1
Here Lies King Arthur
It is England in the year 1191. With King Richard I away in the Holy Land fighting the Third Crusade, at court in London there is political turmoil as the king’s brother Prince John schemes to seize the throne. In England at large there is grinding poverty. The ruling nobles, of French blood following the defeat of the Saxon English by the invading Normans over a hundred years earlier, have reduced the native peoples to the virtual slavery of serfdom. Yet, according to some, there is hope. A Saxon hero is said to have arisen from among the peasants and has taken refuge in Sherwood Forest, from where he challenges Prince John, robbing the rich to feed the poor. In the popular imagination, this is the age of Robin Hood. Curiously, 1191 also marks the birth of another British saga, one that will come to rival even the legend of Robin himself—the story of King Arthur.
The English town of Glastonbury, nestled amid isolated marshland some hundred and twenty miles west of London, is home to the Benedictine monastery of Glastonbury Abbey, many of its buildings destroyed by fire seven years before. The monks are working hard to restore the place to its former glory, and while digging new foundations beneath the Lady Chapel (a side chapel in the main abbey building), they uncover a long-forgotten tomb. At a depth of around sixteen feet, a hollowed-out oak trunk containing two skeletons is unearthed. To have been interred in such a prestigious location, these individuals must surely have been highly revered. Perhaps they are the bones of saints! Excitedly, the monks continue to excavate and soon find something to reveal the identity of the remains. A lead cross around a foot long is found, bearing the Latin inscription:
HIC IACET SEPULTUS INCLYTUS REX ARTHURIUS IN INSULA AVALLONIA CUM UXORE SUA SECUNDA WENNEVERIA1
[Here lies buried the renowned King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon with his second wife Guinevere]
They have, it seems, discovered the tomb of Britain’s most iconic hero: Arthur, king of the ancient Britons, whose final resting place has remained a secret for seven hundred years.
If this discovery is authentic, then the book you are about to read is little more than a wild goose chase. But—I assure—it is not. In the following pages I will be telling the story of my search for the final resting place of King Arthur. In so doing, I will be revealing the remarkable truth behind the mythology and folklore, and ultimately I will unmask the mysterious historical figure upon whom the legend was based. Coincidentally, my research actually began in 1991—exactly eight hundred years after the alleged discovery of Arthur’s grave—during a visit to the splendid ruins of Glastonbury Abbey (see plate 1). I never imagined it would be the start of a real-life historical detective story that was to last for twenty-five years. In the following pages I will be taking you step-by-step through this fascinating search for King Arthur’s tomb, beginning where I myself began: by examining the monks’ purported discovery of 1191.
Before getting started I should probably present a brief outline of the popular Arthurian story that has evolved over many centuries. Some readers may remember it vaguely from their school days or only know some aspects from various TV shows or movies, while others may be unfamiliar with it altogether. In various renditions it usually goes something like this:
Long ago, when Britain was divided and without a king, barbarian hordes laid waste the once fertile countryside. The throne lay vacant for a just and righteous man who could free the people from their servile yoke and drive the invaders from the land. But only he who could draw from a stone the magical sword Excalibur could prove himself the rightful heir. Years passed and many tried, but the magnificent sword stood firm and unyielding in the ancient, weathered rock. Then, one day, a youth emerged from the forest and, to the amazement of all, succeeded where even the strongest had failed. The people rejoiced: the king had come—and his name was Arthur.
On accession to the highest office in the land, King Arthur set about restoring the shattered country. After building the impregnable fortress of Camelot and founding an order of valiant warriors, the Knights of the Round Table, the king rode forth to sweep aside the evil that had beset the kingdom. The liberated peasants took him to their hearts, and Arthur reigned justly over his newly prosperous realm, taking for his queen the beautiful Lady Guinevere. Even a terrible plague, which ravaged the country, was overcome by the newfound resolve of Arthur’s subjects, for they mounted a quest to discover the Holy Grail, a fabulous chalice that held the miraculous cure for all ills. But as happens so often during an age of plenty, there are those whom power corrupts. Eventually, a rebellion tore the kingdom apart: an armed uprising led by Modred, Arthur’s treacherous nephew. Yet there was a dark witch that lay at the heart of the strife: the scheming enchantress, Morgan. During a final battle Modred was at last defeated, and Morgan destroyed by Merlin, Arthur’s trusted advisor and court magician. But all did not end well, for Arthur himself was mortally wounded.
As he lay dying on the field of battle, the last request by the once mighty Arthur was that Excalibur, the source of all his power, be cast into a sacred lake and lost forever to mortal man. When the magical sword fell to the water, an arm rose from the surface, catching the weapon by the hilt and taking it down into the crystal depths. When the great king was close to death, he was taken away on a boat bound for the mystical Isle of Avalon, accompanied by a group of mysterious maidens. Many say that he died and was buried upon the island, yet there are those who believe that Arthur’s soul is not to be found among the dead. It is said that he only sleeps and will one day return.
This, in essence, is the fabulous tale of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table as most people now know it. In one form or another, it has been told the world over. Across the globe the story of King Arthur has long been a bestseller.
It is also important, before continuing, that I explain something concerning the academic consensus regarding Arthur as a historical figure. Some respected scholars genuinely contend that this seemingly improbable story was based to some extent on a man who really existed. The story of King Arthur, familiar today, derives mainly from tales committed to writing in the Middle Ages, from the early 1100s to the late 1400s, which portray the fabled king as living around the year 500. As far as I can tell, historians seem to be divided fairly equally between those who consider this Arthur to have been based on a genuine historical figure, although they maintain that many mythological and fictitious elements were interpolated into the story over the centuries, and those who regard him simply as legend with no basis in reality. Archaeologists, on the other hand, tend to be more hostile to the idea of a historical King Arthur. Historians study historical documents, and early documentation from the Dark Ages, from as early as the 800s, suggests that a figure called Arthur did lead the Britons at the time the legendary monarch is said to have lived. However, these works were written over three centuries after the period in which Arthur is purported to have existed. Hence the roughly fifty-fifty split in opinion among historians. Archaeologists, on the other hand, excavate historical sites and form their opinions from what they dig up. As nothing from the period around AD 500 has ever been discovered bearing Arthur’s name, they generally contend that he was a product of pure fiction. Or, at best, they make no comment at all. Despite various claims, no firm evidence has ever been uncovered to resolve the issue one way or the other. Certainly, no one has found his grave.
That is—I hope to convince you—until now. In this book I present my arguments for Arthur as a historical figure; among other things I have, I believe, located his seat of power and his final resting place. I will propose, too, that even many of the seemingly fanciful elaborations in the Arthurian saga developed from genuine post-Roman customs, beliefs, and traditions of the Britons prevalent at the time he lived. (Britons, by the way, is the term applied to the native British before the Anglo-Saxon conquest of most of England by around AD 700.) Before I began my investigation, I had already consulted the original source material concerning King Arthur and had come down on the side of those historians who considered him to have been based on a real British leader who lived around the year 500. (Obviously, or I wouldn’t have bothered searching for him.) But throughout I have tried to keep an open mind: if what I discovered showed him to be nothing but an unsubstantiated legend, I was willing to give up the search. I could have started this book by discussing in detail my reasons for siding with the “yes camp” for Arthur’s historical existence, but as I want to take the reader through my investigation in the order it occurred, and so as not to confuse the issue, I have left this evidence—both historical and archaeological—for later chapters. So I ask, while you read, that you keep an open mind, suspend disbelief if necessary, and trust me that my reasons are sound for accepting that Arthur—at least, as a down-to-earth British warlord of the late fifth and early sixth centuries—might indeed have existed.
Finally, you may well be asking: How come Phillips found King Arthur when no one else did? Serious scholars who have previously researched the Arthurian enigma have tended to be historians, literary scholars, folklorists, or archaeologists, who examined the problem primarily from the perspective of their particular discipline. It reminds me of the old East Indian allegory of four blind men (or men who are in the dark) who try to identify an elephant. One man touches the thick, rough leg and thinks the elephant is a pillar; another feels the long, thin tail and concludes it is a rope; a third touches the smooth, tapered tusk and believes it to be a horn; and the fourth, who touches the wrinkled trunk, deduces it to be a tree branch. Though they all accurately describe what they are feeling, none has sufficient overall information to know what the object really is.
Because of the scarcity of written information concerning the period in Britain during which Arthur is said to have lived, the metaphorical nature of medieval literature, the obscurity of mythology, and the incomplete picture reconstructed from archaeology, academics have also been working in the dark. No single branch of learning has enough information to solve the enigma of King Arthur. If these academics had shared their knowledge, they might have been able to get a clearer picture of who King Arthur was. Sadly, historians, literary scholars, folklorists, and archaeologists seldom consult one another, let alone work together.
What I have tried to do is to take an overall approach and, where necessary, incorporate each of these subject areas. The answer, I decided, is to combine them all. To me the Arthurian mystery is like a giant jigsaw puzzle: many of the pieces are there, but they are spread among these various subject areas. I have taken an overall approach, piecing together the historical, literary, mythological, and archaeological evidence and finding vital clues that had previously been ignored or overlooked. Furthermore, until I conducted my research, some pieces had been missing entirely. Earlier researchers lacked methods and knowledge that are now available: geophysics has grown; scientific instruments have been developed to reveal what’s buried under the ground without digging; new technological dating methods are available; hitherto unknown medieval manuscripts have been discovered; and new archaeological sites have been excavated, all revealing fresh evidence unavailable to earlier investigators. This, I believe, is why I have succeeded where others failed. This might all sound a bit arrogant, but all will be explained. Besides, someone has to blow my trumpet, and I doubt many other Arthurian investigators will.
Whether or not the monks of Glastonbury Abbey really did find the remains of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere in 1191, the event certainly marked the birth of the Arthurian saga as we know it today. At the time the legend of King Arthur was well known even beyond England: in France, Germany, and as far south as Italy and Spain. It was said that Arthur had been a Christian monarch who, around the year 500, ruled the isle of Britain. Today Britain includes the countries of England, Scotland, and Wales, which, together with Northern Ireland, make up the United Kingdom or UK. Arthur’s Britain, however, included only what is now England and Wales. According to medieval belief Arthur had fought numerous campaigns overseas, where he was hailed a hero for defending the last enclaves of the fallen Roman Empire from the hostile pagan tribes of the East. (The Roman Empire in the West had finally collapsed in 476.) Arthur was, it was told, the last of the Romans to protect the West from the barbarian onslaught, long enough, in fact, for the Christian kingdoms of the post-Roman era to become established. (During the late Roman Empire, the term Roman was applied to anyone with Roman citizenship, regardless of his or her country of origin.) Arthur was more than just a military hero; he was believed to have founded the dynastic powers of medieval Europe and to have been the savior of the Roman Catholic Church.
Although Arthur’s reign was recorded in various ancient works, and extensive mythology, fables, and other early tales had sprung from his supposed exploits before the late twelfth century (that we shall be examining later), the story so familiar to us today—of Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table—only developed after the monks’ purported discovery in 1191. Indeed, it came about as a direct result of that event. Because of King Arthur’s fame and perceived status, news of the Glastonbury find spread quickly, prompting writers and poets across Europe to cash in on the invigorated popularity of the legend. Within a year or so, the famous Arthurian romances began to appear: tales of King Arthur in poetry and prose that became some of the most prolific works of the entire medieval era. (“Romance” was a style of heroic literature that became popular throughout Europe in the Middle Ages.) There can be no argument that the alleged discovery of the Glastonbury tomb was a momentous event in the development of the King Arthur story; however, it is somewhat questionable in a modern-day historical context regarding a search for any truth behind the Arthurian legend. Does it really prove, as it appears at face value, that King Arthur existed as a historical figure? Or was it, as many historians now agree, nothing more than an elaborate medieval hoax?
The event itself probably did occur—or at least something like it—in Glastonbury in 1191, as it was recorded just two years later by the contemporary cleric Gerald of Wales, an eminent scholar and respected chronicler of his times.2 There is, however, some confusion concerning what precisely was written on the lead cross. Gerald, who wrote that its inscription read “Here lies buried the renowned King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon with his second wife Guinevere,” was archdeacon of Brecon, over a hundred miles away, and does not appear to have seen the item for himself. In the late 1200s another historian of the time, a Glastonbury monk called Adam of Domerham, records that, without mentioning Guinevere, the inscription had simply read:
HIC IACET SEPULTUS INCLITUS REX ARTURIUS IN INSULA AVALONIA3
[Here lies interred the renowned King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon]
This does not necessarily mean the discovery was a fraud. Gerald of Wales might simply have misinterpreted what he was told, while Adam of Domerham—having been a monk at the abbey and so having presumably seen the item himself—may have made an accurate recording of the inscription. Today, however, archaeologists would need more persuasive evidence that the monks of Glastonbury really had found King Arthur’s grave. The bones themselves would require dating with modern scientific techniques, while the cross would need to be examined by experts on artifacts from the period Arthur is said to have lived. Sadly, neither the bones nor the cross exists today. Or if they do, we have no idea where they are. In the 1190s, the skeletons and the artifact were put on display in the abbey and later reinterred beneath a new marble tombstone beside the high altar. Today, the spot is marked by a sign standing on an open-air lawn at the heart of the abbey ruins. In 1539 Glastonbury Abbey was closed by King Henry VIII during the English Reformation when the last abbot was hanged, drawn, and quartered, and the buildings were left to decay. Hope that the bones might still lie buried where the high altar once stood was dashed in 1962 when the English archaeologist Dr. Ralegh Radford excavated the site and found no human remains.4 There were, though, disturbances in the soil to indicate that there had once been a grave at the site, as there also were at the site where the bones seem to have originally been found. All, however, that can really be determined from this is that the monks may have found some bones as described. The lead cross is another story.
Unlike the bones, the cross is known to have survived the Reformation. Back in 1278 it was recorded as being seen by the English king Edward I when he visited the abbey; it is said to have been laid on top of the marble tomb for all to see. Evidently, the cross remained here on public display right up until the abbey was dissolved by Henry VIII, after which it came into the possession of the king’s antiquarian John Leland who recorded having examined it in 1540. (An antiquarian was an enthusiast of antiquities, anything to do with the past, rather than a historian who reconstructed the past by studying old documents.) As late as 1607 one of the late Elizabeth I’s royal historians, William Camden, handled the artifact and had it drawn as an illustration for his work Britannia, a groundbreaking historical survey of Britain and Ireland.5 From this illustration we at least know what the cross looked like and what the inscription actually said. We can also surmise, as Leland and Camden both worked for the monarch, that once it had been removed from the abbey, the cross remained in possession of the Crown. The English monarchy was overthrown for a period during the mid-seventeenth century when Parliament, and then the puritan general Oliver Cromwell, ruled the country, and the cross was probably pilfered from the royal household at this time. It was in fact last reported to have been in the possession of one William Hughes, a Protestant cleric attached to Wells Cathedral only six miles from Glastonbury, in the early 1700s. What happened to it next remains a mystery.
Although we can no longer examine the cross, we do have William Camden’s illustration to study. It shows the Latin inscription, which translates most directly as: “Here lies interred the renowned King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon.” So it seems Adam of Domerham’s thirteenth-century interpretation was approximately right. However, the pictured inscription reveals that Adam did not provide the Latin wording verbatim. It is significantly cruder than he relates. Today most historians doubt the cross’s authenticity, at least as a genuine sixth-century artifact. It is pointed out that the Latin appears too rough and ready to date from around the year 500, Arthur’s supposed time. In fact, the wording on the cross differs as markedly from a sixth-century inscription as modern English prose differs from a Shakespearean text. British clerics of the twelfth century still wrote in Latin, but it was no longer their native tongue, and the language had undergone considerable transformation from the everyday spoken form used by the Britons of the immediate post-Roman era when Arthur is said to have lived. This does not inevitably imply that the monks of 1191 staged a hoax, but it does suggest that someone, way after Arthur’s time, fashioned the cross for reasons of his or her own. Indeed, the wording itself implies that the cross was fashioned many years after Arthur’s time.
The inscription not only informs us that the cross accompanies Arthur’s bones but that the place where he rests is none other than the mystical Isle of Avalon. The oldest surviving reference to Avalon appears in the writings of the Welsh scholar Geoffrey of Monmouth in the year 1136, in his History of the Kings of Britain; although he fails to say where it is, Geoffrey tells us that Arthur was taken there after his final battle.6 Accordingly, it is generally assumed by literary scholars that Geoffrey, or possibly one of his close contemporaries, invented the name. Thanks to the Arthurian romances that were written after the monks’ supposed discovery, the Isle of Avalon is today firmly associated with the burial place of King Arthur. Nevertheless, there is no known literary evidence that anyone prior to 1136 ever used the word Avalon. There are indeed associations between Arthur and an enchanted island in more ancient works than Geoffrey of Monmouth’s, but in these it is not called Avalon but Annwn (pronounced “Ann-wun”). So it seems the name Avalon was not the original name of the island upon which Arthur was thought to have been buried, further undermining the authenticity of the cross inscription. Yet even if Avalon had been the name of the island in Arthur’s time, the cross inscription would still be somewhat spurious. Presumably, the people who laid him to rest, and those who lived thereabouts, would need no reminding of where they were. It would be like someone today inscribing my gravestone with the words: “Here lies Graham Phillips in the town of London.” The most likely scenario, therefore, appears to be that a person or persons unknown after 1136 were responsible for inscribing the cross.
It might perhaps be that someone between the years 1136 and 1191, before the monks’ excavation, found the bones, decided for reasons best known to himself or herself that they were Arthur’s remains, and innocently fashioned the cross to celebrate the event. This, however, seems most unlikely. The abbey had been founded in the seventh century, although an earlier ecclesiastical building may have stood on the spot even as early as Arthur’s apparent era. Major rebuilding and enlargement of the monastery occurred in the 900s, and the building that was eventually destroyed by fire in 1184 had undergone no significant renovations since this time. It is, therefore, highly unlikely that anyone would have had reason to dig up the floor of the Lady Chapel and excavate down to a depth of sixteen feet before the fire reduced it to rubble. The reasonable conclusion is that whoever made the cross made it after the fire, at the time the monks were excavating. But if it was a hoax, why bother? What could be the motive?
Today Glastonbury might be little more than a relatively unknown, low-income town were it not for its Arthurian associations. True, Glastonbury has some lovely scenery, but so do many similar-sized towns in western England whose inhabitants struggle to make a living. Tourism was once a big earner for England’s West Country—I know, I once lived there. But today, with the ease and popularity of holidays abroad, many of these towns, including the town where I used to live, are a shadow of their former selves, with boarded-up buildings, collapsing infrastructure, and high unemployment. Their populations are way above the average age, the young having left to find jobs in the cities. Farming communities have been decimated, while fishing villages have been turned over largely to the elderly and retired. But standing defiant among them is Glastonbury. Not only is its tourist industry thriving, its high street is lined with stores selling every kind of astrological, mystical, and occult paraphernalia. During the season its restaurants and bars are filled to capacity, and the town square throngs with Wiccans, pagan sightseers, and New Age travelers. The reason for this demographic anomaly is nothing less than the legend of King Arthur.
Fig. 1.1. Britain today, as England, Scotland, and Wales.
In the flower power era of the 1960s, the legend of King Arthur—at least the romantic, magical version of the tale—became vogue. Hippies descended on the town of Glastonbury in droves, following what the media dubbed the Grail Trail. I have to admit that I was one of them. I remember hitchhiking there one day when I was at college and was amazed to see so many hippies milling around like some kind of a mini San Francisco of the time. But I was more astonished to see the handwritten signs adorning the windows of nearly all the bars and stores: “No Dogs. No Long Hair. No Hippies.” The locals detested the weirdos infesting their peaceful town. Today all that has changed. The once Bohemian nonconformists the locals did their best to vanquish ultimately got jobs, made money, and returned to the town to live. In fact, today, many of the older residents are ex-hippies, and the town’s population is made up largely of their children and grandchildren, who now successfully promote the area’s Arthurian links and cater to tourists from around the world. It is true to say that if it wasn’t for the monks’ purported discovery in 1191, Glastonbury’s tourists and many of its residents would simply not be there. The King Arthur industry actually saved the town. But this was not the only time the Arthurian legend came to Glastonbury’s aid. After the fire in 1184, Glastonbury Abbey desperately needed funds for rebuilding, and the only way to raise such money, as today, was to attract visitors. Now it’s tourism, but back in the twelfth century, it was pilgrimage. And the sure way to lure pilgrims was with sacred relics.
Strictly speaking, relics (derived from the Latin word reliquus, meaning “left behind”) were the bones of holy men and women whom the church had proclaimed saints. To be considered for sainthood (or canonization), it was not enough for the individual to have simply performed good deeds; he or she needed to have performed miracles, such as levitation, stigmata, and visions but above all miraculous cures and healings. In medieval England the average life expectancy was around thirty years (in fact, it didn’t rise much above this until the late nineteenth century), and sickness and deformity were commonplace. Without the benefits of modern medicine, people relied on prayer and religious devotion to make them better. According to beliefs at the time, the bones of a saint were endowed with the sacred healing powers the individual enjoyed in life. To pray over or, better still, to touch the bones of a saint could not only cure you but might endow you with spirituality and increase your chances of going to heaven. Today, we are familiar with how Catholic places of worship are designated to saints: Saint John’s Church, Saint Catherine’s Abbey, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and so forth. The reason for this is that early ecclesiastical buildings were consecrated to (named after) the saint whose bones were said to be interred there. Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, for instance, is so called because it is said to be built over the tomb of Jesus’s disciple Peter. In medieval times the churches, abbeys, or cathedrals that held the remains of the most illustrious saints would attract the most visitors who would make a special journey, or pilgrimage, to visit the site. These medieval religious tourists were the pilgrims (not to be confused with the Pilgrims who settled the New World in the seventeenth century). On Holy Days (from where our term holidays derives), hundreds, sometimes thousands, would descend upon a church housing the remains of a famous saint, where the bones were often on display in a casket known as a reliquary, which the pilgrim could touch while praying for healing or salvation. Relics were big business. Ecclesiastical communities would not specifically charge for pilgrims to encounter their relics, but donations were gratefully accepted. It would be a brave pilgrim who would expect the saint to answer his or her pleas without offering what he or she could afford (or often ill afford). Some abbeys grew extraordinarily rich from the proceeds of their relics, and there was intense competition between them. Those with the relics of the most celebrated saints got the most tourists. If one doubts the remarkable allure of what many today would regard as mere superstition, just visit Lourdes in southern France, a place where, it is said, the Virgin Mary manifested to a young girl in the 1850s. For over a century and a half, Catholics from around the world have flocked to the shrine marking the spot where the Virgin is believed to have appeared. Even non-Catholics, and many who are not even religious, visit the place by the thousands in the hope of miraculous cures. The small town’s population is only around fifteen thousand, but it has around three hundred hotels and a staggering five million visitors every year.
In medieval times much of England’s population believed in miraculous healing, and it was to sacred relics that they turned. By the twelfth century, the business of relics had expanded to include not only bones but the appendages of saints—severed hands, fingers, heads, even genitalia—which were placed in glass-fronted caskets of elaborate design for all to see. Additionally, objects that had once belonged to saints were also regarded as relics: cups, combs, sandals, anything the saint had used. Ultimately, the earthly remains and belongings of eminent kings and queens were also regarded as relics, and this is where King Arthur comes in. Examples of early English monarchs considered divine and whose relics various abbeys claimed to possess, are Alfred the Great, who defeated the pagan Vikings in the late ninth century; the pious and aptly named eleventh-century King Edward the Confessor; and Edmund the Martyr, who died for his faith in 869. Arthur was considered a far more illustrious ruler than any of these. It was he who is said to have saved Christianity in its darkest hour. The Glastonbury monks of 1191, therefore, had a powerful motive for hoaxing the discovery of King Arthur’s tomb. One thing we know for certain is that Arthur’s supposed remains, which were put on display, attracted so many pilgrims that enough money was raised to save the abbey and rebuild it as one of the most magnificent in all England. (Only Canterbury, the seat of the country’s archbishop, was finer.)
In 1991, when I first began my investigation into the Arthurian legend, beside the main roads entering the town of Glastonbury, signboards saying “The Isle of Avalon” welcomed tourists. This seemed strange to me at the time, as the area is not an island. Today, Glastonbury sits amid a small cluster of hills, its highest being Glastonbury Tor with a solitary stone tower at its summit that can be seen for miles around on the fertile Somerset plain. Though much of the surrounding lowland has been drained for farmland over the past few hundred years, eight centuries ago it was heavily flooded, and Glastonbury was surrounded by reed marshes and connected to the mainland by a narrow strip of land. It was indeed an island of sorts when the monks were digging in 1191. But was it the Isle of Avalon?
We will be returning to examine the legend of Avalon itself in chapter 4, but for now our concern is whether Glastonbury has a legitimate claim to be the mystic isle. Did its association with Avalon only arise with the alleged finding of the bones and the lead cross? Is there any evidence that anyone prior to 1191 regarded Glastonbury as Avalon? The answer seems to be no. Early historians appear completely unaware of any such notion. One of the foremost historians of the medieval period is William of Malmesbury, a monk from Malmesbury Abbey in the county of Wiltshire in southern England. In 1130 he spent time at Glastonbury and compiled a detailed history of the abbey.7 William, who has been described as the most learned man in twelfth-century Europe, was well versed in the Arthurian legend and had written about King Arthur in 1125.8 However, in his history of the abbey, although he refers to many folktales and legends concerning Glastonbury, not once does he mention Avalon. In fact, he makes no reference of King Arthur’s connection with the town whatsoever. If we rely on William’s treatise on Glastonbury Abbey, it not only provides evidence that Glastonbury had no early associations with the Isle of Avalon but it also demonstrates how the monks’ Arthurian claims deserve to be treated with skepticism.
The Holy Grail is another theme of the King Arthur story that today is associated with Glastonbury. In the late 1190s one of the authors of the many new stories written about King Arthur was the French poet Robert de Boron. Robert was the writer chiefly responsible for the Grail legend we know today, for he was the first to describe it as the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper. The Bible relates how one of Jesus’s followers, a rich man named Joseph of Arimathea, laid the body of Christ in a tomb after the Crucifixion. According to Robert, Joseph used the sacred cup to collect blood from the crucified Christ, thus endowing it with miraculous healing powers. Joseph, Robert de Boron tells us, led a group of Christian followers who, forced to flee Roman persecutions in Palestine, traveled to England where they founded a church and hid the Grail for which King Arthur’s knights ultimately searched.9 In Robert’s narrative the place where Joseph hides the Grail is Avalon. However, he fails to tell us where Avalon is and makes no reference at all to Glastonbury. William of Malmesbury’s treatise of 1130 makes no mention of Joseph of Arimathea or the Holy Grail, but in 1247 a new handwritten copy made by the Glastonbury monks adds that the church founded by Joseph’s followers, where they are said to have hidden the Grail, was none other than Glastonbury Abbey. This is compelling evidence of fraud by the Glastonbury monks, presumably in an effort to cash in on Robert de Boron’s popular tale.
There is additional evidence to indicate the monks were up to no good. It turns out that Arthur’s was not the first sacred grave the Glastonbury brothers allegedly found. Writing in his history of the abbey completed in 1291, the Glastonbury cleric Adam of Domerham records that back in 1184, immediately after the fire, the monks claimed to have unearthed the remains of Saint Patrick. This discovery did not go down well with the church in Ireland, whose members were furious to hear that the bones of their patron saint were on display in England. Their own claim that Saint Patrick had lain peacefully at rest in Down Cathedral in Ireland for six centuries was upheld by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the bones at Glastonbury promptly disappeared. But it didn’t end there. Within a few months, the monks were at it again, this time claiming to have found the bones of England’s most popular saint, the tenth-century Saint Dunstan. This went down even less well with the archbishop, for Dunstan’s tomb was already to be found in Canterbury itself.10 Yes, the Glastonbury monks had quite a track record for finding spurious holy relics.
It is, I think, fairly safe to conclude that the purported discovery of King Arthur’s grave in 1191 was indeed a hoax. The monks may well have found the bones buried as they described (as construed from Radford’s excavation), but whose bones was probably a mystery. Someone then had the bright idea to make out that they were King Arthur’s remains, and the lead cross was fashioned as “proof.” Perhaps most of the monks were unaware of the fraud. It would only take one person to toss the item into the pit. Whoever was responsible, however, this time it worked: no one else made claim to already posses King Arthur’s relics, and they were widely accepted as genuine.
This was the conclusion I reached in 1991, and the following year the findings were published in my first book on the Arthurian legend.11 This seemed to have had some influence in the town of Glastonbury because before too long the signboards welcoming tourists to the Isle of Avalon disappeared. Evidently, the town council decided the claim was now too shaky to endorse. Thankfully, the Arthurian tourist industry remained unaffected or I might have found myself lynched.
I may have cast doubt on King Arthur’s grave being in Glastonbury, but I had become hooked on the Arthurian legend. From what I’d researched, I was sure that Arthur had been based on a real-life historical figure, the reasons for which I will shortly reveal. So if Arthur was not buried at Glastonbury, where was he laid to rest? The whereabouts of King Arthur’s grave has remained a mystery for fifteen hundred years. What with the global fame of the Arthurian legend, surely its discovery would rank among the most celebrated historical finds of modern times. I decided to make it my personal quest to finally uncover his tomb.