King Arthur

Arthur's Tomb.

At the beginning of the 13^th Century, Glastonbury was on of most important places in the Christian World, the Isle was of great ancient significance, and extremely wealthy. It was at this time the heart of Christian England. It must be remembered that he was a king of the British of the old Celtic race, which included the Bretons, the people of Britain, the Cornish, the Welsh. An early chronicle of the 12^th century recorded how a riot had broken out in Cornwall's Bodmin, when a passing French man made a sneering remark about King Arthur.

It was Geoffrey of Monmouth's book of 1136 ‘The Kings Of Britain, which brought King Arthur and Avalon to the fore, it was a huge success with The Ruling Classes, both in England and beyond. Most people believing the whole story, and tales, and it was by far the most popular part of the book,    and was copied, translated, retold over and over again by other writers, under ‘King Arthur the greatest king of them all, the scourge of the Saxons, it was much exaggerated with Arthur, superhumanly strong ruling over the whole world, miraculously assisted by the magician Merlin, and how he in 542 AD passed away and was buried along with Guinevere at the Abbey.

Although the ruling Normans might have loved the book, and the stories, the Celts were a defeated race, and with     believing Arthur's period would come again, further fuelled by a previous book in 1126 written by William of Malmesbury in which he wrote ‘The Grave of Arthur is nowhere seen, whereby men fable that he will come again.' There was a great fear of uprising of the Celtic peoples. It was decided by the Normans to dig up the bones of the primitive grave in the corner of the Abbey Graveyard, containing the bones of a man and a woman, and unearthed a lead cross from somewhere with the following inscription, 'HIC IACET SEPULTUS INCLITUS REX ARTORIUS IN INSULA AVALONIA'. ‘Here lies buried the famous King Arthur on the Isle of Avalon' This was held by many as a fake, and what we would call a bit of Government ‘Spin'. But many scholars point out, although we have only drawing today, that the depth of the grave and the lettering on the cross are not 12^th century, but much older, with the actual lettering too authentic to be a medieval fake. In 1180 a WelshBard had told King Henry 11 exactly where King Arthur's was situated. At around this period a serious fire had burnt down part of the Abbey, which had started the monks digging in the Abbey Grounds. In the 5^th Century Glastonbury Abbey was a Celtic-Christian Religious Centre, the place you would bury a Celtic Christian King.

So Arthur's remains were reburied with much pomp and ceramony attended by the King and Queen of England themselves, in a splendid marble tombe which stood at the Abbey Church's High Alter, until it was destroyed along with the Abbey by King Henry V111 IN 1539.

Thus there was no more thought of insurrection, the Celts were happy, King Arthur was now a Norman as well as a Celt, and the Abbey had even more visitors, and got even richer.

‘A grave for March, a grave for Gwythur. A grave for Gwgan Bloody-Sword. The world's wonder a grave for Arthur'- Nennius, ‘Mirabilia'