What ingredient of historic fact there may be in the record that the Ambresbyrig of the Saxons, and the Caer Emrys of the “Mabinogion” was the queen’s retreat, the faithful alone must decide. All that impartial and not too credulous historians can do is to pronounce the place as not unlikely, not impossible, and not unfitting as her abode and as the scene of her last acts of restitution and repentance. Almesbury is a British earthwork of forty acres, the stronghold of Ambrosius Aurelianus, Dux Britanniarum, of Roman lineage, but the champion of the Britons against the Saxon horde. Religious associations both early and late cling to this ancient place, and long after Guinevere was dust a Benedictine monastery, founded by Queen Elfrida, continued the religious traditions of the earlier era; and the fact that Almesbury was the customary retreat of royal ladies who wished to withdraw from the world confirms the character of the place as depicted in Malory’s chronicle. Guinevere gave herself up to lamentation among the nuns, “and never creature could make her merry”; Sir Lancelot’s visit only strengthened her resolution to make amends for the past, and prompted him also to seek, too late, perfection in righteous living. While in a hermitage himself there came to him the vision of the queen’s end, and taking her corpse to Glastonbury, he performed for it the last rites, and then delivered himself over to death. His resting-place was Joyous Gard, which, in his grief he had called Dolorous Gard; the queen was laid by her husband’s side in the island-valley. But at Llanilterne, near Cardiff, a huge quoin stone may be seen with an almost undecipherable _Hic jacet_, and popular tradition declares that this is Guinevere’s monument. “Through this knight and me,” said the queen, when Sir Lancelot and she met in the Almesbury convent, “all the wars were wrought, and the death of the most noble knights of the world: for through our love that we have loved together is my most noble lord slain; therefore, wit thou well, Sir Lancelot, I am in such a plight to get my soul’s health; and yet I trust, through God’s grace, that after my death for to have the sight of the blessed face of Jesu Christ, and at the dreadful day of doom to sit on his right side: for as sinful creatures as ever was I are saints in heaven.” When next the “falsely true” knight saw the queen he was in his monk’s habit and she was “wrapped in seared cloths of reins, from the top to the toe, in thirty fold”; then, on foot, he followed her to her tomb, recalling “her beauty, her bounty, and her nobleness.” The next scene is at Joyous Gard itself, with Sir Lancelot smiling as he lies dead, and a hundred torches burning about him; while Sir Ector de Maris delivers the noblest of tributes to the courtliest knight, the truest friend, the meekest man, the sternest foe, and “the truest lover of a sinful man that ever loved woman.”