The cross of lead with the inscription, as it was found and taken off the stone, was kept in the Treasury, or Revester, of Glastonbury Church till the suppression thereof in the reign of Henry VIII.
The bones of King Arthur and Queen Guinivere his wife were translated into the great church, and “there in a faire Tombe of Marble his body was laid, and his Queen’s at his feete, which noble monument among the fatall overthrowes of infinite more were altogether raced” [razed].[80]
I scarcely know anything more pathetic than the old chronicler’s account of that tress of golden hair, the sole remains of the beauty that had captivated the heart of the great king and made his noblest knight to fall, and then the seeing it at a touch fall into dust. She who had mourned her sin at Amesbury, at last, by the loving hands of those who had witnessed her penitence, was borne to rest beside her rightful lord; and the golden tresses which, when she had last seen him in life, swept the dust at his feet, now, after more than six hundred years had passed away, faded into dust again when they had fulfilled their mission of testifying to the main facts of the Legend of Arthur.
Nearly a hundred years again had passed, when in the year 1276 King Edward I. and his Queen Eleanor kept the Festival of Easter at Glastonbury. It was during the abbacy of John of Taunton, a great benefactor to the Church in buildings, books for the library, and vestments, that this visit took place. So great were the privileges of this place that even the king himself was laid under some restraint while abiding in it. His deputy high marshal was not allowed to exercise his office; the king’s judges were held to have no authority; and even a man who had incurred the penalty of læsa majestas was not allowed to be punished. The mausoleum of black marble was opened for their inspection; the king’s bones were seen of gigantic proportion, the thigh bone the width of three fingers longer than that of the tallest monk present. The tomb was ordered to be placed in front of the high altar; the skulls of the king and queen to remain outside for the adoration of the people.
Leland, who saw the tomb, says: “At the head of Arthur’s tombe lay Henricus Abbas (Henry of Blois?)[81] and a crucifix; at the feet lay a figure of Arthur; a cross on the tomb, and two lions at the head and two at the feet.”
And here the hero’s bones rested till the Tyrant King scattered all such precious relics to the winds. His body has not been allowed to rest in peace, but his “name liveth for evermore.” Nor is Arthur’s fame confined to England alone, for amongst the figures that keep watch and ward round Maximilian’s tomb at Innspruck is one of the patriot king, and an exquisite photograph of him in armour, as he is there portrayed, faces the writer as this attempt to show the connection of Arthur’s most heroic deeds with her own native county is being penned.
It only remains to add that the authorities for the above remarks are, Gildas, Geoffry of Monmouth, William of Malmesbury, Giraldus Cambrensis, Mallory’s “King Arthur,” Leland, Drayton’s “Polyolbion,” Speed, and Camden, “The Greatest of the Plantagenets,” and “Our Ancient Monuments and the Land around Them,” by C. P. Haines-Jackson, and lastly oral legend.
The History of Gilds.
By Cornelius Walford, F.S.S., Barrister-at-Law.
PART IV.