Here King Arthur, the hero of a hundred fights, and a thousand myths, was said to be buried with his Queen Guinevra. His heroic deeds, in the defence of his country, against our pagan forefathers, have been sung by many Bards of old, but by none more sweetly than by our greatest living poet. Thus he describes the parting scene with the brave knight, Sir Bedivere, after the hero’s last great battle with his treacherous nephew, Mordred, at Camlen in Cornwall:-- “But now farewell, I am going a long way, With these thou seest, if indeed I go, (For all my mind is clouded with a doubt,) To the island valley of Avilion, Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly, but it lies Deep meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns, And bowery meadows, crowned with summer sea, Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.” But the hope was vain; he went to Avalon to die. This story was sung by the Welsh Bards to King Henry II. on his journey to Ireland in 1177, and interested him so deeply, that he recommended a search for the remains, and that they should be (if found) exhumed and re-interred in the Church, as a more fitting resting place. This wish was carried out after that king’s death by his nephew, Henry de Soliaco, then Abbot, in 1191, and in the spot indicated by the Bards, the remains were found both of Arthur and his queen. Geraldus Cambrensis, who was present, relates the scene, and says that a stone was found with a leaden cross bearing the inscription,--“_Hic pace sepultus rex Arthurus, in insula Avalonia_,”--and beneath it the remains of the hero king, which were of giant proportions, and of his queen, mingled in the same coffin. In the large skull were three wounds, and in the cavity occupied by the queen’s remains a tress of fair yellow hair, which being touched fell to pieces. The remains were duly honoured by a black marble mausoleum in the Church. When more than eighty years had passed away, the greatest of the Plantagenets, Edward the first, and his Queen Eleanor kept the festival of Easter at Glastonbury, and the tomb was opened for their inspection; when the king commanded the hallowed relics to be exposed before the high altar, for the veneration of the people, ere they were recommitted to their resting place; _there_ to rest, until the tyrant-- “Cast away like a thing defiled The remembrance of the just.” We have dwelt upon these old legends, not without pleasure, as recorded chiefly by William of Malmesbury, on the authority of a “Charter of S. Patrick,” and an ancient British historian whose writings were then extant, but whose name he does not hand down to posterity. But the Charter is pronounced by Archbishop Usher to be the forgery of a Saxon monk, and historians in general, consider the truth of the legends, hitherto recorded, as doubtful as those of the kings of Rome, or of the Trojan war.