When, after he had established peace in all those lands, and returned into Britain, he instituted an honourable order of knighthood, called the Knights of the Round Table, the most antient order of knighthood in the world, chiefly to promote self-denial, and prevent differences amongst his nobility and gentry or soldiers, who had well deserved of him and his country, for their good services at home and abroad, that so no occasion of dispute might arise about precedence, in merit, antiquity, valour, wealth, honour, or nobility, amongst them, for that all the knights of this his order were alike equal in those respects in his esteem, and might sit down indifferently at the table, go in and out of the house or church, field, or market, before each other as they came without exception; being an allowed rule amongst them, that the highest seat at the court, senate, church, or table, did no more argue the worth, value, religion, valour, or prudent conduct of a man, than the precedence of a military officer did prove him more valiant than his soldiers. The place of meetings of those knights was at Winchester aforesaid, where they assembled yearly at Pentecost or Whitsuntide.
He gave the same religious Christian coat armour as was given by his father, which I have blazoned before; and in testimony of his thirteen victories over so many crowned heads, he bore also in a field Azure, thirteen imperial crowns Or, as Upton tells us.
Lastly, after this prince had thus vanquished his enemies abroad and at home, had restored the Christian Religion,
eclipsed by the Saxons, ordained this useful order of knighthood, and done all the good offices a just, pious, and religious king could do to his subjects, he was at last, as many others, ungratefully dealt with by his own people, who at the instigation of his discontented cousin Mordred on the Roman Pictish title, confederated with the Saxons as against a bastard, and rose a great army in Cornwall in opposition to his power; against whom King Arthur marched with his army, and gave them battle at a place near Camelford. Where, though he obtained the victory, and Mordred was slain, yet in that battle King Arthur received his mortal wounds, so that, soon after, in order to a cure, he retired to the vale of Avallan, id est, the apple valley, near Glastonbury, Somerset, where he lies buried.
King Arthur’s usual place of residence, where he kept his court (as Hennius the Briton tells us, who flourished anno Dom. 600), was at East or West Camellot, near Cadbury, in Wiltshire.
There was extant in the Welsh tongue in bard’s verses 1170, temp. Hen. II. a song which said that the body of King Arthur was buried at the Isle of Avallan, near Glastonbury, between two pyramids. Whereupon King Henry ordered search to be made after his corpse, as that most classical and authentic author Giraldus Cambrensis, who was an eye witness thereof saith, who relates, that after the pioneers had sunk about seven foot deep, they lighted upon a stone in form of a cross, to the back part thereof was fastened a rude leaden cross, something broad, with those letters inscribed: “Hic jacet sepultus inclitus Rex Arturius in Insula Avalonia.”
Two feet beneath this cross they then also found two coffins made of hollow oak, wherein were the bones and skeletons of King Arthur and of Genevour his wife, the hair of the said lady being then whole and of fresh colour, as Fabian saith, but as soon as touched it fell to powder. This history, for substance is gathered out of Galfridus and other chronologers, John Trevisa’s book of the Acts of
King Arthur, temp. Henry IV. John Lidgate, a monk of St. Edmondsbury, who wrote a tract of King Arthur’s Round Table, anno Dom. 1470, William Caxton, the author of that Chronicle called Fructus Temporum, who also wrote the history of King Arthur, 1484, Nicholas Upton, Canon of the Cathedral Church of Wells 1440, and others.
King Arthur’s three admirals at sea, as appears from the book of Thriades in British, were Gerint ab Erbyn, a nobleman of Cornwall, for then Cornwall and Devon were one county or province, slain at Lhongporth, now London, by the Saxons, anno Dom. 540; March ab Meircyon, and Gwenwynwyn ab Nau.
There is yet extant in the British tongue an elegy upon the death of this Gerint, which amongst others contains those words. Ray Rhytharmaur mab Erbin.