Read The Mammoth Book of King Arthur Online
Authors: Mike Ashley
According to Gerald, Henry II had learned that the body of King Arthur was buried at Glastonbury. Even more, he was told they would find the body between two ancient tall pyramids in the abbey
burial grounds. Henry had been told this by “some old British soothsayer”, who may have been Welsh or Breton. We don’t know when he learned of this, but it must have been late in
his life, and probably around the time that Arthur was born. Henry is supposed to have passed word on to the abbot, but that cannot be so. At that time Glastonbury had no abbot. The post had not
been filled after the last abbot, Robert of Winchester, died in 1178. Henry was more interested in appropriating the abbey revenues himself to finance his wars in France. He installed a friend,
Peter de Marcy, to look after affairs, and this led to a major crisis within the abbey. In fact, it was under de Marcy that the great fire happened, and the circumstances behind it have never
satisfactorily been resolved. De Marcy died soon afterwards.
Henry did not replace de Marcy, and instead put his Chief Justiciar, Ranulf de Glanville, in charge of the finances and of
overseeing the rebuilding works. Henry may have
told Ranulf about the possible burial place of Arthur – Ranulf was, after all, executor of Henry’s will – but nothing seems to have happened before the King’s death in July
1189. One might have thought that had Henry and Ranulf known about it, a search for the grave would have happened straightaway. Yet building works had been in hand for five years and it was not
until early in 1191, eighteen months after Henry’s death, that the search began.
In that time a lot had happened. After Henry’s death his son Richard had no interest in Glastonbury other than its revenues to help finance his Crusade. He appointed an old friend, Henry
de Sully, who had been abbot of Fécamp in Normandy, and who had been in charge of the rebuilding works there after that abbey had been destroyed by fire. De Sully had managed to turn
Fécamp Abbey, with its precious relics, including the blood of Christ and a bone from the arm of Mary Magdalene, into one of the major centres of pilgrimage in Normandy.
Could he do the same for Glastonbury? Indeed he could. It was de Sully who ordered that the excavation be made for Arthur’s body and it was he who selected the site, telling Gerald of
Wales that he had learned this from the King himself. This was how Gerald reported the discovery in
Liber de Principis Instructione
(“On the Instruction of Princes”), which
appeared two years later, in 1193.
In our own lifetime Arthur’s body was discovered at Glastonbury. Although legends had fabricated something fantastical about his demise (that he had not suffered
death, and was conveyed, as if by a spirit, to a distant place), his body was discovered at Glastonbury, in our own times, hidden very deep in the earth in an oak-hollow, between two stone
pyramids that were erected long ago in that holy place. The tomb was sealed up with astonishing tokens, like some sort of miracle. The body was then conveyed into the church with honour, and
properly committed to a marble tomb. A lead cross was placed under the stone, not above as is usual in our times, but instead fastened to the underside. I have seen this cross, and have
traced the engraved letters,
which were cut into it on the side turned inwards toward the stone, instead of facing outward and being visible. It read:
HERE LIES ENTOMBED KING ARTHUR, WITH GUENEVERE HIS SECOND WIFE, ON THE ISLE OF AVALON.
Many remarkable things come to mind regarding this discovery. For instance, he had two wives, of whom the last was buried with him. Her bones were discovered with those of
her husband, though separated in such a way that two-thirds of the sepulchre, namely the part nearer the top, was believed to contain the bones of the husband, and then one-third, toward the
bottom, separately contained the bones of his wife, wherein was also discovered a yellow lock of feminine hair, entirely intact and pristine in colour, which a certain monk eagerly seized in
hand and lifted out; immediately the whole thing crumbled to dust.
There had been some evidence from the records that the body might be found there, and some from the lettering carved on the pyramids (although that was mostly obliterated by excessive
antiquity), and also some that came from the visions and revelations made by good men and the devout. But the clearest evidence came when King Henry II of England explained the whole matter
to the monks (as he had heard it from an aged British soothsayer): how they would find the body deep down, namely more than 16 feet into the earth, and not in a stone coffin but in a hollowed
oak bole. The body had been placed so deep, and was so well concealed, that it could not be found by the Saxons who conquered the island after the king’s death and whom he had battled
with so much exertion while he was alive, and had nearly annihilated. That was why the lettering on the cross, which confirmed the truth, had been inscribed on the reverse side, turned toward
the stone, so that it would conceal the secret of the coffin at that time and yet at some opportune moment or time, would ultimately reveal what it contained.
It should be noted also that the bones of Arthur’s body that they discovered were so large that the poet’s words
seem to ring true: “Bones excavated
from tombs are reckoned enormous.” Indeed, his shin-bone, which the abbot showed to me, was placed near the shin of the tallest man of the region; then it was fixed to the ground
against the man’s foot, and it extended substantially more than three inches above his knee. And the skull was broad and huge, as if he were a monster or prodigy, to the extent that the
space between the eyebrows and the eye-sockets amply encompassed the breadth of one’s palm. Moreover, ten or more wounds were visible on that skull, all of which had healed into scars
except one, greater than the rest, which had made a large cleft – this seems to have been the fatal one.
Gerald’s description is detailed, as if he had been present, although some of the comments such as “his shin-bone, which the abbot showed to me”, suggests that
he had not seen the actual exhumation. In all likelihood Gerald visited Glastonbury afterwards, and his report was part of the “promotion” for the discovery.
The immediate question, though, is: how genuine was the discovery? Gerald’s role in this is suspicious in itself, although whether he was part of the scheme or an innocent dupe is
uncertain. In introducing the above item he said:
The memory of Arthur, the celebrated king of the Britons, should not be concealed. In his age, he was a distinguished patron, a generous donor, and a splendid supporter of
the renowned monastery of Glastonbury; they praise him greatly in their annals. More than all other churches of his realm he prized the Glastonbury church of Holy Mary, mother of God, and
sponsored it with greater devotion by far than he did the rest.
Where did Gerald get the information that Arthur was a noted patron of Glastonbury and mentioned in their annals? Some sixty years before this discovery, William of Malmesbury had been invited
to Glastonbury to write a history of the abbey. A highly respected historian, Malmesbury had completed his own history of Britain,
Gesta Regum Anglorum
(“Acts of the English
Kings”),
in 1125, ten years before Geoffrey. Malmesbury, who had already had access to Glastonbury’s archives when he completed that book, had written, “the
tomb of Arthur is nowhere beheld, when the ancient ditties fable that he is yet to come.” His
De Antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecclesiæ
(“On the Antiquity of the Church at
Glastonbury”) specifically mentions the Annals at Glastonbury but makes no mention of Arthur. In fact, no one had made any link between Arthur and Glastonbury until Geoffrey’s colleague
Caradog of Llancarfan wrote his
Life of Gildas
in the 1130s. In it he tells the story of Melwas, the king of the “summer country” who kidnapped Guenevere and held her at
Glastonbury (presumably on the Tor). Arthur searched for her for a year before he learned of her whereabouts, whereupon he summoned up an army. Gildas and the abbot of Glastonbury intervened and
Guenevere was restored to Arthur.
Malmesbury, though, had found no such references in his research. Neither, for that matter, had Abbot Dunstan, when he carried out major building works two centuries earlier. Even Geoffrey,
never one to miss a trick, had made no reference to Glastonbury. He simply said that after Camlann Arthur was taken to the Isle of Avalon. Gerald of Wales, though, had something to say on that:
What is now called Glastonbury was, in antiquity, called the Isle of Avalon; it is like an island because it is entirely hemmed in by swamps. In Welsh it is called
Inis
Avallon
, that is,
insula pomifera
, “The Island of Apples”, because the apple, which is called
aval
in the Welsh tongue, was once abundant in that place. After
the Battle of Camlann, Morgan, a noble matron, mistress and patroness of those regions, and also King Arthur’s kinswoman by blood, brought Arthur to the island now called Glastonbury
for the healing of his wounds. Moreover, the island had once been called in Welsh
Inis Gutrin
, that is,
insula vitrea
, “The Island of Glass”, and from this name, the
invading Saxons afterwards called this place
Glastingeburi
, for
glas
in their language means
vitrum
or “glass”, and
buri
means
castrum
,
“castle” or
civitas,
“city”.
No one before Gerald had suggested that Avalon was Glastonbury. He could only have got that idea from the abbot. Was Gerald in on the scheme? He was certainly a high flier.
Born in 1145, he was the son of a Norman knight, Sir William de Barri. His mother Angharad was the granddaughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr, king of Deheubarth (1078–1093), through his daughter
Princess Nesta, who was a mistress of Henry I. Nesta was notorious for her love life, and in 1109 was abducted by Owain ap Cadwgan, the hothead prince of Powys, causing a major political row
between Henry and Owain’s father. This could even have been the incident that inspired Caradog’s story of the abduction of Guenevere.
Gerald believed he was destined for great things. Most of all he wanted to be made bishop of St. David’s, in order to petition the Pope to raise the see to an Archbishopric and thus be
independent of Canterbury. He was nominated for the post in 1176 but turned down by Henry II because of his Welsh blood. He refused two other bishoprics before he became involved at Glastonbury.
One might suspect that Gerald was now seeking to ingratiate himself with Richard I. Unfortunately he never did achieve his goal, though he spent a lifetime trying. On the other hand, Henry de Sully
rapidly received promotion, being elevated to the Bishopric of Worcester just a couple of years after his remarkable discovery at Glastonbury.
Aside from the fact that neither Dunstan nor Malmesbury had found any evidence of an Arthurian connection with Glastonbury – and they had access to the original documents before the fire
– there are all manner of clues that show this to be one big hoax. The dimensions of the skull, for instance, particularly the distance between the eyes, is humanly impossible. The Latin
lettering engraved on the cross was not contemporary with Arthur’s day but was closer to the tenth or eleventh century. Some, including Leslie Alcock, have suggested that this may have been
carried out in Dunstan’s day when a mausoleum, known to have been on this same site, was demolished. Perhaps that had made reference to Arthur, and in order to salvage this a new cross was
made. Unfortunately no record of this exists – and Malmesbury would have found it if it had. It is also hard to believe that Dunstan would not have made a more overt reference to this as by
his day the legend of Arthur was already well known.
Then there was the matter of Excalibur. Later myth-makers, or mischief-makers, report that Richard I had presented the recently discovered Excalibur to Tancred, king of
Sicily. Richard had left England for the Holy Land in July 1190, long before the excavation had started, and Gerald made no mention of Excalibur being found amongst the remains.
If we are to believe Gerald, there is still the question of whose remains these were and how the monks managed to find them that deep. They were, it is true, digging in the abbey’s burial
grounds, so one might have expected them to find remains, but there must have been considerable advance planning to have buried the cross. The size of the bones suggests that they may have belonged
to a horse or an ox, but clearly no one would confuse a human skull with an animal’s.
But apart from Gerald’s report, we have no other “eyewitness” statements, and if Gerald was only repeating what the abbot told him, one might imagine there need have been no
exhumation at all. However, in 1962 Ralegh Radford conducted a new excavation at the marked site of Arthur’s grave and was able to verify that a previous excavation had happened. He also
found some stone slabs which may have lined the ancient burial, but nothing else.
There were two other contemporary reports of the discovery, though dating them is difficult. Firstly, Ralph de Coggeshall recorded the event in his
English Chronicle
, finished in 1224.
Curiously, Ralph implies that the site was discovered accidentally whilst they were burying another monk. Also his description of the wording on the cross omits all reference to Guenevere, stating
simply
HERE LIES THE FAMOUS KING ARTURIUS, BURIED IN THE ISLE OF AVALON
. That was the same phrasing recorded by the chronicler at Margam Abbey in Glamorgan. The date of
composition of that entry is disputed, some believing it to be contemporary with the event. With the exception of the wording on the cross, it reads similarly to Gerald’s account and may even
have been compiled from the same “press release” that Gerald had from the bishop. Bizarrely, the Margam Chronicle records that Mordred’s remains had also been found!