Such is Tennyson’s portraiture of Mordred, and the depiction is justified by all that the chroniclers relate of the false knight who by fraud gathered the knights around him, caused himself to be crowned at Canterbury, and at Winchester declared that Guinevere should be his wife. The chronicle explicitly declares that the queen repelled his advances, and flying to London, took refuge in the Tower, which she garnished with her army. Sir Mordred, “wroth out of measure,” laid siege to the Tower, defied the Archbishop, and at length, by spreading evil reports of King Arthur, drew “much people” to his side. This defection supplied Malory with a fine opportunity for moralising on the defaults of Englishmen, who are seldom satisfied--“for there may no thing please us no term.” When King Arthur arrived off Dover with a great navy of ships, galleys, and carracks, he found Mordred and his host awaiting him. Here the first encounter took place, and Mordred, being worsted, removed to Barham Down, where he again suffered defeat. But these skirmishes, desperate as they were, were but preliminaries to the real battle for which both sides were preparing. Mordred’s force was drawn from those “that loved not Lancelot,” and from the people “of London, Kent, Southsex, Surrey, Estsex, Southfolk, and Northfolk”; and Arthur, with his faithful band, moved westward past Salisbury, and on to the shore. Despite the warning of Sir Gawaine’s ghost “in no wise to do battle,” but to make a month’s treaty in order to profit by the presence of Lancelot, King Arthur found himself compelled to engage in the contest. A fair and generous offer had been made to Mordred: Cornwall and Kent were to be his during King Arthur’s lifetime, and on the king’s death he was to have “all England.” But when the treaty was made an adder stung a knight’s foot, and his cry of pain was like a clarion call to battle. In a moment the swords flashed, the trumpets were blown, the horns sounded; and at sunset Mordred was dead, and Arthur had received his death-wound.[28] Undeniably the most picturesque and romantic portion of the river Camlan is about half a mile away from Slaughter Bridge, towards Tintagel, where it has worn a way between the grassy hills and lies half-hidden far below, crossed and re-crossed scores of times by fallen and inclining trees. The waters here hurry and chatter about the stones, and find their way about the rank weeds and undergrowth which here and there impede their journey. It is with some difficulty that the river is found at all, and with greater difficulty that it is approached. But those who persevere will find, where the banks are steepest and the herbage and weeds thickest, that the brook washes a huge engraved stone lying flat and half embedded in the earth. This is King Arthur’s grave, a secret place, and so near Tintagel that the poet did not strain facts greatly when he pointed out that