The starting-point of the whole, in time and incident, is the supposed revenge of the Jews on Joseph of Arimathea for the part he has taken in the burial of our Lord. He is thrown into prison and remains there (miraculously comforted, so that the time seems to him but as a day or two) till delivered by Titus. Then he and certain more or less faithful Christians set out in charge of the Holy Graal, which has served for the Last Supper, which holds Christ's blood, and which is specially under the guardianship of Joseph's son, the Bishop "Josephes," to seek foreign lands, and a home for the Holy Vessel. After a long series of the wildest adventures, in which the personages, whose names are known rather mistily to readers of Malory only--King Evelake, Naciens, and others--appear fully, and in which many marvels take place, the company, or the holier survivors of them, are finally settled in Britain. Here the imprudence of Evelake (or Mordrains) causes him to receive the "dolorous stroke," from which none but his last descendant, Galahad, is to recover him fully. The most striking of all these adventures, related in various forms in other parts of the Legend, is the sojourn of Naciens on a desert island, where he is tempted of the devil; while a very great part is played throughout by the Legend of the Three Trees, which in successive ages play their part in the Fall, in the first origin of mankind according to natural birth, not creation, in the building of the Temple, and in the Passion. This later legend, a wild but very beautiful one, dominated the imagination of English mediaeval writers very particularly, and is fully developed, apart from its Arthurian use, in the vast and interesting miscellany of the _Cursor Mundi_. [Sidenote: _Merlin._]