Click Map For More Detail KeyWords: Arthur's Burial Cross Gerald of Wales "Liber de Principis instructione" Glastonbury Abbey William of Malmesbury Exhumation Ralph of Coggeshall Margam Abbey John Leland "Assertio Inclytissimi Arturii" William Camden "Chronica Majora" Adam of Domerham Pilgrimage "Annals of Waverley" Geoffrey of Monmouth Isle of Avalon Dissolution of the Monasteries

A Discussion by British History Club Publisher, Rod Hampton:

The Discovery of Arthur's Burial Cross:

he medieval historian, Gerald of Wales, tells us that sometime before he died in 1189, Henry II gave a message to the monks of Glastonbury Abbey regarding the location of the grave of King Arthur (see sidebar, below). He also tells us that Henry had gotten the information from an unnamed Welsh bard.

Gerald's account goes on to say that the Glastonbury monks, presumably acting on this information, had uncovered a hollowed-out log containing two bodies, while digging between two stone pyramids standing together in the abbey cemetary. The log coffin had been buried quite deep, at around 16 feet down. A stone slab cover had been found at the seven foot level, and attached to its underside was an oddly shaped cross with a latin inscription on it, naming the occupants of the coffin as the renowned King Arthur and his queen, Guinevere.

Beside Gerald's report written in "Liber de Principis instructione" c.1193, there were several other versions of the discovery of the grave and cross which appeared in various chronicles over the years. Each account was a bit different from the others and either included or omitted details which the others did not. At least five different versions of the inscription on the cross have been reported, and this inconsistency in the details of the story has led many scholars to think that a great hoax was being perpetrated by the Glastonbury monks for the purpose of generating pilgrim traffic to their abbey to see the burial place of the renowned King Arthur.

A Hypothetical Scenario: Chinon Castle, France, 20 June 1189  Hurrying feet, leather-bound, slipping down a stone corridor; bursting through a heavy wooden door into the open; a robed man, carrying a leather bag, breathlessly running across a courtyard toward a small chapel; gasping for air, knocking lightly; the door creaked open, the man is admitted. There, in the dim, candle-lit interior of the gray chapel, uncomfortably propped by pillows on his side on a discoloured, threadbare divan, is the once-glorious monarch, the proud ruler of the Angevin Empire, the Lion of England, the great second Henry, reduced by foreign intrigues, guilt, family discord and age to a sick, wretched, wasting shell of the man he used to be. His illegitimate, but only loyal son, Geoffrey, stands by his side and orders the scribe to write down whatever the king may tell him. The man obediently sets up a small table, takes a sheet of vellum, a goose quill and a small jar of ink from his pouch and begins taking down the startling message which the king dictates. Finishing, the roll is sealed with red wax and stamped with the signet of the dying king. Weakened from the effort of dictation, Henry commands that the note be taken to the monastery at Glastonbury, and given directly into the hand of the acting abbot with all possible haste. Late afternoon, shadows lengthening, sun burning, messenger riding, horse straining, mane flowing, tail streaming, flanks steaming, nostrils flaring, hooves pounding, whip stinging, leather slapping, streams splashing, dust flying, background blurring. At the landing on the Loire river, the messenger dismounts and boards the king's boat to rest for the night. The journey continues at daybreak with the royal craft setting sail and riding favourable winds down the river and around the horn of Brittany. The ship follows the coastline and turns north to cross the channel until a sudden storm forces it to a temporary berth on the island of Guernsey. After a frustrating delay of two weeks, waiting for the summer storm cycle to subside, the king's resolute messenger, pushed by brisk southwest winds, finally crosses the channel to the royal port of Weymouth on England's Dorset coast. On land again, the rider tries to make up for time lost by pushing his horse to its limit. Just after sunset that same day, he thunders through the gates of the Glastonbury Abbey precinct and comes to a halt in front of the great church, recently rebuilt after the tragic fire five years before. Dismounting, the messenger is met and ushered immediately into the private quarters of Ralph FitzStephen, a friend of the king who had been placed in temporary charge of the abbey until a permanent appointment could be made. After reading the message from the king, FitzStephen immediately begins to appreciate the opportunities that it offers, if only the information it contains can be properly exploited. Ralph and the messenger speak at length about the king's failing health and the troublesome military situation involving his rebellious son, Richard. Despite the lateness of the hour and the rigours of the monastic day that would be dawning in only a few short hours, Ralph calls for his archdeacon and plans begin to be made. Henry II died on 6 July 1189 and the new king, Richard I, appointed Henry de Sully to the abbacy of Glastonbury on 14 September 1189. In a private session after the installation ceremony Ralph FitzStephen, the new abbot and a special envoy sent from the king meet together for the purpose of ensuring that Henry de Sully's transition would be a smooth one. One item on their agenda is the urgent dispatch that had come from Henry II, two months before. History tells us that in the early winter of 1191, a pavilion was erected in the cemetary between two tall pyramids which stood close by the south door of the new church. The white-curtained structure surrounded a hole that had been started there by the monks of the abbey, some time before. Although nothing could be seen from the outside, the voices of the men inside and the "chink-scrape" sounds of digging could be heard very clearly. About seven feet down, the diggers cried out that they had hit something hard; all the men grappled with a heavy stone slab, and after great effort and much sweat, the slab began to rise out of the hole. When the stone slab was finally turned and its flat underside became visible, the men could see that part of the stone had been carved out. Set into the cavity was a "leaden" cross of very unusual shape bearing an inscription in strange letterforms. The Latin words on the cross proclaimed that the men had just found, as indeed their masters had expected, the burial place of the great King Arthur.

Adding to the suspicions aroused by the above inconsistencies, the case for a "monastic hoax" gains more strength when we consider that there were several obvious motives for it:

• the monks' beloved abbey church, the most glorious in all England and possibly in all of Christendom, had been destroyed by fire in 1184, just a few short years before.
  

• the abbey's greatest pilgrim attraction, the "Old Church," England's oldest Christian structure which dated back many centuries into long-forgotten time, had been burned up with it.
  

• the abbey's chief benefactor, the recently deceased Henry II, was no longer in a position to finance their efforts to rebuild and the new king, Richard, was more interested in using his money to go "Crusading."

A popular legend, current among the British people, claimed that King Arthur had never actually died and that he would one day return to his people when their need was great. While it is easy for modern people to discount a story like that, the twelfth century was an age of great credulity, and since no one could point to the location of Arthur's actual burial place, the legend couldn't be so easily discounted. Amazingly enough, no one had ever even claimed to know where the grave was, let alone try to identify it. A verse from the Welsh "Stanzas of the Graves" (aka The Graves of the Warriors of Britain), states:

There is a grave for March, a grave for Gwythur,
a grave for Gwgawn Red-sword;
the world's wonder, a grave for Arthur

The historian, William of Malmesbury, confirms that the whereabouts of Arthur's burial place is unknown, and that silly legends have been created to fill the knowledge vacuum:

. . .tomb of Arthur is nowhere beheld, whence the ancient ditties fable that he is yet to come.

Given the immediate need for cash to rebuild their abbey, the death of their chief benefactor and a willingness to engage in questionable practices to serve what they believed was a noble end, it would take no great leap of the imagination to expect that the Glastonbury monks would come up with some other scheme to raise funds. In King Arthur, it would seem that they had a ready-made solution to their problems: a major legendary figure whose grave could attract all the pilgrims that the Old Church did, and, at the same time, enhance the abbey's reputation for sanctity and prestige as the final resting place of saints and kings.

Having said all that, it must be noted that there are a few difficulties with the "monastic hoax" theory. First of all, if we are going to credit the monks with the imagination and effrontery necessary to perpetrate a hoax of this magnitude, then we should also expect them to be able to manage the public relations campaign that would be needed after the "discovery" of Arthur's body.

Instead, we see several different accounts of the exhumation of the grave and, over the years, we get several versions of what was inscribed on the cross. The varied accounts of the inscriptions are as follows:

Margam Abbey (Wales), "Chronicle," some date it early 1190's, others, 14th century
Ralph of Coggeshall, "Chronicon Anglicanum," c.1225
John Leland, "Assertio Inclytissimi Arturii," 1542
William Camden, "British History Club," 1607
     "Here lies the famous King Arthur, buried in the isle of Avalon"

Monks of St. Albans, "Chronica Majora," mid- to late-13th Century
    "Here lies the renowned King Arthur, buried in the isle of Avalon"

Adam of Domerham, "Historia de rebus Glastoniensibus," 1291
    "Here lies interred in the isle of Avalon, the renowned King Arthur"

Gerald of Wales, "Liber de Principis instructione," c.1193
    "Here lies buried the famous King Arthur with Guinevere his second wife in the isle of Avalon"

Gerald of Wales, "Speculum Ecclesiae," c.1216
    "Here lies buried the famous King Arthur in the isle of Avalon with his second wife Guinevere"

Simon of Abingdon, dating and authenticity highly uncertain
    "Here lies Arthur, the glorious king of the Britons"

Nine reports, six different inscriptions. Shouldn't we expect that if the monks had been willing to risk this deception in the first place, that they would have made sure that everyone was telling the same story? Another troublesome thing is that while the fortuitous timing of the "discovery" of Arthur's grave might seem highly suspicious to us, the monks didn't follow up by doing what we might expect them to have done if they were really trying to pull off a hoax. We would expect them to have launched a major publicity campaign, announcing the discovery to the world. We would expect to find evidence that a major influx of pilgrims had been planned for. We would expect to find documentary and literary evidence that Glastonbury had, in fact, become a more important place of pilgrimage than it had already been.

Surprisingly, we see none of that. Other than a few mentions in monastic chronicles through the years, there is no record of any "advertising blitz." There were no new structures built to enshrine the bodies or to house or otherwise accommodate the pilgrims. And there was nothing written to suggest that the "discovery" at Glastonbury attracted any unusual attention, at all.

From their grave, the bodies of Arthur and Guinevere may have been translated to a tomb inside the newly rebuilt Lady Chapel, which had been completed in 1186. After the discovery in 1190, nothing is heard of the tomb or the bodies until many years later when they are reported by the "Annals of Waverley" to be in the treasury in the east range of the abbey church, awaiting a move to a more fitting location. The bodies remained there until the year 1278, when Edward I came to Glastonbury to preside over their re-interrment in a new marble coffin, underneath the high altar, in the recently rebuilt great abbey church (a marker indicates the spot where the tomb stood; see photo above). Arthur's cross was laid on top of the tomb for all to see, and there it remained for about 250 years.

The final disposition of the bodies is unknown, but they probably didn't survive the Dissolution of the abbey by Henry VIII and his zealots during the English Reformation in 1539. The burial cross did, though. It was seen and handled by John Leland around 1540 and illustrated for the 1607 edition of "British History Club" by William Camden. It was last reported in the possession of one William Hughes, an official of Wells Cathedral, sometime in the early eighteenth century.

The story of the cross doesn't end there, but continues on to the present day. There have been several reports in the 20th century that the cross has been found, but in each case, the reports have proven to be false. Those erroneous reports don't mean that the cross does not exist, only that it hasn't been found, yet. It may, even now, be gathering dust in an attic or a cellar, or perhaps lying unseen underneath a pile of logs in an outdoor shed. But, if it were to be found, it would be our only tangible link to the strange events at Glastonbury over 800 years ago.

What We Know About the Cross: