it is hardly necessary to add that there is almost every reason to believe that this extraordinary “find” could have been nothing but a pious fraud, _in majorem monasterii gloriam_. If the truth be not established, however, it has been incorporated into many chronicles as genuine history. Bale, in his _Actes of English Votaries_, bears testimony in these words: “In Avallon, annus 1191, there found they the fleshe bothe of Arthur and of hys wyfe Guenever turned all into duste, wythin theyr coffins of strong oke, the bones only remaynge. A monke of the same Abbeye, standing and beholding the fine broydinges of the womman’s heare as yellow as golde there still to remayne: as a man ravyshed, or more than halfe from hys wyttes, he leaped into the graffe, XV fete depe, to have caughte them sodenlye. But he fayled of hys purpose. For so soon as they were touched they fell all to powder.” The reference to the depth of the grave reminds us that Stow, in his _Chronicle_, declares that King Arthur was buried sixteen feet underground to prevent the Saxons offering any indignity to his corpse, “which Almighty God, for the sins of the Britons, afterwards permitted,” he disappointingly concludes. Camden’s account of the discovery is in these words: “When Henry II, King of England, had learned from the songs of the British bards, that Arthur, the most noble hero of the Britons, whose courage had so often shattered the Saxons, was buried at Glessenbury between two pyramids, he order’d search to be made for the body; and they had scarce digg’d seven feet deep, but they light upon a cross’d stone (cippus) or a stone in the back part whereof was fastened a rude leaden cross, something broad. This being pulled out, appeared to have an inscription upon it, and under it, almost nine foot deep, deposited the bones of the famous Arthur. The letters have a sort of barbarous and Gothic appearance, and are a plain evidence of the barbarity of the age, which was involved in a fatal sort of mist, that no one was found to celebrate the name of King Arthur.” The most detailed account of all is given in Joseph Ritson’s scholarly work on King Arthur, and the famous antiquary’s outspoken comments on the records “and other legendary rhodomontades” of the monks of Glastonbury can be read with amusement as well as with profit. It is a sufficiently remarkable fact that none of the chroniclers agree in their details, and Matthew Paris distinctly declares that the letters inscribed upon the tomb could “in no wise be read on account of too much barbarism and deformity.” Antiquary Leland was sceptical as to the coffin, and William of Malmesbury (1143) said “The sepulchre of Arthur was never seen”; but, despite all contradictions and doubts, the discovery seems to have been generally accepted as genuine, while for many reasons it was gratifying to the people of that and subsequent ages. Caxton would have regarded it as “most execrable infidelity” to have had a doubt upon the subject.