Then follows a reference, based upon Nennius’s narrative, to the battle of Mount Badon. This passage, although somewhat confused in its account of the relative positions of Vortigern, Ambrosius and Arthur in the events of their time, is significant as indicating not only Arthur’s fame as a fabled British hero in William’s day, but the historian’s own regret at the absence of authentic information about a warrior so worthy of lasting commemoration. Another noteworthy reference to Arthur in William of Malmesbury’s history occurs in his account of the discovery in Pembrokeshire of the grave of Gawain, “Arthur’s noble nephew.”[42] Gawain, we are told, “was driven from his kingdom by the brother and nephew of Hengist,” and “he deservedly shared, with his uncle, the praise of retarding for many years the calamity of his falling country. The grave of Arthur is nowhere to be seen; hence ancient songs fable that he is still to come.” Here we have positive evidence that, long before Geoffrey’s time, Arthur’s “return” was sung of by British bards whose compositions, with the solitary exception of the stanza in ‘The Songs of the Graves,’ already referred to, appear to have been irretrievably lost. Henry of Huntingdon is not so trustworthy a chronicler as William of Malmesbury, and his account of Arthur is, substantially, borrowed, with embellishments, from Nennius. Henry’s place in a review of Arthurian records is due not to his _History_, but to a letter, addressed to a friend named Warinus,[43] which singularly attests the interest then felt in the history of Arthur. That letter recounts how Henry, while on a journey to Rome in the year 1139, stopped at the abbey of Bec in Normandy and was there shown by the chronicler, Robert of Torigni, a “great book,” written by one “Geoffrey Arthur,” containing a history of the early kings of Britain. The book in question was, almost certainly, an early draft of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s famous _Historia Regum Britanniæ_. But it is curious to find that Henry’s abstract of the book, as given in the letter to Warinus, differs in one important respect--and that alone concerns us at this stage--from the text of Geoffrey’s _History_ as given in all the MSS of that work in its final form. Geoffrey’s account of the “passing” of Arthur--an incident which offered to so imaginative a writer unrivalled opportunities of romantic decoration--is singularly devoid of ornament. Henry’s abstract of this part of the book which he found at Bec is, on the other hand, a highly-coloured piece of writing.