didst thou commit that monument to keep,
When not great Arthur’s tomb, nor holy Joseph’s grave
From sacrilege had power their holy bones to save?”