Modern Glastonbury has its museum in which may be seen some pottery from “King Arthur’s Palace at Wedmore,” and a thirteenth or fourteenth century representation on the side of a mirror case of Queen Guinevere deserting with Sir Lancelot, the only two relics, I believe, which in any way recall the connection of King Arthur with the place. There are evidences of the antiquity of the Abbey in abundance; though pilgrims’ staffs, leather bottles, palls, grace cups, roods, “counters” made by the monks to serve as coin, and even the reliquary containing a small piece of bone supposed to be of St. Paulinus, sent or left by St. Augustine himself for the purpose of establishing the modified form of the Benedictine rule, do not quite take us back to the sixth century. Though the actual date of King Arthur’s death is not known, and though his age is variously given from just over fifty to passing ninety, and though there is no consensus of opinion as to the length of his reign, we never hear of him at a later date than 604; and unfortunately all the Glastonbury relics take us back at most to the tenth century. Yet enthusiastic Drayton might well be carried away with the theme with which Glastonbury supplied him; and remembering the marvels of its past and the splendour of its aspect in his own day, he asked what place was comparable with the “three times famous isle?” “To whom didst thou commit that monument to keep, When not great Arthur’s tomb, nor holy Joseph’s grave From sacrilege had power their holy bones to save?” [Illustration: THE ABBEY BARN, GLASTONBURY [_To face p. 248_]