King Arthur

by Christopher Hibbert

Excavating further, the monks unearthed a coffin made from a hollow oak trunk; inside they found the bones of a tall man at one end and those of a woman at the other. The skull of the woman was encircled by “a yellow tress of hair still retaining its colour and its freshness.” But when a monk reached down to touch the hairs, they crumbled into dust. The bones of the man were recovered less clumsily, and as each one appeared, the monks marveled at their size. His shin bone, Giraldus recounts, “when placed against that of the tallest man in the place, and planted in the earth near his foot, reached, as the Abbot showed us, a good three inches above his knee. And the skull was so large and capacious as to be a portent or a prodigy, for the eye-socket was a good palm in width. Moreover, there were ten wounds or more, all of which were scarred over, save one larger than the rest, which had made a great hole.” Arthur and Guinevere had been found at last. Now Glastonbury Abbey could be sure of an ongoing stream of visitors and pilgrims bearing gifts. New buildings slowly replaced those destroyed in the fire; a church that eventually would be the largest in England took its splendid shape, although the sprawling ruins of the abbey still may be seen. And in 1278, when King Edward I and Queen Eleanor visited the abbey, the remains of Arthur and Guinevere were moved to a black marble tomb in the center of the choir and laid to rest. Two stone lions were placed at each end of the tomb...