Discovery of The Island of Avalon

Anyone who wishes to know the truth about some of the greatest mysteries that still exist today should read this blog.

  The story is complicated but will show the reader where the body of Jesus is to be found.

 The unfolding of the story to find the truth involves the Grail stories and information from old texts that were at Glastonbury abbey, but it consists of factual evidence. If you have ever wondered if the resurrection was a reality then this is the blog for you.

The Roman Catholic church has a completely different account from that suggested here but the rumours that Joseph of Arimathea is buried at Glastonbury are only half truths. The Author of this blog knows where there are three bodies: the body of King Arthur, The body of Jesus and the body of Joseph of Arimathea. Unfortunately the owners of the Island where these bodies are preserved in an old tin vault have refused any co-operation with the author so I will leave it up to the reader to make his own appraisal of the facts presented here. The island of Avalon is revealed, but what it contains is part of the biggest treasure hunt since the uncovering of Tutankhamen.

Let us start with a brief synopsis and then start the quest to find the Island of Avalon which the reader will be shocked to learn is not in Glastonbury, but on the South coast of Devon at the Island called Burgh Island. What and why the island contains these three bodies and the cache of treasure buried by the Templars, will only be understood by reading this entire blog.

In the Dark Ages, after the death of King Arthur, a monk known as Melkin, (who could well have been the famous Merlin), left for posterity a riddle or prophecy that exposed the burial site of Joseph of Arimathea. This location known as the Island of Avalon has long been thought to exist at Glastonbury abbey. The Island of Avalon has been associated with the tor because monks at Glastonbury needed the association with Joseph to attract pilgrims. The myth that Glastonbury tor is somehow connected or even synonymous with the Island of Avalon is probably down to a man called Henry Blois.
The author of this blog has deciphered the meaning behind the riddle known as Melkin's prophecy, upon which the mythical status of Glastonbury is founded and how it came to be associated with Joseph of Arimathea's burial site. The monks riddle which clearly indicates with pinpoint accuracy the whereabouts of the resting place of King Arthur and Joseph of Arimathea in the Island of Avalon, is evidently not at Glastonbury. The strange thing is that the geometric puzzle left by Melkin describes directions that are derived from the Ley line system built by Neolithic man.

This Blog describes how this huge display of geometrical precision across the British landscape was understood and known to exist as late as late the 1300’s. Also, the presence of the St. Michael Ley line was known about by Melkin in the sixth century. An array of churches were built upon this ancient system to point out to posterity the location of the tomb of Jesus by the Templars and also to mark the spot where they had buried their treasure.

This secret location is called the Island of Avalon and the same monk Melkin visited this island which is now called Burgh Island, at the death of Britain’s famous King Arthur. Here he found arcane information from the Temple in Jerusalem that was brought to England by Joseph of Arimathea. This information with an account of the first Christians arrival with Mary Magdalene was written in a book composed by Melkin giving account of the time from the arrival of these early Christians, up until the time of King Arthur. This book became known as 'The Grail book', that found its way to France when Melkin established an early hermitage on Mont- St -Michel in Normandy. This book then through the troubadour family of the counts of Pitou and Aquitaine gave rise to the wide array of Grail stories. A close family connection in the person of Henry Blois or as many knew him as Monseigneur Blois became the Master Blehis that was Abbot of Glastonbury and was the first to expound from the French Grail literature and know of the English tradition that existed at Glastonbury. It was Henry of Blois that also left the clue at Glastonbury regarding the burial site of Joseph of Arimathea. This came into the possesion of Father William Good and it confirms Melkin's directions to the Island of Avalon or the Island of Sarras of the Grail romances.

‘And did those feet’, a book by Michael Goldsworthy, clearly shows that the body of Jesus is in fact buried with Joseph of Arimathea within this island in Devon. It used to be known as the fabled Island of Ictis and contains within it an ancient tin vault that became the tomb for both of them, but it had originally been used to store tin ingots. The confirmation of the whereabouts of this tomb is given by precise geometrical instructions upon the British landscape. These instructions left in the obtuse Latin puzzle by the monk Melkin, once deciphered, lead us to the grave site. The islands position, if the reader is in any doubt, is also verified by the clue given to the Jesuit priest, Father Good, who lived in the sixteenth century and deposited this vital information in the English college in Rome. Father Good however was unaware of the significance of the clue he was given concerning how Joseph of Arimathea was 'Carefully' hidden in Montacute.

The Templars in the middle ages were aware of the location of this tomb and deposited their treasure in the same tomb on Christmas day 1307. However, they removed one item from the sepulchre within the island which because science has been unable to explain its formation..... has been classed as a fake. This was what has now become known as the Turin Shroud. The Turin Shroud in the monk’s Latin puzzle is described perfectly six hundred years before it was shown in Lirey, so how could it be a fake? This artefact said to exist in the tomb with Joseph due to Melkin’s description..... by misunderstanding of the intended meaning of the puzzle..... became known as the Holy Grail, especially by the subltle twists of the prophecy's interpretation at Glastonbury. The reader will understand by this blog that the Holy Grail is in fact something inestimably more valuable and this blog sets out and explains what the Grail is and how the Grail stories came about.

The body of Jesus, around which the Turin Shroud was once wrapped, remained in the tin vault, steeped in Cedar oil. This is the process by which the image on the Turin Shroud was formed over a period of six hundred years until it was removed from the body around 600AD and later removed from the Isle of Avalon. The Turin Shroud was essentially formed within what became known as the Grail Arc, that is the coffin of Jesus mentioned in the Grail Stories.

The reason this Island which used to be called Ictis was chosen to house what is the holiest relic of all..... is because it was not widely known about in the ancient world and kept secret from the Romans. It was rumoured to exist through a report by one of the first Greek explorers to Britain named Pytheas. Devon and Cornwall have a history in the tin industry and it was from this island that tin was traded with Joseph of Arimathea.... who, Cornish tradition has always maintained, was a tin merchant and was accompanied on his trading missions by Jesus. Diodorus gives us a clear description of this same island that Pytheas had named Ictis or 'Fish Island' due to the vast quantities of pilchards caught off the Island. This blog uncovers an ancient Biblical link to the Devon and Cornish peninsula through a bloodline from the first born of Judah, one of the twelve sons of Israel, called Zarah. It is from his heritage a line of Kings was born in the South west of England known as the kings of Sarras which culminated with the famous King Arthur.

King Arthur, Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea are waiting to be unearhed on the Island today called Burgh Island, but there is also with them, the Arc of the Covenant and the Templar treasure. The blog traces these events pulling together a wide source of detail linking the most powerful people in Europe such as Eleanor of Aquitaine, the earliest tracable owner of the book of the Grail, written by Melkin.

Leonardo Da Vinci visited this Island in the last three years of his life and left clues within four paintings, that show the geographical and geological features of the Island, He let the world know by his picture puzzle (rebus) in the Windsor Library, that he was showing us a great mystery. He even went as far as to say he would show where it is, in his two paintings of the Yarnwinder.

The amazing coincidences that have brought this knowledge into the modern era can only be viewed as having been determined by supernatural forces because this whole drama is played out to specific times that are spoken of by the biblical prophets. The implication and ramifications of the unearthing of this tomb will have ramifications across the world as this blog uncovers the relationship between this tomb’s unveiling and how it was predicted by the Prophets. It is also a very strange event that while the world looks on, the olympic ceremony brings the Island of Avalon and Blake's Jerusalem into popular Consciousness.

This Blog will offer definitive answers upon such enquiries as:

What does a ley line have to do with finding the body of Joseph of Arimathea and locating Avalon Where is Jesus buried and why is his body still preserved? Who was Joseph of Arimathea and where is he buried? What was his connection with the British Isles? Can we find any truth in the legend that he was a tin merchant? As the uncle or father of Jesus, what is the likelihood that he escorted him on occasion to the British Isles? Did Jesus arrive in Cornwall and acquire much of his wisdom in the British Isles? Why do the Gospel accounts differ about the disappearance of body of Jesus, King of the Jews. How is it that  the Island of Sarras off the coast of Southern England where the Grail was brought to, take the name of Judah’s son and natural heir called Zarah?

4] Where exactly is the fabled Island of Ictis and can we establish a relationship between this island, renowned in the ancient world as an exporter of tin, with Joseph of Arimathea? Why is it that Ictis has only now been located, when it has been in plain view of all researchers. Was there ever a connection between the island of Ictis and the Isle of Avalon, mentioned by the sixth century monk Melkin? How does Melkin know that the island of Ictis is the Avalon of the Grail Romances, and Arthurian legend?

Was the prophecy of Melkin that tells of the whereabouts of Jesus’ tomb and that of Joseph of Arimathea really a fake made in the thirteenth century as most scholars believe. If so why does it plainly point to Avalon and Ictis. Did Melkin actually write a prophecy or a riddle?

Where exactly does the Glastonbury tradition get intertwined with these other questions regarding its connection to Joseph of Arimathea and through the various Grail stories? Was King Arthur’s body actually found in Glastonbury, or was it an elaborate hoax? Who is responsible for the Glastonbury deception regarding the Isle of Avalon and the didinterrement of Arthur. Who wrote the original Grail material that became known as the matter of Britain. Who then translated this into French and also understood the tradition that existed at Glastonbury.

What is the connection between the Templar treasure and the Isle of Avalon. What is the meaning of the Grail stories? What is the Grail and who does it serve? How did the Grail become a vessel or chalice that holds the blood and sweat of Jesus?

What has the Grail tradition to do with the Turin Shroud? How was it that Science was unable to say how the image on the Turin Shroud was formed? Why can no one explain the shrouds provenance or history prior to 1353 AD?

These topics initially seem to be so disparate and unconnected, that any relation between them appears scant and impossible to establish with any degree of certainty. However, it is the aim of this enquiry to show how inextricably linked these diverse questions are. It will show how the many pieces of a puzzle that have hitherto been unconnected, hidden, deliberately obscured, ignored, misunderstood, or even inadvertently lost over time..... can be resolved into one conclusive body of evidence.

This blog is heavy going as there is sometimes a need to repeat information already known to some readers, which to others, is necessary for a step by step, orderly account that leads to a revelation that will astound even the casual reader.

Whatever the readers background or discipline, or by whatever chance you have been prompted to read this blog, this examination of diverse material, seemingly unconnected, actually disentangles a few mysteries and makes discoveries that will have global ramifications.

There are many references to old texts, but where scholastic endeavour has previously failed in the past to piece together evidence, we hope that the reader will be enlightened by the connections made in this Blog.

The best way of getting the reader to understand everything as a whole as the evidence comes together is to start with information that the reader will need to know to make their own assessment of the evidence which leads to the discovery of Avalon and what is buried on that Island. This information will seem random and unconnected for the moment but will all piece together later in the blog

So lets start with the St Michael's Ley Line.

It is called the St Michael's Ley Line due to its features that are shown in figure 1. The point to make here is, that it is doubtful that the churches that were built along the line were all dedicated to St. Michael by coincidence.

There are many places which are named after St. Michael that lie exactly upon its axis. Several churches or chapels were built along the line from the early thirteen hundreds onwards, with the St. Michael dedication. However other churches not on the St. Michael ley line have a distinct relationship to this line. We will investigate further, later on, as to why these chapels and churches seemed to have been erected by organized design in such a short period of time.

Figure 1 Showing the St. Michael’s Ley Line.

. The probability that so many sites occur by coincidence having the St. Michael name in one alignment are small. We must assume that it is by design and we will discover why and by whom these churches were built.

In the book the ‘Sun and the Serpent’, Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhurst investigated the entire St. Michael's Ley Line plotting its interwoven energy course, as it criss-crosses the rhumb line. They did so by dowsing, but many skeptics feel that there is no substance to this form of enquiry and dismiss the use of this technique. However, we shall see shortly, that this line exists and is no figment of the imagination but who put it there and what is its purpose?. Between 450-750AD a monk lived named Melkin, who knew of the Ley lines existence and left us clues in a Latin riddle that will lead us to the uncovering of this hidden tomb.

Insula auallonis auida funere paganorum, pre ceteris in orbe ad sepulturam eorum omnium sperulis propheciae vaticinantibus decorata, & in futurum ornata erit altissimum laudantibus. Abbadare, potens in Saphat, paganorum nobilissimus, cum centum et quatuor milibus domiicionem ibi accepit. Inter quos ioseph de marmore, ab Armathia nomine, cepit sompnum perpetuum; Et iacet in linea bif urcata iuxta meridlanum angulum oratorii, cratibus praeparatis, super potentem adorandam virginem, supradictis sperulatis locum habitantibus tredecim. Habet enim secum Ioseph in sarcophago duo fassula alba & argentea, cruore prophete Jhesu & sudore perimpleta. Cum reperietur ejus sarcofagum, integrum illibatum in futuris videbitur, & erit apertum toto orbi terrarium. Ex tunc aqua, nec ros coeli insulam nobilissimam habitantibus poterit deficere. Per multum tempus ante diem Judioialem in iosaphat erunt aperta haec, & viventibus declarata.

Island of Avalon, coveting the pagans in death, above all others (places) in the world for their entombment there, it is honoured by the circle of portentous prophesy (Avebury) and in the future will be adorned by those that give praise to the highest. The father’s pearl, (Jesus) mighty in judgement (or virtuous through new wine), the noblest of pagans, sleeps 104 miles from it (Avebury), by whom he recieved interment by the sea from Joseph named from Arimathea, and has taken his eternal rest there, and he lies on a line that is two forked between that and a meridian, in an  angle on a coastal Tor, in a crater, that was already prepared, (with powers from on high, as from an adorable maiden, up high in Ictis is the tomb and those dwelling there are at 13 degrees.) above which one can go at the extremity of the verge, high up in Ictis to the place they abide to the south at thirteen degrees.

The monk who wrote the Latin riddle above knew what had certain knowledge of the presence of the Ley network before any of the churches were built.

Certainly, this Monk called Melkin who understood arcane knowledge and who knew of the St. Michael’s Ley line long before it even had that appellation..... leads one to believe that somehow these stone circles connect man to his future. This is in fact is alluded to by Melkin in his prophecy.

Figure 1b Showing the three stone circles in Cornwall called ‘The Hurlers’ situated on the Neolithic St. Michael Ley line but this site has no monument to St. Michael. It is one of the objectives of this enquiry to elucidate to the reader the interconnectedness of what is potentially part of a huge ancient functioning system and its relevance in the present era. Who was it in the modern era and which organised body realised that some planned out design is still extant on the British landscape? Did the later designers of the 1300s who built on top of the very locations on which ancient man had built his design, know of its function and have knowledge of its effect upon the inhabitants of Britain?

Figure 2 Showing Glastonbury Tor situated on the St. Michael Ley line, one of many Hill top St. Michael dedicated sites.

How had the misunderstood two cruets ‘cruore’ of the Glastonbury monks invention, or the ‘duo fassula’ mentioned by the monk Melkin in the dark ages in his prophecy become synonymous with the Grail. How did the ‘Duo Fassula’ which contained the blood and sweat of Jesus, evolve into a vessel, gradatim or graal, made of gold and studded with rare gems in the unfinished work of Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval, or the Conte du Graal around 1180. Where did Kyot or Walter Map source their material but from the book of the Grail and who but Melkin knew of the same material that was to become the source of Glastonbury legend? Melkin is attested to have written about Arthur in books in Britain and as we know he left behind his British prophecy concening Joseph of Arimathea. As the continuations and re-working’s of the French romances proliferated, Melkin’s testimony which provided the substance for the ‘book of the Grail’ met with similar material that existed in Britain.
The genealogy of Joseph of Arimathea, including Arthur’s exploits mixed with material from what became known as the Gospel of Nicodemus, evolved into a fantastic array of medieval romances emanating from France, known as the ‘Matter of Britain’. These ‘Histoires’ centred upon the search for the Grail and gave account of its arrival in Britain with Joseph of Arimathea. We know that Melkin wrote a book on Arthur and his round table attested to by subsequent British Chroniclers and also Melkin’s prophecy concerning Joseph is found in John of Glastonbury’s Cronica. Both Arthur and Joseph are buried in Avalon or the French ‘Avaron’. Both British and French traditions seem to have emanated from a common source judging by the commonality of the material i.e Joseph, Arthur, the island of Avalon and the Grail’s connection to Jesus. This persistent theme portrays what was in the most part, historically based material. This becomes apparent later especially as we discover the links between the Island of Avalon, The Island of Sarras of the French romances and the Island of Ictis of Classical fame. These three islands are all one and the same going under different names, but let us inquire into how this Island is integrally linked with the Ley line system and how it becomes part of the St. Michael network of ‘Church Markers’.

It was Alfred Watkins, who first coined the phrase ‘Ley Line’ when he saw the interconnectedness of certain points upon the landscape and how they aligned with each other. John Michell even more recently made the connection between the names of the sites that had been dedicated to St. Michael that were also aligned. In a flash revelation, standing next to St. Michael's Burrow Mump, he could see a similar hill in the distance and topped with a similar church also dedicated to St. Michael. Melkin’s prophecy had related that Joseph of Arimathea was buried on a ‘bifurcated line’ and without Michell’s modern day re-discovery there could never be a line with which to ‘bifurcate’. The other directions given in Melkin’s prophecy are directional derived from this Line and without knowing of its existence the prophecy of Melkin would remain in history as a discarded jumbled tale or worse, the ruminations of a madman.

Mitchell’s discovery for the first time in the modern era brings to light the evidence that, there must be some kind of design along this line. This previous design was then built upon by the Templars demarcated by St. Michael Churches. If the overlay of churches or the previous Neolithic erections provide the source for that which is dowsable is uncertain as Broadhurst and Millers book shows that much of the dowsable energy is flowing through the altars of these more recent churches.

The odd thing about the investigation into the St. Michael Ley line is the fact that many of these sites are ‘stand-alone’ (i.e. somewhat removed, not urbanized, and for the most part situated on a high promontory). Predominantly, these St. Michael dedicated churches which make up part of the line and other “marker” dedicated churches, seem to have been built between 1250-1380. The St. Michael hilltop church feature exists with some frequency throughout the countryside of southern England and France and on islands with surprising regularity. It is a strange occurrence that a geographical feature should predispose the dedication of a church and we should enquire as to why, suddenly in that era, were so many sites dedicated to an Archangel.

It is peculiar that, in the past, some of these relatively new hilltop St. Michael churches have been purposefully allowed to crumble and it is possible that for some of them, any trace of their existence was removed deliberately. This is evident in three locations; specifically-Montacute atop St. Michael’s hill, Burgh Island in Devon and Chapel Carn Brea at Land’s End.

Figure 3 Showing the St. Michael church Burrow Mump on the St. Michael Ley line.

Figure 4 Showing the Redruth Carn Brea which had a 13th century St. Michael chapel on it, latterly turned into a castle which lies exactly upon the rhumb line of the St. Michael Ley Line.

St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall, made famous because of its rumoured links with the island of Ictis and thus its links to Joseph of Arimathea the tin merchant... stands in Mounts Bay opposite Marazion in Cornwall. It is one of the objects of this enquiry to show the reader how more than once St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall has been mixed up with Burgh Island lying opposite Bigbury on Sea in Devon. This tranquil Island stands as a sentinel, while the tides have ebbed and flowed around it for centuries. This once also had a chapel on it dedicated to St. Michael, which has left no trace of its presence through the passage of time and is rumoured to have once been the site of a small monastery.

Melkin also in the Grail literature speaks of this Island having a monastery on it and this was reiterated by Henry of Blois who as we shall uncover wrote the Perlesvaus from Melkin’s latin text. Melkin, who we shall discuss in detail shortly, wrote his prophecy concerning the Isle of Avalon and Joseph of Arimathea who supposedly brought the Grail to Britain. It would seem that Melkin is divulging information which is hinting at a location where Joseph of Arimathea might be buried and therefore, should we be looking for clues on a map.

Before we get to the exactitude of Melkin’s geometric instructions that point out the tomb site let us follow another line of investigation which will show us the island that Melkin is pointing to as the same island that Joseph of Arimathea will have visited as a Tin Merchant

The reason for trying to accurately locate the island of Ictis is because we know that it was engaged in the tin trade. If we can establish Ictis as a definitive location today, then we will see how this Island confirms the directions given in Melkin’s prophecy. We know that sometime after the Roman invasion of Britain that Joseph of Arimathea was a tin merchant as the Cornish traditions have maintained.

Researchers over the last 2000 years have tried to find the location of the fabled ‘Island of Ictis’. There has been much written and incredible ingenuity used by scholars and commentators alike, to fit facts as they see them, to agree with their own preference for the location of Ictis. It would appear that for all this effort in the modern era, no one has definitively managed to locate it. The references about Ictis came from many different sources, Greek and Roman over a period of approximately 400 years, but recent commentators have not been able to see the pertinent facts that were related, in perspective.

This search for the Island of Ictis originated due to a Greek named Pytheas, who made a journey by sea, circa 325 BC and wrote a Chronicle of his voyage, which no longer exists. He mentioned the island in his journals and left quite specific references to it, the most pertinent being that it dried out at low tide and was located in southern England; hence its permanent association with St Michael’s Mount, just south of Marazion in Cornwall. It is because of Pytheas’s notoriety and the fact that his original writings no longer exist, that over time, references from other ancient chroniclers that mention his journey and his description of the island and its environs have become garbled.... some of the chroniclers simply disbelieving much that he related.

Courtesy of James and Jade

Figure 9 Showing St Michael’s Mount, Marazion, and the rocky foreshore, on which the foreign trading vessels were supposed to land at all states of the tide.

Pytheas was an astronomer and a geographer, who may have been the first Greek to visit and write about the Atlantic coast of Europe and the British Isles. It is a shame that his main work, which was called ‘On the Ocean’ is no longer extant, but we know something of his travels through the other Greek historian called Polybius, who lived around 200 BC. Timaeus even mentions Ictis before Polybius while other ancient writers who mention Pytheas’ voyage are Posidonius, Diodorus Siculus and Strabo, who all wrote before the birth of Jesus.

Strabo relates that Dicaearchus who died about 285BC did not trust the stories of Pytheas but we shall see his mistrust was not fair.

Diodorus, who gives a good description of the island and its trade, (much of which can be ascertained to be from Pytheas’ original eye witness description) also tells how large cart loads of tin were brought to the island . Diodorus is also seen to be quoting from Posidonius, while Pliny on the subject of Ictis, who wrote circa 50 AD is also quoting from Timaeus (contemporaneous with Pytheas) and not directly from Pytheas.

It is evident that over the period of four hundred years when these Greek and Roman historians were recounting Pytheas’ exploits, mostly second or third hand, an inaccurate account has been passed down about an island that traded tin with a name called ‘Ictis’ that existed in southern Britain. The effect has been like that of Chinese whispers around a single dinner table without the added difficulty of translating Greek into Latin and we can witness how different the message from the first to the last may be distorted. Pytheas’s voyage was intended partly as a commercial venture looking for opportunities in trade with his own city Marseille and the other part scientific. Pytheas was long before Galileo in attempting to assert that the earth was round and this proof was known by the ancient world. This proof could only be arrived at by taking sightings of the sun at different latitudes and as Pytheas proceeded North, he observed the change in the length of daylight and he observes “the midnight sun,” confirming he went far up to what he called Thule, which presumably is confirmed by later chroniclers as Iceland.

There is mention of a passage that he made, said to be six days long and this could be one going north to Scotland but many commentators think that he only went up the eastern side of Britain but this would deny his having described the shape of Britain as triangular. The lost interpretation of the six days could even be an account of the journey to reach southern England from Marseille. Some ancient writers seem to give it as a quote from the ‘Britains’ about the distance to travel to Ictis to procure tin. The ‘six days inwards’ (introrsus) related by Timæus, and quoted by Pliny, says, that this Mictis or Ictis, “was six days sail inwards from Britain” and given as a direction supposedly by the Britons to Pytheas on his arrival in Belerion, has led most Ictis investigators astray and was obviously related out of context, as much of the other information has been.

Pliny’s quotation of Timaeus ’six days sail inland from Britain, there is an island called Mictis in which white lead is found, and to this island the Britons come in boats of Osier covered with sewn hides’ could be a confusion of the six days in which it would take to get from Lands’ end to northern Scotland averaging 70-90 miles a day if indeed Pytheas went up the western side of Britain with no mention of Ireland. Some commentators seemingly assuming that because the tin is known to come from Cornwall and thus the Britons starting place...... it somehow confirms a six day passage up to Thanet and implys Thanet as being synonymous with Ictis.

Diodorus’ quotation of Posidonius who travelled in Britain around 80BC describes the metal workers of Belerion carrying their tin to a certain Island called Ictis which acted as a great trading post for merchants. This quote coupled with the fact that the Isle of Wight's Latin name ‘Vectis’ being similar to ‘Ictis’, has also led to more confusion as much trade was known to take place from this area. Some commentators have assumed the Six days inwards can be applied to the journey along the Southern coast from where Pytheas initially made contact with the inhabitants of the Southern tip of Belerion, all the way to Thanet in Kent, another possible candidate for Ictis, as Kent is mentioned in his Journal.

Pytheas as a ships navigator had mastered the use of the "Gnomon," an instrument similar to the hexante or Sextant as it is known today. This instrument was used by Phoenician and Greek navigators since very early times and Pytheas used it to calculate the latitude of Massalia, which he found to be 43' 11' N, almost matching the exact figure of 43' 18'N for where Marseilles lies today. It was a committee of merchants from Marseilles that engaged the services of Pytheas to undergoe his voyage of discovery. He was a renowned mathematician of that city, who was already famous for his measurement of the declination of the ecliptic, and for the calculation of the latitude of that city, by a method which he had recently invented of comparing the height of the gnomon or pillar with the length of the solstitial shadow. Many of the ancient writers disbelieved Pytheas’ account of his journey and the distances involved and much interpolation, interpretation and rationalisation of subsequent writers has meant that we are now no longer sure of what has been related accurately.

It is 238 miles from the mouth of the Gironde to Ushant, a leg of the trip that Pytheas records “as three days away” by Strabo then one days sail to the Belerion coast. Pytheas was averaging 79.3 miles a day. The four days, quoted by Diodorus from the Gironde is indicating he had a quick passage from Ushant, probably sighting the Lizard first only 89 miles away. It was hereabouts at an undisclosed landfall, he made his enquiries to the ‘Britons’ about tin. Pytheas was probably told it was two days further up channel, but Timaeus records that the Britons, said the Tin would be available six days inwards in an island which they went to in wicker framed boats covered with hide, these wicker boats probably only used locally. It is only fifty five miles from the Lizard to Ictis and if Pytheas did record that the journey in total was six days, Pytheas most probably sailed along the coast for the last two days stopping overnight so that he did not miss the island.

Timaeus recorded Pytheas in Greek, then it was rendered by Pliny the Elder in Latin, influenced by other previous references that were possibly interpolated nearly 300 years later. This would not accord with the original detail given by Pytheas. It seems most likely that, Pytheas’s intention was to give a meaningful reference of six days in total to the Island of Ictis from the Gironde, detailing “inwards” up channel from his present location. This seems to be the obvious solution but this six day period may indeed be in reference to another part of his trip and the context has been muddled. One can tell that Diodorus is not giving a first-hand account but the ‘we are told’ reference from this next extracted account is most probably referencing details given by Pytheas: Britain is triangular in shape, similar to Sicily, but its sides are not equal. This island stretches obliquely along the coast of Europe, to a point where it is least distant from the mainland, we are told, is the promontory which men call Cantium,(Kent) and this is around one hundred stades from the land, at the place where the sea has its outlet,(The Dover Straits) whereas the second promontory, known as Belerium, is said to be a voyage of four days from the mainland. Is this the four days from the Gironde again, just mis-conveyed by later chroniclers in the wrong context?

The shape of the tin ingots described as ‘Astragali’ in Diodorus’s account seems to have been confused because vertebrae bone or knucklebone were used as gaming dice and went by that name. The shape of any discovered tin ingots from Devon and Cornwall neither resemble cubes or the knucklebone shape. There is little credibility that can be given to this hypothesis. These moulded convex and bun shaped ingots in different sizes would fit into wooden framed skin covered boats called coracles. The shape of the Ingots would be bun shaped (like those found at the head of the river Erm) with no hard corners for a few reasons and it is to this shape from which we can assume the term ‘astralagi’ refers.

Naturally moulded tin ingot formed in any convenient dried rock pool next to a river where cassiterite would be mined, would be the first. Consequently, a hemispheroid that would not tear the animal skins of the local traders that transported the ingots to Ictis in their coracles is the second. There would be no need to schampher or to soften the flat surface edges of the convex shape due to ‘surface tension’ of the liquid tin as the mould cooled. By natural design, flat on one side and convex on the other, seem to be the shape of the majority of existing examples including the recent find of the ingot cargo in the Erm mouth which we will discuss shortly. This shape would make them ideal to fit between the wooden framing of any coracle and present a completely flat interior for its occupants, following the curve of the boat. This would avoid point and weight loading of any part of the skin. The exterior of the Astragali would always present to the skin face a surface unlikely to rip or damage and be kept in place by the surrounding wooden framing. By placing and packing the Astragali as a removable floor the traders would be spreading the weight throughout the coracle while at the same time creating ballast at a low centre of gravity. This would be the optimum means of transport at sea to avoid the cargo becoming loose during passage. The shape of the Astragali over time, was probably standardised by popular agreement and by convenience to both transporter and smelter..... in moulds eroded by rain or river used by early ‘Tinners’.... hence all the different sizes, but the shape for shipping being a convenient element. The third reason as C.F.C Hawkes points out, can be deduced from Diodorus’s description of the ingots passage to the mouth of the river Rhone by horse or mule , a passage of about thirty days ‘on foot’. The ingots would be better shaped for saddle bags on these pack horses. The optimum size of the ingots would have evolved by feedback from the pilots of coracles.

The shape of the ingots probably evolved from lighting fires over dried out rock pools conveniently found everywhere next to the river, from which the Cassiterite was panned by the Bronze Age Tinners and this shape turned out to be the most practical for early sea transport.

It is not even clear whether Pytheas when he refers to coracles is referring to the foreign traders. This seems unlikely but seems to refer to the suppliers from the different river mouths transporting their tin to Ictis along the coast to the central agency. Certainly this would have been the easiest way to get ingots from areas downstream of the rivers running from southern Dartmoor to convey them to ictis. The river Avon however, the effluent from which exits by the trading post of Ictis is a different story, as the Tin came down by cart from Dartmoor as witnessed by Diodorus’ description of Pytheas’ eye witness account as we shall establish later.

It becomes evident that Diodorous when he writes, ‘and a peculiar thing occurs concerning islands near, lying between Europe and Britain. For at high tides, the passage between being flooded, they appear as islands, but at low tide, the sea recedes and much space being exposed again dry, they are seen to be peninsulas’; has completely misled those investigators looking for the fabled island of Ictis.

The word “near” when referring to neighbouring islands has made it impossible to find a relative location on the South West coast of Devon and Cornwall. The most probable explanation of this confusion.... which leads to an impossible location to match its description…… is that it is a combination of Pytheas’ original eye witness account combined with that of a later trader who gives account of passing the Channel Islands. Upon setting out from the French coast in the morning, would see islands before dark while passing the Channel Islands, then probably having slept through the night one would arrive at another island next to the coast…… could be an explanation, but it is more likely that it is a mixture of two accounts.

Ictis is a single Island of Pytheas’ account but was misconstrued by Diodorus and other chroniclers from eyewitness accounts of traders that obviously were referring to the Channel Islands and this reference to other islands being ‘near’ is a later interpolation and misunderstanding of Pytheas’ account. Alternatively, a passenger not accustomed to navigation, the sea or the speed at which a boat travels, might lead him to believe those other islands to be in close proximity to the one at which he has arrived if they travelled through the night.

It is highly probable that Diodorous is relating directly from Pytheas the detail concerning the island drying out, but then inserts his own information narrated to him from one of the overland traders who might have made the voyage to Ictis or even heard of an account or seen the Channel Islands. Diodorus as a Greek Sicilian from Mediterranean waters is already struggling with the concept of ‘tides’ and in his narration he deems the whole notion as “peculiar”. So having made this error and misunderstood that Ictis is situated “near” other islands, these other islands then in the same ‘peculiar tide’, become plural peninsulas’ in the narrative. To find such a location on the British South West promontory ‘near Britain’ would be impossible. However one might view the confusion of the plurality of Islands, we know that Pytheas is talking of a singular Island called Ictis to which wagons cross over when the tide recedes.

However, with the many garbled references let us stick to the account in Diodorus’s ‘Bibliotheca Historica’ for the moment and see what he has to say in the following passage relating to the Island of Ictis and the British tin trade;

“We shall give an account of the British institutions, and other peculiar features, when we come to Cæsar’s expedition undertaken against them, but we will now discuss of the tin produced there. The inhabitants who dwell near the promontory of Britain, known as Belerium, are remarkably hospitable; and, from their intercourse with other peoples merchants, they are civilized in their mode of life. These people prepare the tin, in an ingenious way, quarrying the ground from which it is produced, and which, though rocky, has fissures containing ore; and having extracted the supply of ore, they cleanse and purify it, and when they have melted it into tin ingots, they carry it to a certain island, which lies off Britain, and is called Ictis. At the ebbing of the tide, the space between this island and the mainland is left dry and then they can convey the tin in large quantities over to the island on their wagons. A peculiar circumstance happens with regard to the neighbouring islands, which lie between Europe and Britain, for at flood tide, the intermediate space being filled up, they appear as islands; but at ebb tide, the sea recedes, and leaves a large extent of dry land, and at that time, they look like peninsulas. Hence the merchants buy the tin from the natives, on Ictis and carry it over into Gaul (Galatia); and in the end after travelling through Gaul on foot about a thirty days journey, they bring their wares on horses to the mouth of the river Rhone.”

Mount Batten in Plymouth, a peninsula just off Cattwater, has been posited as a possible contender for Ictis, but it doesn't dry out at low tide and it could never have been kept secret as Strabo relates and one can see geologically it has never been separated by tidal flow.... or insular, to fit with Pytheas’ description. The source of the Plym is at Plymhead, on the high open moorland of Dartmoor and the river from Higher Hartor to Cadover Bridge which has concentrated evidence of early settlement including burial mounds and Bronze Age hut circles.... would possibly put Mount Batten as a contender for Ictis, if indeed it had dried out at low tide to where carts could cross, as related by in the original description by Pytheas. The strip of land leading to Mount Batten was splashed on a high tide before the modern breakwater was built but this hardly results in the description of an island. Even though there is a small natural harbour.... why, one must ask was the tin taken to the island that Pytheas witnessed, but for the insular protection and the ease of landing and then loading a vessel.... both of these conveniently found at Burgh island.

Pytheas correctly estimated the circumference of Great Britain as 4000 miles and also knew the distance that he had sailed from Marseille to be 1050 instead of the actual distance of 1120, so he was accurate in his own estimations and figures. His account would have been without error because he experienced it, unlike later second hand accounts, some of which were written by chroniclers that thought his exploits and observations not credible and actively set out to discredit him.

The Belerion mentioned by Pytheas is most likely defined as the southern promontory of Great Britain probably commencing with Salcombe in South Devon, stretching all the way down to Lands’ End. This ‘promontory’ clearly depicted on a map geographically adheres to Pytheas’ description. More rationally we can understand his definition as the start of the south west peninsula or ‘promontory’ as a description derived by a Navigator. There is also the fact that the name of Belerion tends to suggest the area defined by a people and that same area would then latterly become known as Dumnonia which included both Devon and Cornwall. By Pytheas’ understanding, he was explaining the area south of Salcombe and describing Belerion as such, being defined by a people ‘the natives of this promontory area’ more than the norm, being ’friendly to strangers’; a trait still evident in the modern era.

Just west of the entrance into Salcombe estuary, about 2.5 miles west of ‘Bolt tail’, there lies a small island called Burgh Island which fits Pytheas’s description exactly. Bolt head and Bolt tail (probably derived from Bel) being easily recognisable from miles out to sea with its prominent plateau like formation.... would

make landfall at Ictis for any early trader relatively simple ‘eyeball navigation’. If one considers that, to navigate in these tidal currents that relentlessly flow, (sometimes in opposing directions on the outskirts of the channel on the same contrary tide)…… it makes navigation hazardous. Once having passed the Channel Islands on a trip from the French coast or from a departure point further west, the navigator is open to the vagaries of the current and weather.

The first compasses were made of lodestone, a naturally-magnetized ore of iron. Ancient people found that if a lodestone was suspended so it could turn freely, it would always point in the same direction toward the magnetic pole. These were later adapted as compasses made of iron needles, magnetized by stroking them with a lodestone. It is highly probable that the early navigators that were plying their trade in tin, even before Pytheas made his voyage, used these lodestones to locate the escarpment of Bolt head and Bolt Tail. There is an old mine at the base of Bolt head known as Easton’s mine in which Mundic is found (an oxidisation of pyrites).... while the unfortunate miner had hoped to find Copper. These lodes of Pyrites crystals are found throughout the whole cliff and there are several well documented accounts of Ship’s compasses being ‘swung off’ by the mass of Iron rich lodes found in the headland. The Captain of the Herzogin Cecilie fell afoul of this phenomena by hitting the Ham stone.... while the ancients may have used this to their advantage in conjunction with a swinging lodestone.

Copyright The Francis Frith Collection

Figure 10 Showing the Island of Ictis as it appeared in 1918 but relatively unchanged since Pytheas first visited.

Pytheas was one of the first people to give a report of Stonehenge while he visited the British Isles and took measurements of the Sun’s declination in Britain at different points in the year to further his astronomical studies. He was also probably one of the first Greeks to give an account of the tidal activity which he had learnt (from the Britons), was caused by the moon, the tide of course being virtually non-existent in Mediterranean waters. This was 1800 years before Galileo was taken to task in asserting that the world was round. Galileo was denounced at the Roman Inquisition in 1615 AD by the Catholic Church, which condemned heliocentrism (the idea that the world was a globe) as ‘false and contrary to Scripture’. This does seem quite extraordinary when the Sun and Moon are obviously round and this knowledge had existed for nearly two thousand years.

Some of the ancient writers like Diodorus do not even mention Pytheas by name, but refer to his comments alone. Pliny, who is using Timaeus as a source says, “there is an island named Mictis where tin is found, and to which the Britains cross”. He uses the word ‘proveniat’ which commentators have assumed as meaning that Tin was actually mined at Ictis but the real meaning is ‘provend’ as a supplier which matches the concept of ‘Emporium’ which many translators chroniclers and commentators have misunderstood. The reasoning behind this choice of word is very misleading, since there was no tin mined at the island, just stored there, (large quantities of tin being transferred to the island by cart)..... this point being of great importance as the reader will become aware shortly. The ‘crossing’, mentioned by most chroniclers is in reference to the sandbar or causeway evidenced today at Burgh island, but Pliny who obviously never went to the island, implying a large stretch of land to be crossed.

Diodorus writes also that tin is brought to the island of Ictis, where there is an Emporium, literally being translated as a ‘marketplace or agency’ and this is the definition which defines the role of Ictis.

Polybius was probably a source to Strabo for some details concerning Ictis and Strabo relates that an Emporium on the Island of Corbulo at the mouth of the river Loire was associated with the Island of Ictis, so here again the real picture is made more difficult to identify Ictis. Strabo also infers that Ictis, and Corbulo are different names for the same island, so there is much confusion as the Chinese whisper effect has confused its location. Possibly, Strabo never saw a copy of Pytheas and sourced most of his material from Polybius. Diodorus on the other hand seems to have read Timaeus, sourced from Pytheas’ original, which Polybius seems to have read also. It would appear that Strabo did not read Pytheas first hand, (or he would not have referred to Polybius) and is probably accountable for much of the Chinese whispers effect.

Pliny calls the island, Mictis, mictim or mictin which indicates that he has translated directly from Timaeus, changing the case ending from the Greek at different times, but he was struggling to make the distinction between Cassiteris and Ictis because he actually writes “INSULAM MICTIM,”. Other writers such as Suetonius have actually referred to the island as Vectis, which has obviously led to confusion with the Isle of Wight which was known in the Roman world as Vectis and used to be pronounced ‘ouectis’ which obviously sounds similar to Ictis.

It would appear taking into account archaeological evidence of early tin production that one would need to look for an island somewhere between Salcombe and Lands’ End that dries out at low tide and becomes a peninsula. We should ignore the information about Ictis having been surrounded by other islands close by, as there is no such location near a tidal Island peninsula. We should account it as later misunderstanding of a muddled confusion from a second or third hand account concerning the Channel Islands. Other considerations to achieve a practical location for Ictis should consider navigational ease or constraints and overland transportation; for by Pytheas’ account, these were large consignments of tin being moved. It would appear therefore, that the story as a whole has become a confused interpretation over the years comprised of rationalisations and interpolations of the original account.

Diodorus relates that Ictis was dry at low water and “the natives conveyed to it wagons, in which were large quantities of tin”. This and the fact that the Island is connected by a causeway at low tide, across which these wagons convey the tin are the essential facts relayed by Pytheas himself.

The fact that large quantities of tin at this stage in 350BC and more specifically before that, was produced in Devon can be seen archeologically. It makes little practical sense to think that the Isle of Wight or Hengistbury point or Thanet is even a viable candidate for the island of Ictis.

The quantities mentioned and the heavy transport loads involved from Dartmoor as far as the Isle of Wight over 100 miles away should exclude any further mention being given as a credible location for Ictis even given the transport risks of such a valuable commodity. The problem with all the previous possible candidates for the Island of Ictis is that scholars or researchers have always used information selectively to support their own views on the location. It is known that tin mining had first started in between the Erm and Avon estuary in the early British Bronze Age. There is ample archaeological evidence to show that tin streaming existed high up on the moors behind South Brent at Shipley Bridge on the Avon, at least to 1600BC and probably beyond.

Figure 10a Showing the tin Valley of the Avon, high above Ictis on Southern Dartmoor.

Old style tin streaming between these two rivers was the main industry in pre historic times, due to the geological formation of a river on each side of a central granite escarpment. Tin is smelted from ‘cassiterite’, a mineral found in hydrothermal veins in granite, which is what had been separated by constant erosion from the Quartz, Mica and Feldspar that constitute the Granite.

This area just north of the South Hams is where we find the earliest beginnings of what was to become a global supplier of tin to the ancient world. The methods employed to extract tin from Dartmoor followed a progression from streaming through open cast mining to much later underground mining. Within ten miles from Ictis there are extensive archaeological remains of these three phases of the industry, and sites still exist that show the stages of processing that were necessary to convert the ore to tin metal. The ordnance survey map provides a snapshot showing the evolution from the early Bronze Age through to the 1300’s AD. The once very extensive alluvial deposits of tin ore, which were the first deposits to be mined in the two rivers…… once existed in lodes, that have been eroded , leaving the steep sided valleys; evidence the vast quantity of ore that must originally have been gathered on the valley floor. The first occupants, just panning the river beds due to cassiterite’s specific gravity, would have sourced it all the way down the Erm and Avon Valleys.

The legendry island of Ictis which is called ‘Burgh Island’ today, stands at the mouth of the Avon River on the opposite shore to the small hamlet of Bantham. The Island of Ictis, first heard of in the chronicles of the ancient writers, was probably coined from the Greek ikhthys meaning fish, because up until recently Burgh Island was renowned for the shoals of pilchards that congregated naturally around it in Bigbury Bay. It seems that Pytheas referred to the Island as ikhthys island or ‘fish island’ (as it was probably called back then by the locals)…… and then later chroniclers termed it the Island of Ictis. The shoals of pilchards in the bay were legendary well into the 18th century…… fishing fleets said to have made catches of 12 million fish in a single day. The pilchards were cured with salt and were either pressed for oil or shipped by the barrel load to Europe. It seems extraordinary that the one Island described by Pytheas as Fish Island and renowned for its huge shoals that sometimes darkened the whole bay, would not be associated with the Greek word ikhthys…… also being the only tidal island on the southern promontory as described by Pytheas…… and especially situated just 10 miles from the huge alluvial tin deposits that existed on southern Dartmoor.

Tin was transported from this small island over to France by French traders and further by international traders such as the Phoenicians…… since around 1000 BC until around 30 BC. This trade must have been seriously interfered with by Julius Caesar's expeditions in 55 and 54 BC. The recent find of tin ingots at the mouth of the River Erm 2.5 miles distant, confirms Burgh Island as Ictis and its link with the tin trade. In small area near Bantham that has recently been archaeologically excavated, Amphorae were found and also other signs of active trade with France and most probably Phoenician traders from an early era. In another recent discovery on the Eastern shore at Wash Gully, 300 yards off the coast on the approaches to the Salcombe estuary, divers recently uncovered 259 copper ingots, a bronze leaf sword and 27 tin ingots. The wreck of an old trading vessel found there, dates from around 900BC and measures 40ft long to approximately 6ft wide and is constructed from timber planks. It is thought to have been powered by a crew of 15 seamen with paddles, but it seems likely even at this early stage, some form of ‘windage’ would have been employed in a fair wind.

There is more physical archaeological evidence along this small stretch of coast, between the mouth of the river Erm and Salcombe, to add credibility to Burgh island being synonymous with Ictis and its links with the Tin industry. The Archeological evidence indicates that there was considerable trade in tin ore being shipped abroad from an early period. Although the copper ingots of the Salcombe wreck are said to have come from Europe; it does not necessarily indicate that the copper was being imported. A craft of this size may have been on a scouting mission to pick up ingots from Ictis, having heard of it as a tin depot from those further along the coast or the tin ingots could have come from Ictis before it was wrecked.

There is little evidence to show anywhere on the promontory of Belerion that the actual smelting of bronze took place to any industrial degree but it is possible that these copper ingots found off Salcombe, could have been traded with the locals for the rarer commodity of tin. Although copper was mined to the south-west of Dartmoor, these mines are of a much later date than the wreck in question. The ‘Blow Houses’ found up behind the Avon dam are part of the tin smelting process and were probably only used as such and not employed to make bronze and these were of a much later date.

Strabo relates the fact that the people who control the Island of Ictis took great pains to hide the business of the island from Roman vessels seen on that part of the coast. It is probable that the early wagoneers who brought the tin down through Loddiswell to the Island of Ictis for sale, could no longer keep secret their route down from Dartmoor after the Romans arrived and this may have been the root cause of the eventual end of the islands monopoly as the place of primary export. ‘Emporium’ indicates that Ictis acted as a market, which indicates some sort of central agency, trading post or even monopoly from which the tin was traded. This would make sense practically, understanding that a trading vessel would not want to wait around for the tin to be brought down from the various tin streamers upon the moors. This leads to a natural conclusion that Ictis maintained some sort of vault or storage area from which tin was dispersed as trading vessels arrived. This would also concur with the ‘wagon loads’ of Pytheas eye witness account. vessels arriving from abroad, could expedite their business by landing and loading on the sand causeway and if the winds were fair, return home without a long wait in the anchorage at Bantham.

In the early days when coracles were used, the pilot of a small trading vessel would take rest in Bantham behind the duned promontory. He would sail across to Burgh Island, dry out on the sand at low tide while loading, securing and making ship shape his cargo of tin ‘Astragali’, to be floated off at high tide for the return voyage. It would seem also that Pytheas had a sound vessel but it is quite possible that his reference to coracles only refers to vessels engaged in the tin trade bringing tin to the Island of Ictis from local river mouths or even as far as from tin bearing Cornish river beds.

It may be that Pliny quoting Timaeus ‘to which the Britons cross in boats of osier covered with stitched hides’……is an account originating from Pytheas when he initially asked the Britons where the Island that sells tin might be found. The reason for positing such an assertion is that I believe that the merchants of Marseille commissioned Pytheas’ voyage because they had witnessed a substance known now as British Glass (which was a by-product of smelting) that was said to have come from the island that sold tin. It is thought that Pytheas went in search of Amber which is a fossilised resin but the nearest thing in the ancient world to describe British Glass.

Modern construction such as clincker that used bronze nails was known at the time of Pytheas’s visit, but we can speculate that most of the cross channel trade in tin would have taken place in vessels built of wood and animal skins to ensure the vessel remained watertight…… this as a natural progression from framed coracles.

There is evidence in France of bronze foundries that may have built upon a long standing trade with Ictis such as Villedieu-les-Poêles just inland from the Contentin coast not far from Mont-Saint-Michel. Villedieu-les-Poêles was established on a reputation stemming back to pre-Roman times and was one such foundry that eventually became one of the biggest in France in the medieval era smelting bronze for church bells across Europe. This trade being established through the mainland harbours such as those at St. Père-sur-Mer, Genets and Avranches and St Malo. One can assume therefore that most of the bronze was founded in Europe as copper became more plentiful from European mines.

It becomes apparent that Ictis acted as the main tin agent for the western peninsular of England, declining from around 50BC until its closure, but until that point, miners upon Dartmoor would have found it very difficult to deliver as demand dictated, without an agency on the shore to deal with the comings and goings of foreign vessels. There is no question that the tin was traded with Europe, the Greek historian Herodotus in the 5th century B.C, referring to the tin trade as occurring in the "Isles of the West" and others said to be Phoenician saying the trade existed long before that. Biblical records recording the use of tin as far back as the coming out of Egypt with Moses, Tubal-Cain the instructor of every artificer in works of brass and Iron, and the building of the first Temple.

Ictis’ central agency, originally determined by geographical convenience; dissolved, as the industry changed or as the Romans search for the tin Island became ever closer to discovery. This island contains what probably can be likened to one of the first banks to ever exist. As such it would allow the miners to bring their tin down from the moors when they wished and the foreign traders to purchase their ingots …… then up anchor when the wind and tide were in their favour. The production of tin involved much labour and its use in conjunction with copper created a metal of great value. Late in Ictis’ history, with the emerging Roman Empire trying to get their hands on as much tin as possible, it proved necessary, in its final century of trading, to conceal the active trade of the island.

Strabo relates: ‘Now in former times it was the Phoenicians alone who carried on this commerce for they kept the voyage a secret from everyone else. At one time when the Romans were closely pursuing a certain Phoenician ship-captain in order that they too might uncover the tin markets in question, jealously guarding the secret, the ship-captain drove his ship on purpose off its course into shoal water; and after he had lured his pursuer into the same ruin, he himself escaped by a piece of wreckage and received from the State the value of the cargo and what he had lost. Still, by trying many times, the Romans learned all about the voyage.’

It seems in the end, the location of Ictis was never actually discovered and Cornwall in general became known as the Cassiterides, Diodorus saying “if I am deceived, I would say, with Herodotus, that I am not acquainted with the Cassiterides.” meaning as a set of Islands, given as ten in number where tin is produced. This would, as we have discussed…… seem to be a later confusion with the Channel Islands and outlying rocks.

Posidonius in his account of the tin-trade, says that metal was dug up ‘among the barbarians beyond Lusitania, and in the islands called Cassiterides,’ and he added that it was also found in Britain, and transported to Marseilles. Pomponius Mela relates that ‘Among the Celtici are several islands, all called by the single name of Cassiterides, because they abound in tin.’ Strabo, writing about the year 10 AD, is in no way sure of the location of the Cassiterides or the islands on the coast of Spain and seems to think the tin-islands are distant to Britain causing confusion with the Scilly Isles or indicating some knowledge or rumour about the Azores and says ‘Northwards and opposite to the Artabri are the islands called the Cassiterides, situated in the high seas, somewhere about the same latitude as Britain.’ And then goes on to say that ‘The islands are ten in number’. Pliny, who was Procurator of Spain writing just after Strabo reverts back to the old statement, that ‘opposite to Celtiberia are a number of islands, which the Greeks called Cassiterides, because of their abundance of tin.’

Ictis by this time was no longer operational but its location to the Romans was unknown surely because by this time the legendry island that had ceased operation was now understood to be a bunch of islands that produced tin on them…… a non existant location. Publius Crassus visited the northern coast of Spain and he was supposed to have found the way to the Cassiterides, because Strabo says ‘As soon as he landed there, he saw that the mines were worked at a very slight depth, and that the natives were peaceable and employing themselves of their own accord in navigation: so he taught the voyage to all that were willing, although it was longer than the voyage to Britain. Thus much about Spain, and the islands lying in front of it.’

What Crassus had found is not certain but if it were on the British coast by this time the steady migration of tinners moving south after the closure of Ictis would have been inevitable, so maybe he witnessed ‘shamelling’ down in Cornwall. Certainly to that part of the peninsula would have been further than most cross channel routes from France and he may have assumed Cornwall to be further out into the ocean and disconnected from Britain especially if having travelled from Spain. Festus Avienus who wrote around 400AD perpetuates the myth that Islands exist somewhere out in the channel or off southern Britain by regurgitating the accounts of previous chroniclers: ‘Beneath this promontory spreads the vast Oestrymnian gulf, in which rise out of the sea the Oestrymnides islands, scattered with wide intervals, rich in metal of tin and lead. The people are proud, clever, and active, and all engaged in incessant cares of commerce. They furrow the wide rough strait, and the ocean abounding in sea-monsters, with a new species of boat. For they know not how to frame keels with pine or maple, as others use, nor to construct their curved barks with fir, but strange to say, they always equip their vessels with skins joined together, and often traverse the salt sea in a hide of leather. It is two days' sail from hence to the Sacred Island, as the ancients called it’ and goes on to say, ‘near to this again is the broad island of Albion.’

Much of this information coming from chroniclers such as Pliny who believed it to be a fable of the Greeks, that the tin was fetched from " islands in the Atlantic," and carried there in the "wicker-boats sewn round with hides."

Polybius is the authority for letting us know that Ictis and Corbelo were in fact in later days kept secret from the Romans saying that no one in the city could tell the Romans anything worth mentioning about the north and also that nothing could be learned from the merchants of Narbonne, or of the City of Corbelo, which was said to have been a flourishing place in the age of Pytheas and who Strabo mixes up with Ictis.

Foreigners were warned of the danger of all attempts to interfere with the Carthaginian commerce.

Strabo tells us of a Phoenician trading vessel whose captain on its return voyage from the “Tin Isles”, while being followed by a Roman vessel which kept him in sight and being unable to elude it; duly steered into the shallows, which caused the sinking of both vessels on a shoal. This endeavour as we saw in the passage earlier was to maintain the secrecy of the location of Ictis.

Now there would be no point in this deed unless of course he was seen heading to seaward from the proximity of Ictis and this indicates that he must have been fully laden because he was on a return journey and therefore probably slower than normal. If overhauled and captured it would be difficult to explain the inconsistency of being laden with ingots in close proximity to an island…… and the Roman captain working out that this was the island that his countrymen had searched for. If the Phoenician were somewhat distant however from the island and captured, he could say Ictis was at any location, but to be seen heading to seaward departing what looks to be a Lee shore and in close proximity to an island, would surely have made a Roman captain suspicious if he had indeed survived to tell the tale or captured the captain with his cargo.

Figure 10b Showing the white water at the head of the river Erm caused by West Mary’s rocks which the Phonecian pilot ran his vessel onto and the proximity of these rocks to the Fabled Island of Ictis situated in Bigbury Bay.

The captain of the Phoenician vessel, whose own life was preserved, was rewarded by his countryman or the agency on the island for managing to maintain the secrecy of the island which begs the question; was Ictis’ agency or monopoly set up by merchants from Tyre and Sidon but we shall deal with this question later when we learn that Ictis is in fact the Island of Sarras from the Grail stories and so named after Zarrah Judah’s son and firstborn heir.

It seems very strange that a trading vessel laden with a cargo of tin ingots, having just left the coast would fall upon Mary's rocks at the mouth of the Erm estuary. Assuming we have located Ictis, (as Melkin later confirms), it would seem extraordinary as an explanation for the find of a cache of ingots, that a boat would set out in foul conditions after having loaded a cargo, only to fall prey to rocks on the next river mouth over from where one had just set sail.

A captain could always return to where he knew was navigable. It seems highly likely that the boat carrying the wrecked ingots recently discovered at the mouth of the Erm was the very Phoenician vessel narrated by Strabo, while there was reported evidence of another wrecked vessel of a similar age that had sunk close by. Interesting is the fact that it was his countrymen that recompensed him not only for his vessel but the value of his cargo. This would lead us to believe by Strabo’s report that this island was held in such high esteem by the Phoenicians as a central agency and as such, probably kept secret its whereabouts, to monopolise the supply of tin to the ancient world. Logically, because of the cluster of ingots found at the mouth of the Erm with a matching account to explain their presence in such close proximity to Ictis; it should predispose the enquirer to consider the reasons for such an unlikely find. It must be that the Island was trying to remain unexposed to Roman discovery and takeover as Strabo indicates. This alone should confirm that the identity of Ictis is synonymous with Burgh Island without the information that Melkin later provides us with as an unequivocally identification.

It was the community at Folly Hill just above Bigbury on Sea which operated Ictis as a storehouse and mart for tin due to its close proximity for loading while beached, as opposed to there having been a community that has left archaeological evidence of dwelling on the Island itself.

The prevailing wind in Bigbury bay is south west most of the time but if one were heading out into the channel, one would leave Ictis on a starboard tack heading toward the hill fort on Bolt tail. If no look outs had warned an unsuspecting captain and he met a Roman vessel heading north west sailing under Bolt Tail, the two vessels would be virtually on top of each other before they sighted each other. Our brave Phonecian captain chose to ‘go about’ and ‘reach’ past Ictis and lead his pursuer to the mouth of the Erm. For the Roman to follow the Phonecian onto the rocks would mean that as Strabo related, he was unable to shake off his pursuer. The Roman captain, immediately on the the Phoenician’s stern, thinking he was heading into the navigable waters of a river mouth, would be left no time to take evasive action, sailing off the wind into the river mouth. In fact he was probably so close having ‘run him down’ across the bay, that the last thing he saw was the vessel ahead, founder on the rocks before he heard the bottom of his own vessel disintegrate. It seems highly probable that the Phoenician captain might have thought he would clear the reef while leading his pursuer (with a deeper draught) onto it. It was a chance he was willing to take and his decision would have been dependant on the tide at the time of the pursuit but in the interests of protecting the whereabouts of the then undiscovered ‘Tin Emporium’ he courageously sacrificed his vessel. The Tin ingots are all that remain, but they are situated only 2.5 miles away from Ictis. Of course the only evidence that would remain from such an incident would be the narrative itself and the cache of tin ingots after a period of approximately 2100 years. The fact that this story was still circulating at the time Strabo wrote is a good indication of the degree of fame in which the Phonecian captain was regarded.

Caesar himself bears witness that the Veniti at this time who were also engaged in tin export from Ictis in the Roman era ‘were the most powerfull seafaring people who exact tribute from such merchants as sail on that sea’ meaning the channel. The enemy i.e. the Veniti, he says ‘had great advantage over us in their shipping; the keels of their ships were flatter than ours, consequently more convenient for the shallows and low tides; their forecastles were very high; their poops were contrived so as to endure the roughness of the sea; the hull of their vessels were built of impenetrable oak; the banks for the oars were beams of a foot square ,fastened at each end, with iron pins an inch thick. Instead of cables for their anchors they made use of iron chains and had hides for their sails, either because they wanted linen and were ignorant of its use or what is more likely, they thought linen sails not strong enough to endure their boisterous seas and tempestuous winds and to carry vessels of such considerable burden.

The ease of access into the small tidal basin of Bantham would have been considerably easier to navigate in days gone by, before the dam at the head of the River Avon was constructed. It is plain to see from a seaward perspective, how small trading vessels having once turned the corner at the mouth of the Avon, find shelter in a small anchorage and remain hidden as long as they were not seen entering the harbour.

Figure 11 showing the anchorage at Bantham

From seaward, the approach to the river mouth looks like a ‘lee shore’ which no sailor would want to approach unless he had prior knowledge of the passage between the waves leading to a haven behind the spit. From a seaward perspective, a passing vessel would only see the cliffs in the background and never assume the tidal river turned tightly to starboard behind Bantham dunes. Due to the fact that the entrance is not wide, the entrance is disguised from seaward as a breaking shoreline at nearly all states of the tide as shown in figure 12, but a clear entrance is visible in the photograph viewed from the top of the Island of Ictis.

Figure 12 showing the approaches to mouth of the river Avon.

For this reason and because of the brave acts of one Phonecian captain, Ictis has remained elusive. If the Romans had discovered it, the modern world would have known its whereabouts. In the early days of Ictis, if the weather was foul and the tide ebbing, a small trading vessel could find sanctuary and dry out on the beach in the lee of the sand causeway with enough shelter found in the lee of the island itself. When the tide flooded, a small vessel would ease up to the anchorage in Bantham. In 1864, during the drainage of the marsh around the Buckland stream at Bantham, it was noticed that cart loads of bone were recovered which confirms a large camp that was known to exist there in Roman times and indicates that Ictis had become redundant before the camp was established as later writers would not still refer to the fabled Island.

Phoenicians and Veniti alike traded with these friendly people for centuries. It was only due to the longevity of tin streaming and the expertise that was built up due to this trade over such a long period that their reputation and pre-eminence continued until the Roman era. The ‘tinners’ themselves, would have been content in the knowledge that, through the agency the best price was realised and the ‘tinners’ did not find it necessary to undercut the value of their labour by competing with one another.

Bronze age ‘tinners’ started to mine eluvial deposits for tin as alluvial deposits started to dwindle and this caused a gradual edging northward over the centuries up to Tavistock, Ashburton and Chagford. Much of the evidence of the earliest tinners upon southern Dartmoor that originated on the Avon, and the Erm but later encorporated the river Yealm and some of the tributaries of the Tamar, Plym and river Dart have had their archaeological evidence of tin streaming from the early British bronze age removed by subsequent workings. The Bronze Age axe head found on Mothecombe beach dated to around 1600BC is evidence of very early tin production for the Erm and Avon valleys and also adds credence to Ictis’ subsequent establishment.

The western side of Dartmoor opening up probably after Ictis shut down, as tin from this side traded out of Sutton harbour. Gradually over a period of 1600 years the whole industry made a steady progression southwards into Cornwall but certainly the beginnings of tin were from the rich alluvial grounds on Southern Dartmoor from which the Ictis trade was born and for which the Island became famed in the ancient world.

From the ancient writers, to the modern researcher misinformation about the Island of Ictis has compounded its elusiveness. One can see how the Cassitterides (the Tin Isles), from the later Latin chroniclers, was mistaken for an island called Ictis which exported tin and which was reported as being surrounded by other islands in close proximity. Diodorus says of these “islands,” (using the plural,) that “they appear islands” only at “high water” and that when the tide is out, the intervening space is left dry, and “they are seen to be peninsulas”. This being reported by the subsequent writers is understandable from a chronicler who has never seen the French coast, the English coast or tides.

It is not difficult to understand how one can get the detail between islands of the Channel Islands, mixed up with the island that is the ‘Emporium’ that actually dries out at low tide.

Confused accounts have prevented researchers from noticing the only island from the Salcombe estuary down to Lands’ End that would practically fit Pytheas’s description. It also fits all the practical criteria of easy access to tin from ancient time, the provision of a safe harbour and seclusion from pirates. The fact that it dries out at low tide, (the one unequivocal clue we had), because Diodorus found the concept strange and yet still included that detail in his narrative, is only part of the confirmation. Diodorus at no stage intonated the Island was to be found in Cornwall but by his definition of the Belerion promontory, his southern promontory could start at Salcombe. In fact Diodorus has little idea about Ictis and thinks the Tin Isles are off Spain. Tin also is found in many regions of Iberia, but not found, however, on the surface of the earth, as certain writers continually repeat in their histories, but mined out of the ground and smelted in the same way as silver and gold are. For there are many mines of tin in the country above Lusitania and on the islets which lie off Iberia out in the ocean and are called because of that fact the Cassiterides.

Diodorus knows that tin is mined in Spain and like Strabo, is dubious of Pytheas’ account which implies the collection of alluvial and elluvial deposits. He also follows this last extract with: And tin is brought in large quantities also from the island of Britain to the opposite Gaul, where it is taken by merchants on horses through the interior of Celtica both to the Massalians and to the city of Narbo, as it is called. By following on with this account he is implying that the Island of Ictis to which tin was transported…… now was to become islands where the tin came from called the Cassiterides. There simply never were tin producing Islands. Supporters of the St. Michael’s Mount location as Ictis also should remember that it is not opposite Gaul as described above, whereas Burgh Island not only has the confused Channel Islands in close proximity but also fits the ‘opposite Gaul’ account more accurately. Regardless of the fact that Diodorus from Pytheas’ account records that the wagons conveyed the tin to the Island, traders accounts recorded by chroniclers would have expressly confirmed that Ictis is where one obtains tin, not where the tin came from before it was transported for storage on the island.

From the early bronze age in the south west, tin was an extremely scarce and valuable commodity due to the amount of labour that it took to extract from alluvial ground or river bed deposits before smelting. A large community of Bronze Age tinners existed in the area around Shipley Bridge where the initial alluvial deposits would have been plentiful and there is evidence that in the dry summer months they may have controlled the river flow with a small dam so that working the river beds was facilitated for short intervals. The dam may well have been used for fish stock also. It is for this reason Ictis sprung up at the base of the Avon and Erm rivers evolving into a trading post or market and then became the equivalent of the local bank vault, storing tin ingots that had been mined in the area, these very miners hewing out a storage area within the Island. This convenience of location, gave easy access for the traders, instant payment for the ‘tinners’, of the goods brought over by the continental traders and the first major tin monopoly and marketplace for the tinners product.

Figure 12a showing the dam wall at Shipley Bridge with protruding stones designed to anchor the cross wall. These large stones were anchored into the side wall to create a fixing point for the dam that is found next to the Bronze Age dwellings at Shipley Bridge.

Old Cornish folklore tells a story that 2000 years ago Jesus visited southern England in his early childhood. The story goes that he accompanied his uncle, who was Joseph of Arimathea, on many of his voyages to the British isles. The legend persists that Joseph of Arimathea came to Britain on many occasions as a tin merchant. It is not difficult to assume that if involved in the tin business he would certainly pay a visit to Ictis even though it might have been in the throes of closing down. The island of Ictis in his earlier visits was probably operating as in its heyday but much of the activity during the course of his lifetime would be in decline due to Roman interference. The ‘tinners’ upon Dartmoor had predominantly supplied the ancient world with tin but the supplies ran thin as demand increased. Mining methods were changing to cope with demand; Ictis’s monopoly of the past was surpassed by ‘tinners’ disbursing and operating in their own localities, making their own deals with foreign traders in many of the estuaries and rivers along the southern coast. If Joseph of Arimathea owned the island while in operation or subsequently bought the now defunct vault, hewn within the island, that used to house all the tin, this would in part explain the reference to the island being an ‘emporium’…… yet also provide a few answers to the discrepancies in the burial accounts of Jesus. Of course today everyone is ignorant of the storage area within the Island and its functionality and it lays as yet undiscovered. What was the best kept secret of the ancient world was now to become the best kept secret of the modern world.

The reader at this point may wonder where we are going with all this but after our enquiry into the prophecy of Melkin and the Grail legends these connections will be confirmed and we will have to come back to the question of Ictis. If there is any truth in what we are proposing, why would Joseph have the body of Jesus repatriated back to England?

When the body of Jesus is unveiled, it in no way detracts from his status or his mission or to what he has accomplished through God’s divine plan during the last 2000 years. The only people it would offend are those who believe the resurrection involves a body physically lifting off the earth and leaving no trace, even though this technically was the Ascension. It is for this very reason the ‘Grail’ has been so many things except the body of Jesus, as this would not fit the reports of the Ascension which Apostolic sources had assumed similar to Elijah's…… the lack of a body perpetuating the belief in Ascension. It is also the reason for the complicated and conflicting polemicism surrounding the discovery of the empty tomb related by the Gospel writers.

How is it that so many questions surround Jesus’s provenance at his arrival in Jerusalem to carry out his mission? John the Baptist his own cousin was not familiar with him, yet the inhabitants of Jerusalem knew his mother. They did not know Jesus on his arrival because he had been away for some time and he was castigated for being a Zerhite by being called a Nazarene. Most Bible scholars are aware that Nazareth as a location or town did not exist and the first non-biblical source to mention that town was by Sextus Julius Africanus, dated about 200 AD; the first biblically connected reference being from the Church Father Origen, around the same time. A Nazarene comes from the word ‘Nazir’ which actually means an untrimmed vine, and refers to a Nazarite, a person with a conferred status rather than hailing from a location called Nazareth which the Gospel writers had rendered thus, due to their misunderstanding and scant biblical reference. Thus Nathaniel is rendered as having remarked: "Can any good thing proceed from Nazareth?" (John 1:46). There is no pre-Christian mention of Nazareth and it would seem that the Gospel writers dealt with the accusation of ‘Jesus the Nazarene’ as bestowing a place of origin.

However, Jesus would not have learnt nor been able to challenge the Pharisees in their understanding of the Law in Jerusalem, if indeed he had not received instruction elsewhere…… nor was it by visiting Egypt, as is often thought. It was obvious who misunderstood the Law by Jesus’s ability to confound the Jerusalem temples’ best accusers and sophists who asked between themselves the provenance of his wisdom. The Jews believing they had a monopoly on the interpretation of Law were deeply puzzled by Jesus's interpretations asking: "How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" (John 7:15). Jesus had been away for most of his formative years being schooled in the Law and what the prophets had predicted. The three main reasons for thinking it was England is that the Grail stories, once understood, show that his coffin was brought to England…… Melkin’s prophecy emphatically states where the body is…… and Cornish tradition has always maintained that he visited British shores.

Jesus was not negating the Law by challenging it with new insight, but instead confirming and fulfilling what the prophets had predicted and the Pharisees had misinterpreted. Essentially the Law to the Jews or Pharisees in Jerusalem had become as the law that lawyers rely on today. The law becomes corrupt…… and so it is today in our courts, that no man can be sure that the truth will be upheld. Precedent, previous case judgements upon which future judgements are decided, over time has been so corrupted by those who profess to search for the truth, that conscience and judgement in the courts has diverged so far that even common sense does not prevail. The wise of Jerusalem were rendered incapable of such correct understanding of the law by being subject to its corruption.

The Temple in Jerusalem at that time was like an empty shell, the Ark of the Covenant, the life of the temple, had been secreted by the Temple priests five hundred years earlier, deep in the vaults, while being besieged by the Babylonian army at the first captivity or even before that due to the Egyptians. Although the book of the Law was re-discovered on the Jews release from captivity, and their return with Ezra and Nehemiah, the Ark remained secreted and undiscovered.

After the crucifixion, Joseph managed to obtain Jesus's body and supposedly collected his blood and sweat into one or two receptacles and brought them with him to England. for all the Grail’s multitudinous depictions, it is the connection with Jesus that is the one unchanging theme. The vessel or vessels supposedly now lie with Joseph of Arimathea in an undiscovered sepulchre on mainland Britain. This may not be the whole truth but we will uncover the meaning of ‘duo fassula’ later as a riddle for ‘duplico fasciola’ which is a direct description of the Shroud of Turin being a doubled body cloth, which as we know today is full of the blood and sweat of Jesus. What most scholars believe today is that Melkin’s prophecy is a fraud but it is in fact what the mythical status of Glastonbury is founded upon. Without the gradual fraudulent transference of Glastonbury into Avalon maybe Gastonbury’s mythical status as the place where Joseph was laid to rest may purely have been based upon his church there.

Was it this prophecy or some other writings of Melkin that establishes the association with Joseph of Arimathea. Glastonbury is certainly not the Avalon of Melkin’s prophecy as the reader will become aware shortly especially when Melkin’s ‘adorandam virginem’ does not apply to the old church. Glastonbury acolytes have always assumed it was this phrase which locates Avalon in Glastonbury because the chapel of the Virgin Mary was located there. As we progress through the evidence it becomes clear that Melkin’s prophecy applies to the old island of Ictis where Joseph chose to bury his Son and he subsequently would be buried by members of his family as recorded in the perlesvaus or High history of the Grail.

If we just follow the dots, it's not so difficult to conceive that the Cornish legends have substance. If Joseph of Arimathea was Jesus's uncle or father and was a rich tin merchant who occasionally visited the South West of England, it would seem natural to find a refuge after the crisis that had taken place in Jerusalem. The refuge he sought was the fabled island of Ictis. It seems Joseph had established a relationship with the people who controlled the island or more probably bought it during his time as a tin merchant as it went into decline after the Roman invasion. It is this island to which Melkin leads us to…… but he calls it ‘Avallonis’ but he knows its name was Ictis.

Joseph after the murder of his Nephew would wish to return to a part of the world where people were known for their good nature. This should be understood also in terms of Joseph’s recent enlightenment that his nephew or son was in fact the ‘Messiah’ which had been spoken of by the prophets. However, there is always one continual thread in the various sources from Baronius, Melkin, William of Malmesbury and John of Glastonbury, to name but a few; and that is, that Joseph of Arimathea arrived in Britain, whether on St. Philip's instructions, on his son’s shirt, on Solomon’s ship or with Mary Magdalen. All this extraneous information can be accounted as immaterial because all we need to accomplish is find his resting place and all will be revealed. The enquiry of this book does uncover the whereabouts of Joseph of Arimathea's resting place; however, there are several more aspects to our enquiry that need to be considered first.

Joseph of Arimathea, who acted as a father figure to Jesus, realised that Jesus had fulfilled much that had been prophesied by the prophets of Israel and as the gospels relate, took it upon himself to ask Pilate for Jesus’s body that he might take care of it. Joseph of Arimathea returned to Britain having being fully converted by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit with the benefit of having understood the truth of the words that Jesus spoke in the temple and the relevance of his message. He returned as one of the main disciples to proselytise the British Isles and possibly sited the first church in the British Isles at Glastonbury.

Gildas circa.540 AD, the earliest source for the arrival of Jesus’s message in Britain attests, that Christianity first reached Britain when Tiberius was Emperor around 37AD. The Glastonbury tradition gives Joseph building the first church circa 67AD and both Tertullian 200 AD and Eusebius 280 AD, each confirm an early date for the first Christian message reaching Britain. Tertullian states that:
“For in whom else have the people of the world trusted, except in Christ who has already come?...How then the varieties of Gentiles and the many borders of the Moors, all the boundaries of the Spaniards, and the various nations of the Gauls, and the regions of the Britons, inaccessible to the Romans, but subdued by the true Christ”.

The Cornish these days cannot remember any of the words to continue the song that starts “Joseph was a tin merchant”. This song has helped perpetuate the legend of Jesus in Cornwall for 2000 years and more recently this same story has been brought into popular consciousness by Blake’s anthem exposing the same legend at the opening ceremony of the Olympics by portraying Blake’s Jerusalem. There is another song associated with Joseph in Cornish tradition, which we know today as “I saw three ships come sailing in”. Today it is a popular Christmas Carol, but many in Cornwall seem to think it has associations with Joseph of Arimathea’s voyages to the West Country but as we will uncover, this song stems from a completely different tradition, which also was to become the world’s second best kept secret.

Joseph of Arimathea and his connection with the British Isles has been related by many people, but there is none more responsible for putting him squarely in British history than John of Glastonbury but some of Joseph of Arimathea’s spurious associations with Glastonbury had already begun before he reiterated the prophecy of Melkin.

It is not by accident that his opening lines about dispelling ‘doubts regarding the antiquity of the church of Glastonbury….. is the reason for to the confusion that mistakes Avalon with Glastonbury. If the church is not anciently connected, then the church that Melkin’s prophecy supposedly refers to…… along with the ‘cratibus’ reference to its construction, is now voided…… even though William of Malmesbury says it was covered with lead. It is essential that the antiquity of the church be established, otherwise Avalon cannot be established as being Glastonbury. This is essentially done through the church references in Melkin’s prophecy, but also through tentative allusions to a chapel (the Grail chapel) being dedicated to ‘Our Lady’ in the Perlesvaus but this shall be discussed at length later.

John of Glastonbury is the main consolidator of the Joseph legend and from his work in the ‘Cronica’, he starts his treaties of St. Joseph of Arimathea, which he claims are taken from a book which the Emperor Theodosius found in Pontius Pilate’s council chamber in Jerusalem, and here he is quoted at length from a translation by David Townsend from James P. Carley’s study of John of Glastonbury’s ‘Cronica’:

Matters which admit doubt often deceive the reader; in order to dispel doubts regarding the antiquity of the church of Glastonbury, therefore, we have added some undisputed facts gathered from the ancient sayings of historians.

When the Lord had been crucified and everything had been fulfilled, which had been prophesied of him, Joseph of Arimathea, that noble Decurion, came to Pilate, as the gospel story explains, asked for the body of Jesus, wrapped it when he had received it in linen, and placed it in a monument in which no one had yet laid. But the Jews, hearing that Joseph had buried the body of Jesus, sought to arrest him, along with Nicodemus and the others who had defended him before Pilate. When they had all hidden themselves, these two-that is Joseph and Nicodemus, revealed themselves and asked the Jews,’ why are you aggrieved against us because we have buried the body of Jesus? You have not done well against a righteous man, nor have you considered what benefits he bestowed upon us; instead you have crucified him and wounded him with a lance’. When the Jews heard these words, Annas and Ciaphas seized Joseph, shut him up in a cell where there was no window, sealed the door over the key, and posted guards to watch over him. But Nicodemus they sent away free, since Joseph alone had requested Jesus’ body and had been the principal instigator in his burial. Later, when everyone had assembled, all through the Sabbath they considered, along with the priests and Levites how they should kill Joseph. After the assembly had gathered, the chief officials ordered, Annas and Ciaphas to present Joseph; but when they opened the seals on the door they did not find him. Scouts were sent out everywhere, and so Joseph was found in his own city, Arimathea. Hearing this, the chief priests and all the people of the Jews rejoiced and glorified the God of Israel because Joseph had been found whom they had shut up in a cell. They then made a great assembly, at which the chief of the priests said, ’how can we bring Joseph to us and speak with him?’ They took up a piece of parchment and wrote to Joseph, saying,’ peace be with you and yours. We see that we have sinned against God and against you. Deign therefore, to come to your fathers and your sons, for we have marvelled greatly over your assumption. Indeed, we know that we have plotted evil counsel against you, and the Lord has freed you from our evil council. Peace to you, Lord Joseph, honourable among all the people’. And they chose seven men who were friends of Joseph and said to them, ’When you reach Joseph, greet him in peace and give him this letter.’ When the men had reached him, they greeted him peaceably and gave him the letter. Joseph read the letter and said, ’Blessed are you, O Lord my God, who have liberated Israel, that he should not shed my blood. Blessed are you, O my God, who have protected me under your wings.’ And Joseph kissed the men who had come to him and took them into his house. The next day he climbed up on his ass and went with them until they came to Jerusalem; and when all the Jews heard of it, they ran to meet him, saying, ’Peace at your coming in, father.’ Joseph responded to them, saying, ’Peace be with you all.’ And they all kissed him, and Nicodemus received him into his house and made a banquet for him. The next day the Jews all came together, and Annas and Ciaphas said to Joseph, ’Make confession to the God of Israel, and reveal to us all that which you are asked. We quarrelled with you because you buried the body of Jesus and shut you up in a cell on account of the Sabbath; on the following day we sought you but did not find you. Therefore, we were greatly astonished, and fear has held us even up until now, when we have received you. Now that you are present, tell us before God, what happened to you’ .Joseph answered them, saying, ’When you shut me up at evening on the day of preparation, while I stood at my Sabbath prayers, the house in which I was held was taken up in the middle of the night by four angels, and I saw Jesus like a flash of light. I fell for fear onto the ground, but, holding my hand; he lifted me up from the ground and covered me with the scent of roses. As he wiped my face, he kissed me and said to me, “Do not fear, Joseph; look upon me and see who I am.” I looked at him and said, “Rabbi Elijah,” and he said to me, “I am not Elijah, but Jesus, whose body you buried.” Then I said to him, “Show me the monument where I lay you.” And taking my hand, he led me to the place where I buried him and showed me the linen shroud and the face cloth in which I had wrapped his head. Then I recognised that he was Jesus, and I adored him saying,’ “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Then, holding my hand, he led me into my house in Arimathea and said to me, “Peace be with you. Do not go out of your house until the 40th day. I shall go to my disciples.” And when he had said these things, he disappeared.’

After all this, the noble Joseph of Arimathea, animated by an ardent faith, became the disciple of blessed Philip the apostle, and, filled to overflowing with his saving doctrine, was baptised by him, along with his son Josephes. Later he was appointed guardian of the blessed ever virgin Mary by blessed John the apostle, while John himself laboured at preaching to the Ephesians: Joseph was present at the assumption of the same glorious virgin, along with blessed Philip and his other disciples, and he preached incessantly through many lands the things which he had heard and seen of the Lord Jesus Christ and his mother Mary; finally, converting and baptising many, in the 15th year after the blessed virgins assumption he came to Philip the apostle in Gaul, along with his son Josephes, whom the Lord had earlier consecrated Bishop in the city of Sarras. For when the disciples dispersed throughout the various parts of the world after the Lord's Ascension; as Freculph bears witness in his second book, in the fourth chapter; Philip came to the kingdom of the Franks to preach, and he converted and baptised many into the faith of Christ. Since then, the holy apostle wished to spread the word of God, he sent twelve of his disciples to Britain to proclaim the good news of the Word of Life; over these he set his dear friend, the aforesaid Joseph, who buried the Lord, along with his son Josephes. More than 600 came with them, as is read in the book, called ‘the holy Grail’ (Sanctum Graal), men as well as women, all of whom vowed that they would abstain from their own spouses until they had come into the land appointed to them. They all made a sham of their oath however, except for 150, whom at the Lord's command crossed the sea upon Josephes’ shirt on Easter night and landed in the morning. The others repented, and through Josephes’ prayers on their behalf, a ship was sent by the Lord which King Solomon had artfully constructed in his time and which endured all the way to the time of Christ. That same day, they and the Duke of the Persians named Nasciens reached their companions; Joseph had earlier baptised Nasciens in the city of Sarras, along with the King of the city, whose name was Mordrain. The Lord later appeared to Mordrain in a vision and showed him his pierced hands and feet and his side wounded by the lance. Taking great pity upon him, the King said,’ O Lord my God, who has dared to do such a thing to you? ’And the Lord answered,’ the faithless King of North Wales has done these things to me, and he who has bound in prison, my servant Joseph and his companions, who were preaching my name, in his territories, and who has inhumanely denied them necessary sustenance. You then, do not delay but hasten to those parts, girded with your sword, to avenge my servants upon the tyrant and free them from their chains.’

The King, then awoke and rejoiced in the Lord because of the vision revealed to him, made disposition of the house and kingdom, began his journey with his army and coming to the place by God's guidance, commanded the aforesaid King to permit God’s servants to depart freely. But the Welsh King, altogether refusing the command, indignantly ordered him to leave his land without delay. When King Mordrain had heard this, he and the aforesaid Duke Nasciens came against him with their army, and Nasciens killed the Welsh King in a battle of just vengeance. Then King Mordrain went to the prison where the wicked King held Joseph and his companions under arrest, led him thence in great joy, and told him the vision which the Lord had revealed to him in order to free them. Then all were filled with great joy and thanked the Lord mightily.

After this Saint Joseph and his son Josephes and their 10 companions travelled through Britain, where King Arviragus then reigned, in the 63rd year from the Lord's incarnation, and they trustworthily preached the faith of Christ. But the barbarian king and his nation, when they heard doctrines so new and unusual, did not wish to exchange their ancestral traditions for better ways and refused consent to their preaching. Since however they had come from afar, and because of their evident modesty of life, Arviragus gave them for a dwelling an island at the edge of his kingdom surrounded with forests, thickets and swamps, which was called by the inhabitants Ynswytryn, that is ’the Glass island’. Of this a poet has said, ‘The twelvefold band of men entered Avalon: Joseph, flower of Arimathea, is their chief. Josephes, Joseph’s son, accompanies his father. The right to Glastonbury is held by these and the other ten.’ When the saints then, had lived in that desert for a short time, the Archangel Gabriel admonished them in a vision to build a church in honour of the holy Mother of God, the ever virgin Mary, in that place which heaven would show them. Obeying the divine admonitions, they finished a Chapel, the circuit of whose walls they completed with wattles, in the 31st year after the Lord's passion, the fifteenth, as was noted, after the assumption of the glorious Virgin, and the same year in fact, in which they had come to St Philip the apostle in Gaul and had been sent by him to Britain. Though it was of unsightly construction, it was adorned with the manifold power of God; and, since it was the first church in the land, the son of God distinguished it by a fuller dignity, dedicating it in his own presence in honour of his mother. And so these 12 saints offered there, devout service to God and the blessed virgin, freeing themselves up for fasting and prayers; and, in their necessities they were revived by the assistance of the Virgin Mother of God. When the holiness of their lives was discovered, two of the Kings, though pagans, Marius, the son of King Arviragus, and Coel, son of Marius, granted them each a hide of land and at the same time confirmed the gift. Thus, to this day, the 12 hides take their names from them. When a few years had passed, these saints were led forth from the workhouse of the body. Arthur was buried among those men and Joseph and positioned on a bifurcated line next to the oratory mentioned before. Consequently, he occupies the same place that was the lair of wild beasts, which formerly was the dwelling place of saints, until it pleased the Blessed Virgin to restore to her oratory as a monument of the faithful.

The consequences of such writings have helped to maintain Glastonbury as Avalon, because in Avalon according to Melkin the Holy Grail is buried alongside Joseph of Arimathea. This twist of fate made it necessary to  unearth  King Arthur in Avalon,now at Glastonbury,  but this was never the case. They are both interred at Burgh Island and the evidence which clearly shows  this follows.

The mythical exploits of King Arthur and the legend of Joseph of Arimathea seem to have been perpetuated by the Glastonbury establishment to concur with Grail romances and the writings of Melkin, the monk who so little is known about is the source. The mythical Island of Avalon has its presence interwoven into many forms of folklore, whether it be the Grail Romances from France, Arthurian legend in Britain, or even in association with Joseph of Arimathea. These stories have now been so interwoven over time, that it is difficult to divine their original source and many people today regard them as purely fictional. There is virtually no consensus of opinion when it comes to the subject of King Arthur, but many also think that he did live in a period between 450 and 650 A.D. and is an historical figure.

The name Arthur is extremely rare in Welsh writings as a Welsh name and as we will try to elucidate, King Arthur's connections seem to be based upon a Cornish and Devonian background. However, the Welsh, mainly through the writings of Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Triads spread his fame abroad from a Welsh perspective. Arthur is portrayed as having battles against native Britons and as being the Pen-Dragon of a consolidated force against the Saxon invaders. Arthur's Cornish heritage is never very far, but the Welsh chroniclers by Celtic association appear to have made him into a more national figure.

And when Arthur heard that, he turned back with all that had survived of his army, and succeeded by violence in landing on this Island in opposition to Medrawd. And then there took place the Battle of Camlan between Arthur and Medrawd, and was himself wounded to death. And from that (wound) he died, and was buried in a hall on the Island of Afallach.

The one thing that can be agreed upon is Arthur's association with the Isle of Avalon or Affalach, but it is the term ‘Hall’ that seems out of place at the end of this last passage. Does the vault that the miners hewed on Ictis resemble a chamber more precisely? The cave under the Chapel in the Perlesvaus indicates we are on to the right track.

 It is worth pointing out regarding the dating of Arthur that Lucius is fictional appearing first in Geoffrey of Monmouth's ‘Historia Regum Britanniae’. Lucius appears in later literature such as Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, and the Alliterative Morte Arthure, and a Roman Emperor defeated by King Arthur appears in French Arthurian literature and also in the Vulgate Cycle. As we will cover, the source of this French material and the British sources derive from one man, Melkin, but the French and British literature was separated for a period of about 3-4 hundred years before the wildly embellished French Grail romances met back up with the same traditions that existed in Britain. Because these two sources were separated but concur about Arthur living in a period of Roman and Saxon involvement we can assume that without dating specifically, both sources are not based upon fiction but more probably are the product of an historical account that has been romanticized.

Again John of Glastonbury is quoted here saying; ‘This passage is found among the deeds of the Glorious King Arthur’: the book of the deeds of the glorious King Arthur bears witness, that the noble decurion Joseph of Arimathea came to Great Britain, which is now called England, along with his son Josephes and many others, and that there they ended their lives. This is found in the portion of the book dealing with the search carried out by the companions of the round table for an illustrious knight called Lancelot du Lac, that is, in the part of the book where a hermit explains to Gawain the mystery of a fountain, which keeps changing taste and colour; in the same place it is also written that the miracle will not end until a great lion comes whose neck is bound in heavy chains. It is also reported practically at the beginning of the quest for the vessel, which is there called the Holy Grail, where the White Knight explains to Galahad, son of Lancelot, the mystery of a miraculous shield which he enjoins him to carry and which no one else can bear, even for a day, without grave loss.’

We must discover the truths behind the fabric of the various tales, since the legends have stretched over 2000 years. Accounts of King Arthur and associated Knights run concurrently with Joseph of Arimathea who lived 500 years earlier, but also involving Knights from the crusade era; shows that what might have been an historical account has lost all chronology. The Troubadours of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries have embellished upon legend from the Dark ages and they have distorted historical fact so that the time frames in which the stories are related, only make less credible, what once was a true account. These might include Mary Magdalene's passage through France , the arrival at Glastonbury of Joseph of Arimathea, the legends of King Arthur and Merlin, all appearing in a random time frame from the days of Joseph of Arimathea, coinciding with tales of questing knights in search of an elusive Grail. All these combined to make a wondrous source material for the artful troubadours seem to have involved characters of courtly renown out of flattery.

However, Melkin the Prophet from the British tradition, predicts the discovery of Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb and how it will be found untouched, together with predictions of visiting pilgrims on a global scale, due to the wondrous miracles done at the Island of Avalon, all add to the aura of intrigue. Some of this material however, can be accounted as esoteric and occult knowledge disseminated circa 600 -700AD, and relates in part, to true historical fact compiled by Melkin. Melkin, who as we shall discover named the Island Avalon after what he had witnessed there at the death of King Arthur also witnessed other astounding revelations. His knowledge of the arrival of the early Christians was recorded in ancient manuscripts and he transcribed this history including events that had transpired in the intervening years up until Arthur’s death in what became known as the book of the Grail.

Melkin’s prophesy, as we shall uncover, is the root source for the perpetuation of the Joseph legend at Glastonbury, but his other writings were to have an even greater effect. The account that went to France (as an original Latin text) as the book of the Grail, became the source information known as the ‘Matière de Bretagne’. The body of material that the French refer to as ‘The Matter of Britain’ coincides with subject matter and material contained in Melkin’s prophecy about Joseph, which as we saw earlier, was written in almost untranslatable Latin, but is most commonly translated thus:

The Isle of Avalon, greedy for the death of pagans, more than the rest of the world, for the entombment of them all, decorated beyond all others by the spheres of portentous prophecy. In the future, adorned shall it be by them that praise the Most High. Abbadare mighty in Saphat, noblest of pagans, has found sleep with 104 other knights there. Among these Joseph of Arimathea has found perpetual sleep in a marble tomb, and he lies on a two forked line next to the southern angle of an oratory, where wattle is prepared above the mighty maiden and where the aforesaid Thirteen spheres rest. Joseph has with him in his sarcophagus two vessels, white and silver, filled with the blood and sweat of the prophet Jesus. When his tomb is discovered, it will be seen whole and untouched and will be open to the whole world. From then on those who dwell in that noble Island shall lack neither water nor the dew of heaven. A long time before the Day of Judgment in Josaphat; open shall these things be and told to the living.

Although this prophecy does not mention Glastonbury, much of the purport of the prophecy has been conferred on Glastonbury. We will investigate how this has transpired later by the conscious fraud of the Glastonbury monks as we find that Glastonbury has associated itself with Melkin’s prophecy falsely and also fraudulently uncovered the bones of King Arthur so that Glastonbury may be thought of as being synonymous with Avalon.

Giraldus Cambrensis in 1194 AD records that the tomb of King Arthur was found in 1191 between two "stone pyramids in the holy cemetery dedicated by St. Dunstan". Giraldus is clearly referring to the two stone pyramids that were reported by William of Malmesbury as being located a few feet from the old wattle church. An inscribed lead cross was said to have been found in Arthur’s uncovered grave, with the words Hic iacet sepultus inclitus rex Arturius in insula Avalonia; ‘Here lies interred King Arthur in the island of Avalon’. Clearly, by finding King Arthur’s body which was reputed to be buried in the Isle of Avalon…… it would naturally confirm the location of Avalon as Glastonbury especially if the body were found at Glastonbury. Combining that with a corpse with an inscription stating ‘here lies King Arthur’, would seem to eliminate all doubt. It is here that Glastonbury has its biggest problem because once decoded, Melkin’s geometrical instructions are part of a puzzle in the form of a Prophecy and these actually lead to Burgh Island, the Avallonis to which Melkin is showing us.

Although the prophecy, written by Melkin around the sixth to seventh century was somewhat untranslatable; by implication, it was inferred in that text that Joseph of Arimathea was buried in the Isle of Avalon. The Grail romances also make the same claim for King Arthur, but even before they appeared, much of the Arthurian and Joseph material was commonly known in folklore. Joseph from an early time was renowned for building the first church at Glastonbury and was acknowledged to have a connection with the tin trade in Cornwall. Arthur’s name as a King that fought Saxons would have been widely known although not greatly recorded except in manuscripts written by Melkin left in Britain.

Melkin wrote his attested book on ‘Arthur and the Round Table’ after Arthur’s death, (to have knowledge that Arthur is buried in Avalon), but the fact that Joseph was known to be buried in a place called Avalon before Melkin wrote…… we are not able to establish, because as we will get to shortly, Melkin knew the Island used to be called Ictis. However, the village on the river Avon which flows to Avalon, was known as Aveton before the Norman conquest, but we have no reference as to when it took this name……so the island does seem to have been named Avalon by Melkin. This area was referred to as ‘Venn’ in the period between 700 and 1066 as seen in a charter by Edward the Confessor but we will get to this later. Since the location of Avalon remained a mystery to all except to the ‘illuminate’ within the Templar organisation, we can only assume it was Melkin who named the Island since he was the person who gives account of who is buried there and the description of the surrounding landscape found in the French perlesvaus is obviously taken from Melkin’s original accounts.

Whether or not Arthur was widely acknowledged to be buried in the Isle of Avalon, prior to the proliferation of the Grail material is unknown but seems probable based upon the assumption that it was Melkin who is responsible for the source from which Geoffrey of Monmouth proclaims Athur’s burial place.

We cannot be sure of the name of that Island at that date when Melkin wrote, but as will become clear that Melkin knew it was the old Ictis of the Greek and Latin chroniclers. He would hardly have created a puzzle naming the Island of Avallonis as the island in which Joseph and Arthur were buried, if the name of that Island had that particular appellation at that time. This would negate the purport of the riddle and for this reason we can assume that it was Melkin who is responsible for the name Avalon.

By the twelfth century, two of the greatest personages in ancient British history, Arthur and Joseph, are confirmed to lie in the same location at Avalon. Glastonbury's reputation however rested on rumour with neither tomb to exhibit, and proof was necessary to encourage pilgrims to come to the Abbey.

William of Malmesbury and Geoffrey of Monmouth in their respective writings as we have mentioned do not make a connection between Avalon and Glastonbury, so evidently, at the time that they wrote, no propaganda was yet employed in Glastonbury. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Gildas and Nennius had all given an account of King Arthur and his battles and there was generally a resurgence of interest in the British hero that also brought fresh reminders of the Isle of Avalon into popular consciousness at the advent and proliferation of the Grail materials arrival in Britain.

 It was circa 1190 A.D with a probable prior seeding from Henry of Blois (an abbot of Glastonbury) that Glastonbury as an institution came up with the idea to establish unequivocally the location of the Isle of Avalon as Glastonbury.

It is from extracts in William of Malmesbury’s ‘Gesta Regnum’ (copied into the margin), John of Glastonbury and the Magna Tabula, that we hear of Melkin’s prophecy, which speaks of the Isle of Avalon. The monks would have considered that if they were to unearth Joseph of Arimathea, naturally there would have to be miracles, to coincide with Melkin’s prophecy. The Prophecy foretells of this, but to produce the ‘duo fassula’ (the vessel synonymous with the Holy Grail) might prove difficult, because no-one was quite sure of its form. Even the Glastonbury monks might have realised that a false representation of the Grail might be sacrilege. The Monks however would be attuned to that part of the prophecy that predicted ‘the whole world would be in attendance’ and this would be good for the Abbey coffers. The fallacious assumption of some commentators today that the Prophecy of Melkin is a 12th century fraud is based upon several erroneous assumptions which we shall get to shortly.

The real practical problem that Glastonbury Abbey had, if they were to fabricate a discovery of Joseph’s tomb, was that they would have to reveal the Holy Grail to the world, known then as the ‘duo fassula’ or the Graal and not even the monks were certain what the Holy Grail consisted of, so there could be later catastrophic ramifications if it then got discovered. If they unveiled Arthur however, the practical problems of having to produce a Grail like object could be overcome. They would still be able to confirm Glastonbury as the Isle of Avalon, conferring on their Abbey, the even greater honour of having Joseph of Arimathea buried within their grounds, even if he was never going to be located.

Leland, who was an early writer partly responsible for the continuation of much of the Glastonbury polemicism, states that he actually held the cross found at Arthur’s grave, in his hands. However, as we shall find out, the fact that Leland had in his possession such a cross in no way adds credibility to the ruse created by the monks of Glastonbury that had already transpired. The monks at the abbey, unveiling the tomb and producing a cross does not prove that Arthur himself was buried there. After all, who in their right mind would stipulate on the cross where the place was that it was going to be found in. Its sole purpose was to locate Arthur in Avalon which vicariously locates Joseph there by their eagerness in the epitaph to locate the tomb in the Isle of Avalon.

The pyramids however, marking "King Arthur's Grave," are shown on a plan displayed at Glastonbury Abbey today, which also indicates the site of the shrine to which his remains and those of Guinevere’s were later relocated.

The Grail romances relate that King Arthur, had troublesome relatives, the worst of whom was his sister Morgan Le Fey, and his nephew Mordred. Arthur’s sister wanted his throne for her lover, but Mordred, Arthur’s nephew, (or as some romances relate), his son, by his other sister Morgawse, usurped Arthur’s throne while he was off battling abroad. Arthur returned and suffered serious injuries in a battle with Mordred to retake his throne, eventually killing Mordred, but King Arthur had been fatally wounded in the fight for his kingdom. It is said that he was taken to the Isle of Avalon where it was hoped that he would be healed from his wounds.

It must have been understood by the originator of this material or more likely by the people transferring Arthur for a specific reason, that the Island of Avalon must have been a place on which miracles took place. This concurs with the perception held by Melkin in his prophecy.  What, it must be asked, would convey sanctity to such a place except a connection with Jesus or possibly Joseph of Arimathea?  What the High History of the Grail does not emphatically state is that the coffin of Jesus is on the Island, but it does give every other hint that this is the case. Between the lines of the different scenarios in the branches of the work, it becomes very clear that this is being stated subliminally.

 Arthur is said, as we have mentioned, to be buried in the Isle of Avalon and that someday he would return to his people. This brief prophetic suggestion was probably caused by the fact that no-one knew what happened to him or where he had been taken and stems from rumour created in the interim before Arthur was declared to be buried in Avalon by Melkin. This rumour still existed to the time when Thomas Malory tells us that 'some men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our Lord Jesus into another place, and men say that he shall come again, and shall win the Holy Crosse.'

The fact that a Grail source, originating supposedly in France and Melkin’s Prophecy from Britain, both confer on Avalon some miraculous status, would appear to suggest that there is a common understanding between these works. What exactly does it mean that Arthur would return to his people except that he was lost to them and no-one knew where his gravesite really was. When Joseph of Arimathea is uncovered, it will be discovered that Arthur is buried with him………then he will be returned to his people, but only one man could know of his whereabouts, the same person who says who else is buried also in the Island of Avalon, from having seen the tin vault and what it contained.

Let us assume for the moment that the Grail stories are based on elements of historical facts about Arthur and not everything in the Grail stories is fabricated. Arthur, whose reputed castle lay at Tintagel, would have been fighting near that location with Mordred, having just returned from abroad, suggesting this last battle took place down in Cornwall. Instead thinking of Glastonbury as an island, why not go to the Isle of Avalon that is by the sea, as is attested in numerous places in our investigation. We may have a glimpse that this could not apply to Glastonbury but a real coastal island. Geoffrey of Monmouth says:

It was there we took Arthur after the battle of Camlan where he had been wounded, Barin thus was the steersman because of his knowledge of the seas and the stars of heaven. With him at the tiller of the ship, we arrived there with the prince; and Morgen received us with due honour. She put the king in her chamber on a golden bed, uncovered his wound with her noble hand and looked long at it. At length she said he could be cured if only he stayed with her a long while and accepted her treatment. We therefore happily committed the king to her care and spread our sails to favourable winds on our return journey.

The whole aura of the Grail was that it was not just an object originally and what has made it hard to identify is its duality. The Grail is the body of Jesus contained in the Grail Ark and also the objective understanding of a heightened consciousness that becomes aware of a divine plan. This sound incomprehensible at first, but as we progress the reader will then understand why it has been so difficult to pinpoint what the grail is in the past. It is the understanding of this divine plan that explains the Grail’s appearance and disappearance and the Grail castles construct becomes synonymous with the gradual steps to gnosis. Many readers will think we are straying into the unreal at this point but if we can produce the body of Jesus the rest of the evidence will fit into place.

A un jor d'une Acenssion / Fu venuz de vers Carlion / Li rois Artus et tenu ot / Cort molt riche a Camaalot / Si riche com au jor estut.

Upon a certain Ascension Day having come from Caerleon, King Arthur had held a very magnificent court at Camelot as befits such a day.

This is the common translation that gives location to Camelot but here Chrétien de Troyes mentions it just in passing……… as King Arthur holds court after having come from Carlion, which according to Geoffrey of Monmouth was his main castle. However, Camelot originated from this French source that Chretien used and only later was it developed as a city of consequence and then as an alternative location to Tintagel.   

By Chrétien’s own attestation, he is using a source for his romance, so let us assume this source is called the ’Book of the Grail’ and this transliteration from ‘Shir ha Ma'a lot’ to Camelot was either made by the previous authors translation from the Latin to the French from which Chrétien was now using or it might just have been fitted into the text due to Chrétien’s lack of understanding of how it fits in.

It seems that the grail has the element of quest attached to it which is part of its essence in the search for it. It would appear that this (the ‘Shir ha Ma'a lot’ relationship with the Grail) is the root of the element of quest that was weaved into the romances. One gets the feeling from the haltering of Chrétien’s flow and the change in direction of his story, that he is following an unclear plot that he does not fully grasp.

There are only two people who are eligible to have brought this depth of understanding to Britain (especially being conveyed in Hebrew); either Jesus or Joseph of Arimathea. This casual reference to Camaalot, translated from the original Latin Grail book into French relates to the Ascension of the Temple. This also has been confused with Ascension Day(instead of in manner ascending) by Chrétien and then subsequently, it has metamorphosed into a mythical castle by other Grail writers working from his work. Camelot subsequently became a city of architectural beauty becoming fixed ( where the court existed) in Arthurian literature, eventually having geographical reference……… and thus the birth of a legendary city which was unable to be found.

Chrétien’s source material, as the reader will see as we probe deeper, was written by Melkin in his ‘Book of the Grail’ owned eventually by Eleanor of Aquitaine who was patron to Chrétien. Through Eleanor’s Templar connections, the ‘Troubadours’ romanticised and extrapolated version upon version sometimes including the names of courtly figures. With all the various Grail legends that originated from a common source, the sense of original source material has become barely recognisable. This propagation was carried out mainly by the courts of Europe and the Templars that frequented them,but a body of ‘illuminati’ hiding within the hierarchy of the order, who knew of the real truths that were held within this book were responsible for erecting the St.Michael dedicated churches that lead to the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.

It seems highly unlikely that a wounded King Arthur was laid out on a horse and cart and driven all the way to Glastonbury after his fight with Mordred or Medrawd. It was said that the death of Arthur was concealed for quite a time and a wild story was diffused among the populace that he had withdrawn to some magical region, from which, at a future crisis he would suddenly reappear. What is more likely is that the legendary Island of Ictis which Joseph possibly owned and the Isle of Avalon are one and the same place. Arthur was taken there, where all his forbears had been anointed as kings, touched with the oil of the Grail Ark. Arthur was cognisant of who was in the Grail ark and those that brought him there were hoping for a miracle to cure his wounds. This assumption becomes all the more credible if Arthur, who was genealogically related to Joseph, knew that Jesus was buried in the same place as Joseph. Would not the island’s proximity to Arthur’s battleground just 40 miles away, make it a more likely resting place than Glastonbury? It is more plausible that Arthur was carried to the Isle of Avalon (still living), in the hope of a miraculous recovery, where lore had it, even prior to Melkin, that great miracles would be or had been worked there.

This belief in the miraculous, associated with the Island, was subsequently corroborated in Melkin’s prophecy, although posited as happening at a future date when the location is discovered. Certainly this secretive repair to the Island of Avalon would explain the delay of Arthur’s death being published abroad and why is it that such an illustrious figure was not known by William of Malmesbury to be buried at Glastonbury?

Melkin was held in such high regard by ancient writers as we are informed, but many say he lived prior to Arthur and Merlin. Gildas may make reference to Melkin under another name but this name could be confused with Merlin. As we shall see, if Melkin wrote the ‘Book of the Grail’ from which the Grail writers and some Welsh material derived; he would have been the one who supplied the information that Arthur was buried in Avalon and it must follow that Melkin then lived after Arthur or latterly contemporaneously, to record this information. Geoffrey of Monmouths’ writings also relate much about Arthur, but this information would have come from Melkin’s other writings that remained in Britain as opposed to the Book of the Grail that went to France. By the last chapter the reader will understand that the book of The Grail referred to by Helinand may indeed have been written in France.

King Arthur’s tomb, stated by both of the twelfth century historians, Ralph of Coggeshall and Giraldus Cambrensis, and from the thirteenth century monk Adam of Domerham, is said to have been found in 1191 in the old cemetery of the monastery at Glastonbury with the leaden cross. Adam of Domerham even says that curtains may have surrounded the site during the unearthing which smacks of a fraudulent endeavour.

He was said to have been found alone by Ralph of Coggeshall, Adam of Domerham and the aforementioned Leland. He is said to have been found with Guinevere by Giraldus Cambrensis, a Bishop alive at the time of the events, and with obvious intent to link Arthur to Glastonbury:

The memory of Arthur, the famous king of the Britons, is not to be suppressed, forasmuch as of the excellent monastery of Glastonbury, of which he also was the patron, he had been in his days, a principal benefactor and magnificent benefactor, Histories much extol him : for, before all the churches of his realm, he most loved and promoted, the church of the holy mother of God, Mary of Glastonbury : whence, when the warlike man was alive, in the fore part of his shield, he had caused to be painted the image of the blessed virgin ; that internally, he might always have her, in the contest before his eyes, whose feet also, when he was in the moment of engagement, he had accustomed to kiss with the greatest devotion. His body however, which, as fantastic in the end and as it were, by a spirit, translated to a great distance, neither to death obnoxious, fables have been feigned in these our burying ground, hid very deep in the earth in a hollow oak and marked with wonderful, and as it were, miraculous tokens, was found and, into the church, with honour, translated, and to a marble tomb decently commended : whence, also, a leaden cross, a stone being put under it, not infixed on the upper part, as it is wont, ought to be, rather in the lower part which we, also, have seen, for we have handled it, contained these letters, not rising up and standing out, but more within, turned to the stone :

‘Hic iacet sepultus inclitus rex Arthurius in insula Avallonia cum uxore sua secunda wenneveria’ -Here lies buried King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon with his second wife Guinevere.

Figure 13. Showing the cross found in king Arthur’s grave shown in the 1607 edition of Camden’s Britannia. The inscription is not consistent with any known sixth century script and experts place the lettering as tenth century and this does not mention Guinevere.

It certainly seems that Guinevere was a later invention to concur with the High History but even if Arthur did have two wives, why was there only one body found originally, as attested by other witnesses. It was Geoffrey of Monmouth in his history of the Kings of Britain who says that after the battle in Cornwall  at river Camlann, Arthur was taken to Avalon for the healing of his wounds. Geoffrey in no way indicates where the Isle of Avalon is, and William of Malmesbury who wrote before him said Arthur’s resting place was unknown. It would seem however he was aware that Arthur was buried in Avalon, but did not know of the Islands location and this evidence negates Glastonbury from being synonymous with Avalon until later.

It seems as if we can ignore the witness of Giraldus Cambrensis as polemic, even if the monks had not stated that they had re-buried two bodies; then in 1278 had them disinterred again and put them on show with the two skulls for Edward I and Queen Eleanor as those of Arthur and his Queen Guinevere. The bones were, after this showing, then reinterred once more in a tomb in front of Glastonbury’s high altar.

 The high altar was eventually broken up in the dissolution of the monasteries and the bones are no longer to be found. The monks set out to convey upon themselves the burial site of such an illustrious figure, just as surely as they had done with their claims that Joseph of Arimathea was buried somewhere within the Abbey grounds. The monks of course, could only do this by laying claim to the fact that Glastonbury was an island at one time and thus making more credible their claim with much contrived ensuing etymology. Glastonbury’s tenuous association with Joseph of Arimathea is shown by the very fact that the monks relied on the corroboration of this ancient prophecy .i.e they had to turn Glastonbury tor into the Island which, (as the subject of the prophecy) locates Joseph. The Church had to be made of Wattle which we shall cover shortly and a line must be found at Glastonbury, so the whole prophecy about the tomb being found on a bifurcated line sounded convincing and that the prophecy was seen to apply to Glastonbury abbey.

The fact that the original church may well have been dedicated to the Virgin Mary is of little doubt and is surely the only genuine common parallel with the prophecy…… and may well have been the one solid association upon which the monks were to base their fraud……even though the ‘adorandam virginem’ part of the puzzle does not apply to the virgin Mary, but gives specific directions on the island.

This all goes to show that Glastonbury’s various attempts to mimic certain facts supplied in the prophecy indicates clearly that it is the prophecy which would establish the authority(to the monks) of an association with Joseph……… upon which the Glastonbury myth is based.

It would be the prophecy that would supply the credibility for their claim as Avalon if other pertinent parts of the prophecy could also be made to marry with Glastonbury. This also shows that the scholars who say that the prophecy was a later invention of the 12-13th century, designed originally to prove the existence of Joseph of Arimathea within the abbey grounds makes little sense. Up until the present, the prophecy has remained mute and largely meaningless so if this was their intention,why not make it clearer. Now the riddle is decoded, it points to a completely different island in Devon with established connections to Joseph of Arimathea…… an amazing coincidence for a puzzle supposed to be an invention. Not only that, but the Goegraphic description in some of the Branches only highlight it was Burgh Island and the valleys south of Dartmoor they were referring to.

Once Geoffrey of Monmouth had written his Historia Regum Britanniae, King Arthur gained legendary status and thus any association to him would have been beneficial to fraudulent monks that were perpetrating these mistruths. The original intent however, was laying claim to Joseph of Arimathea's relics, which of course had direct links to Jesus himself. Much undue analysis as to whether the cross unearthed along with Arthur’s remains is the genuine article or not seems completely out of place like so much other scholastic endeavour when the unequivocal answer is revealed.

The pyramids at Glastonbury between which King Arthur was purportedly entombed……… we should hear what the Rev William Henry Parr Greswell (1848-1923) says of evidence supplied by Sir H. Spelman (1562-1641):

‘On one of the ancient stone pyramids that used to stand before the cemetery of the monks at Glastonbury, the name of Bregden was inscribed and according to Sir H Spelman, this Bregden gave a name to " Brentacnoll and Brentmersh," just as a certain Logdor or Legder, (possibly an ancient chief), gave the name of Logderesburg or Legdersbeorg to that other ancient possession of Glastonbury Abbey, known since the Norman Conquest as Montacute, (Mons Acutus). Both hills, like the famous Glastonbury Tor itself so having, Montacute claimed a chapel or church, dedicated to St. Michael, that conspicuous saint of seafaring men.’

One of the pyramids had inscribed on it the names, Brent Knoll, Montacute together at Glastonbury in association with St. Michael. How old was the inscription, how old were the pyramids, and were the pyramids there before Joseph of Arimathea built his first church? Certainly the step pyramids were both covered with the names of Saxon Bishops and leaders from the seventh century, but these questions need to be asked and answered in the context of the more recently discovered St. Michael Ley Line but we shall get there shortly.

John of Breynton was Abbot of Glastonbury from 1334 to 1342, and John of Glastonbury's Cronica suggests that he proactively advanced the standing of the Abbey and opposed moves by the Abbey of Wells to dominate over them. Breynton was the Abbot in charge of the Abbey archives while Glastonbury was enjoying a new resurgence of interest in Joseph of Arimathea, due mostly, to the proliferation of the Romance stories and their own manipulation of the prophecy of Melkin so that it appeared to apply to Glastonbury. The romances had revitalized much interest in Arthur, which the monks previously and miraculously had found on the grounds of the Abbey about 150 years before hand.

The next abbot Walter de Monington took over in 1342 AD and he was known to have kept the Abbey in profit, and continued during his time to carry out building projects on the estate grounds to improve its status and establish its ecclesiastical precedence. John of Glastonbury's Cronica was finished just as Monington arrived at the Abbey as Abbot. It was due to the amalgamation of all the prior sources of John of Glastonbury's Cronica, much of the content revolving around Joseph of Arimathea's mission to Glastonbury, that in 1345 they applied for a Royal permit, to search Glastonbury grounds to unearth the body of Joseph of Arimathea. By this time the Glastonbury monks had begun to believe the propaganda of earlier generations, but Joseph was not found.

From when the next Abbot Chinnock arrived on the scene in 1375 until 1420, big changes happened at Glastonbury. In 1382 Chinnock restored the ruined chapel in the cemetery and re-dedicated it to St. Michael and St Joseph of Arimathea, also adorning the Abbey with excerpts from John of Glastonbury's Cronica in the main church encouraging those who came into the Abbey to read of the legend. Anything that promoted the Abbey by associating it still further with Joseph of Arimathea was acceptable. The end result of all this self-promotion of Glastonbury Abbey was at last, to be independent of the See of Wells, and through their associations with the illustrious Arthur and Joseph, the Abbey continued to gain primacy, wealth, and pilgrims.

Figure 20 Showing the remains of Glastonbury Abbey and King Arthur’s supposed resting place in the foreground marked by the plaque seen in figure 21.

The Abbey at last, through its own propaganda, had freed itself from the pressures of royal taxes, interference from other Bishops and neighbouring landlords by its saintly supremacy, and its immoderate claim to an array of holy relics, that had been uncovered since the disinterring of Arthur's grave. Realistically, over this period of time, the chroniclers of Glastonbury Abbey had set out to increase the prestige of their own monastic order and this was mainly established by erroneous “proofs” of their past associations. In 1497 William Whyche wrote a continuation of John's Cronica and since John of Glastonbury very rarely wrote in his own words but mostly extracted from other sources, it is probably from this that some of the misrepresentations to Melkin’s prophecy really happened, if indeed they had not happened earlier. We know that John of Glastonbury recorded faithfully what others had said, without too much interpretation, but we do not know if we have any other source for the prophecy and that other chroniclers did not use John as their source. It would seem by William Whyche’s lection,( his later interpretation in his own words), that much of the errors of interpretation and interpolation from Melkin’s prophecy became even more exacerbated. In effect the Abbey chroniclers by degree, changed the purport of Melkin’s prophecy, but what we cannot be certain about is whether it was Melkin’s intention that later generations were to be misled into thinking that Avalon was Glastonbury. If it was known in the sixth century that the church at Glastonbury was originally built by Joseph, then there is a possibility of Melkin’s conscious misdirection. However, as we have witnessed already this seems unlikely as early chroniclers saw no connection between the unknown location of Glastonbury and Avalon. William of Malmesbury witnessing in his time that no explicit records had survived on the subject and that it was, therefore, to no avail to speculate further regarding the Joseph Tradition.

After Chinnock died, Richard Bere 1492-1524, built a shrine to Joseph and established the coat of arms of Glastonbury; using Evelak’s shield as an associative emblem, becoming Joseph’s shield, which depicted a green knotted cross with Golden jug like beer vessels on each side of the cross on the shield, with drops of blood dripping down. This even further established the association of Joseph of Arimathea with Glastonbury, as it now became their heraldic shield and confirmed the Abbey's relationship with Melkin’s prophecy in that these jugs were synonymous with the ‘duo fassula’.

Figure 19a, Sixteenth century Glass in the Chapel of St. John showing the arms of Glastonbury depicting the green gnarled cross from the thorny bush that sprung from Jacobs staff which grows at Glastonbury. The heraldic shield is probably based upon Evalak's shield, but depicts the misinterpretation of the 'duo fassula' as vessels containing the blood of Christ and the blood is depicted by the droplets

Basically John's entire Cronica is put together extracting verbatim from other sources, but wherever possible the Glastonbury establishment’s tentative connections with Arthur and Joseph were portrayed as more substantial than the previous sources. John's main sources for his Cronica were William of Malmesbury, Ranulph Higdon, Giraldus Cambrensis and Adam of Domerham. Much of his early Glastonbury regurgitation came from William’s ‘De Antiquitae Glastonie Ecclessie’ which was written in 1130. It can be seen from William’s later work, how his ‘Antiquitaes’ was unscrupulously meddled with, by a considerable number of interpolations by scribes from the Glastonbury institution. Little by little, and at every turn, over time, a false belief was established that Joseph was buried at Glastonbury.

In William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regnum, this later work just referred to, he says ‘the Britons would have come utterly to nought but for their new king Ambrosius the sole survivor of the Romans, who kept the Saxons in check through the notable efforts of warlike Arthur’.

Then he follows on by saying ‘this is the Arthur, concerning whom the idle tales of the Britons rave wildly even today; a man certainly worthy to be celebrated not in foolish dreams of deceitful fables but in truthful history’; John of Glastonbury seeing things in a completely different light, promoted Arthur as being an integral part of Glastonbury's history.

It was Adam of Dommerham writing before John who gave the account of the annexation of Glastonbury Abbey to the See of Wells by Bishop Savaric and told of the visitation to Glastonbury in 1278, of Edward I, when the tomb of Arthur was opened for the second time and his bones were reinterred to the high altar. John of Glastonbury used many sources when on the trail of Joseph of Arimathea, and gave quotes from the gospel of Nicodemus, the Vulgate cycle of the Arthurian romances, which included Robert de Boron's Merlin, Lancelot, Le Mort d’Arthur, Le Queste del Saint Grail, the Estoire and of course from Melkin. It is from the Estoire that John tells us of Joseph's release from prison and of his arrival in Britain and the gift of ‘Ynis witrin’ from Arviragus and of his building of the wattled church 31 years after the crucifixion.

One can see with all the various sources that provided the Joseph and Arthur material from which John drew; that it was bound to throw up conflicting information. It becomes muddled though when he himself had a hidden agenda. What few people realise is that much of this information had been revealed by the Book of the Grail and had been embellished and corrupted by the Grail writers in France, but the initial source for that book had been Melkin. The real reason that much of this distorted information had arrived in Glastonbury was due to a previous Abbot, Henry Blois and we will see what a large part he played in this saga shortly.

John of Glastonbury also used as source material Giraldus Cambrensis who wrote two books ‘ De Principis Instructione’ c. 1193-9 and his ‘Speculum Ecclesiae’ of c. 1217 both from which, John sourced his material. It was from Giraldus’s first book that we hear of the original discovery in 1191 of Arthur's body, but then in his second book 20 years later, he wrote a different version where he dates the incident to the reign of Henry II, but the king had died in 1189. In Giraldus’s first book he tells of King Arthur having had a special devotion to St. Mary of Glastonbury, of whose church he was a generous patron and whose image he painted on his shield and kissed its feet in the hour of battle, as was quoted above, but prior to this time, there was no connection between Arthur and the church at Glastonbury. The root cause again for this fabrication is Glastonbury trying to gain an association between its church and Arthur, purely because of the ‘adorandam virginem’ mentioned in Melkin’s prophecy and the association of the chapel with ‘Our Lady’ which the perlesvaus had said was where the Grail was stored. This chapel was of course on an island named Avalon and it was Arthur’s disinterrement that makes Glastonbury credibly synonymous with Avalon.

When Giraldus talks of Arthur's body he says ‘fanciful tales were told and that his body was carried off by spirits to remote regions, and was not subject to death but one day would return’. After Arthur’s disappearance he is reiterating the old rumours regarding what had happened to Arthur. How could such a famous figure have no burial site except the one fabricated by the Monks. Giraldus goes on to say ‘in our times it was discovered buried deep in the earth in a hollow oak between the two stone pyramids in the cemetery of Glastonbury’ and then goes on to quote another version of Arthur’s burial with Guinevere just because the High History says she is buried in the same place as Arthur (no one paying too much attention that they were in two sepate tombs in that versionas she was buried before him). Giraldus says ’two thirds of the sepulchre contained the bones of the King. The remainder, those of his wife, were at his feet with a yellow lock of the Queen's hair that turned to dust when touched by a monk’. He then adds credibility for the find by saying that, the brethren had become aware of the tomb’s location ‘from writings, which they possessed’ and other information was gleaned from letters carved on the pyramids and then again through visions and revelations made to some of their order. But most of all, it was King Henry, who had plainly told them the whole matter as he had heard it from ‘an ancient historical poet of the Britons’. Giraldus is trying to infer that it connects King Henry with Melkin and thereby Melkin’s prophecy (which relates to Joseph only), but by the inference now associates Arthur. King Henry could of course have read the Perlesvaus the earlier edition of the High History but the only information in that is that;  the tomb is under the Chapel and this is not where they disinterred his body. However it should not go un-noticed that Henry was married to Eleanor of Aquitaine and as we shall see, she and her family were the owners of the Book of the Grail.

Giraldus continues on to say ‘how's that deep down, 16 feet below the ground’, should they dig, ‘they would find a body not in a marble tomb but in a hollow oak’. The reference here to a marble tomb was in fact drawing attention to an association with the well-known prophecy intonating ‘unlike Joseph’s tomb of marble’. The word ’Marmore’ for marble from Melkin’s prophecy has a completely different meaning ‘by the sea’ as the reader will be made aware, when we investigate the prophecy more deeply. The reason Giraldus offers for the secrecy of this tomb and the fact that it was buried so deep, was apparently a desire to hide the body from Arthur’s old enemies the Saxons. The rational reason for having to discover a body at such depths is most probably a gambit by the monks, covering the fact that previous searches for Joseph in the same place, had never uncovered Arthur.

Then again Giraldus, establishes Avalon with Glastonbury for posterity by saying ‘Glastonia was anciently called ‘Insula Avalonia’, for it is an island surrounded by marshes; wherefore in the British language it is named ‘Inis Avalon’, that is to say Island of Apples. Then he relates that Morganis, who was ruler of these parts and who was allied to King Arthur by blood carried him there after the battle of ‘Kemale’ for the healing of his wounds and now the island is called ‘Glastonia’. He also relates that the island had been called in the British tongue ‘Inis Gutrin’ which is ‘Insula Vitrea’ which the Saxons who came after, changed its name to ‘Glastingburi’ because ‘Glas’ in their language is the same as ‘vitrum’ and ‘buri’ is like ‘castrum’, so rendering, Glastonbury.

Giraldus adding further evidence to substantiate the Glastonbury claim, then goes on to relate that King Arthur’s bones were of ‘enormous size and his shinbone came some distance above the knee of the tallest man in this place, his head was prodigiously large and it had 10 wounds or more, all of which had healed up except one’, which seemed to indicate Arthur’s death blow.

The date given by Ralph of Coggeshall, who wrote at the same time as Giraldus’ first account for the unearthing of King Arthur’s bones was 1191. Ralph writes that they were found when a grave was being dug for a monk who had specially desired to be buried between the two pyramids. He also gives an alternative inscription on the leaden cross not mentioning Queen Guinevere. Since the Guinevere connection is only found in both of Giraldus’ accounts, it seems that he is the most guilty of Glastonbury's self-promotion setting its history records conveniently on course to concur with information given in Perlesvaus regarding Guinevere’s burial with Arthur. This now renders the Perlesvaus’ location of Avalon at Glastonbury  thus laying claim to Joseph of Arimathea's burial ground. As startling as it is, that three Glastonbury chroniclers Ralph of Coggeshall, Giraldus and Leland all attest to having had the lead cross discovered with Arthur in their possession, all three of them were unable to agree exactly what was written on it.

Not only were there three different renditions of what was written on the cross unearthed with Arthur, one with Guinevere: ‘cum wenneveria uxore sua secunda’, but there was another which came from Leyland, a witness who stated that he held the cross in his hand circa 1540 and actually measured it. There are later chroniclers who give a completely different translation: ‘hic jacet gloriosissimus Rex Britonum Arturus’ (here lies the renowned British king Arthur) that it makes one wonder what the cross, which the monks had obviously fabricated themselves, actually had written upon it. Now we know why Giraldus found it necessary to introduce Guinevere, (for he quotes the epitaph twice) to fit in with more recent accounts of Arthur emanating through the romances, both accounts differ which does highlight his invention. In the first quote, having ‘cum wenneveria uxore sua secunda’ coming before ‘in insula Avallonia’ and in the second place after it. Giraldus specifically says that he had read the quotes from the cross, so we will never understand why, having gone to the trouble to fabricate the cross in the first place, the Glastonbury chroniclers couldn't sing from the same hymn sheet. It actually makes little difference what was written on the cross, for its sole purpose was to establish Glastonbury as Avalon.

Figure 21 Showing the plaque in the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey today still insistent that Arthur is buried beneath. The situation of the plaque is shown in figure 20.

This era 1190, to 1230 when the Grail legends became prevalent, was the time when it became a necessity for Glastonbury to find a solution to its problem. To maintain its independence and ecclesiastical standing, its status and primacy, it had to be three things; the burial place of Joseph, the burial place of Arthur, and the Island of Avalon. As long as it could maintain to the world that these things were true, it would always remain a sacred placed thus attracting pilgrim alms. It was due to the proliferation of the Grail romances and their connection with Joseph and Arthur that at this time it shone a light on Avalon and thus the need to be the location where such illustrious personages were interred.

 
Just to recap then……after Geoffrey’s book had reached popular consciousness stating that Arthur was buried in the Isle of Avalon and Grail literature confirmed it;  it was necessary for Glastonbury to produce King Arthur. (Geoffrey’s source for this information was one of the books left in Britain by Melkin). The discovery of Arthur in the Abbey cemetery in 1191 established that Glastonbury was the Island of Avalon, the island that is the subject of Melkin's prophecy. The Perlesvaus also concurred that the Grail was on Avalon. The obvious inference was that Joseph was buried there also. This quick transmutation, has been pointed out already because when William of Malmesbury looked through Glastonbury's records in 1120 and from the time when Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his history of the Kings of Britain in 1135, neither of them up to that date had ever associated Avalon, with Glastonbury and as we have covered already, William of Malmesbury asserting that King Arthur’s burial place was unknown.
It is for this reason most scholars believe the prophecy to be a fake of the twelvth or thirteenth century. Why, one must ask, are the monks so keen to associate the abbey with this prophecy if it is merely a fabrication? Why, if it is a fabrication do the three clear instructions contained within it, point to the place where Joseph is buried which just happens to be an island by the sea which coincidentally used to sell tin and the main protagonist supposed to be buried on the island was a tin merchant?. If this is not enough why is Avalon in the Vales of the west unlike Glastonbury. This prophecy was anything but a fake and because of this the monks had to mould their features to it, not the other way round. Besides if you clearly want to indicate that Joseph of Arimathea is at Glastonbury why spend so much energy reinventing onself as Avalon to fit anothers format. Why not create a much clearer puzzle that says ‘Joseph is here’ rather than creating a riddle (that no-one understands) and that points exactly to an Island in Devon where according to the Perlesvaus (the other authority for Avalon), the geographical features fit the location at the sea and of course explain the title of the book………Through,across or around these Valleys.

As William wrote a comprehensive history of Glastonbury ‘De antiquitae Glatoniensis ecclesie’ around 1130 which related many legends in connection with the Abbey, but made no mention of either Arthur's grave or a connection of Glastonbury to the name Avalon, it becomes plain that Glastonbury is not Avalon.

So it would seem that between the dates of 1135 and 1191, the plan was hatched to produce Arthur probably taking place due to necessity straight after the Abbey fire. The contemporary authors of the time of the discovery gave different reasons for Arthur suddenly being disinterred. Giraldus in his ‘de Instructione Principis’ written in 1193, relates that King Henry had been informed by the Welsh Bard that Arthur’s body would be found in this exact location 16 feet beneath the ground. However, Ralph of Coggeshall writing a few years after the disinterment says that Arthur's grave was found haphazardly as a grave was being prepared for one of the monks of the Abbey, who had asked to be buried between the two pyramids that existed just outside the Abbey. Both of these writers seemed to be relating inconsequential narrative, but one wonders why it was so essential to proffer a reason for having uncovered Arthur’s bones, and like so many polemicists, they are seen to be entrapped in their own guile.

Where there is a connection there is often a grain of truth that lays behind the rumour. In 1152 Eleanor became engaged to Henry II who became King in 1154. Eleanor had a strong connection to Melkin’s Book of the Grail as we shall find out and since no one knew at this stage where Avalon was, it seems likely that the Queen having come from France had informed King Henry of the ‘Matter of Britain’. King Henry died in 1189 two years before Arthur’s supposed unearthing. The only place in England to have a Joseph tradition (except Cornwall and that was just as a visitor) was Glastonbury. The business of ‘Aviragus and the twelve hides’ as Glastonbury tradition may have pervaded along with rumours of the churches founder.

 Eleanor knew both Arthur and Joseph were buried in Avalon, so are Henry and Eleanor with their proprietary knowledge from the Book of the Grail, responsible for emboldening the Monks to make the connection between their tradition of Joseph and that of the emergent King Arthur from the Grail stories, both buried in Avalon. This could well have been the doing of Henry Blois, who initially planted the seed that Avalon was Glastonbury. However, Joseph could not be produced for reasons given already, so the monks duly uncover Arthur out of necessity, requiring funds from pilgrims to rebuild.

Arthur’s body was never in reality discovered and as we shall reveal shortly, it is still buried in the Island of Avalon. Even though, in all probability, Joseph had in fact established the first church at Glastonbury, the real reason for the inventions propagated by Glastonbury, were due to the fact that in 1184, the Abbey had been burnt down. What does again seem a little convenient to fit with Melkin’s ‘adorable virgin’ translation is the consecration in 1186 of the ‘Lady Chapel’ at Glastonbury Abbey straight after the fire which Dugdale says was ‘better known as the chapel of Saint Joseph’.  By strange coincidence this just happens to be the appellation of the Grail chapel in the Perlesvaus.  This tends to show the churches traditional connection to Joseph but implies a later wish to carry that association further to comply with Melkin’s ‘adorandam virginem’ or  ‘Our Lady’ which puts the ‘oratori’ in Avalon.

The ancient manuscripts that would have provided Glastonbury with evidence of its illustrious past had been burnt along with other books Melkin had written that remained in Britain. One however, the ‘Book of the Grail’ had left for France in the Saxon era after the death of Arthur; the historical content of which was slowly filtering back into Britain, but it was now transformed and barely recognisable as the same Joseph heritage upon which Glastonbury had its reputation before the fire. The version was now mixed with arcane ancient knowledge derived from the Jerusalem temple that had been intermingled with historical accounts of Jesus’ death that involved Joseph’s journey with his body in an oil filled coffin to an island and allegorical accounts of mixed iconography and anachronistic muddled relationships of the illustrious bloodline that followed for the ensuing 400 years after Joseph’s arrival.

This was all accomplished by troubadours who were not aware of the substance of the source from which they composed their tales. These troubadours encouraged and commissioned by European courtiers, most of whom at this time were either Templars or were connected to them, were at the centre of court entertainment. How flattering if one of their names were weaved into these tales as the rest of the court listened on.

This Grail material concerning Joseph as it filtered into Britain must have trivialised what the ‘Glastonbury institution’ had previously viewed as their monopoly, by virtue of possessing the wattle church. By association with the wattle church and Joseph, they needed a quick fix to re-establish themselves as the only serious location to have direct historical associations with Joseph now these foreign romances had infiltrated and told of Avalon the same as Melkin had done. The ploy worked and the discovery of Arthur’s body, accompanied by the ‘Leaden Cross’ found with it, not only spelled out the location it was found in, but was immediately accepted as genuine. The Glastonbury institution gained enormously from this promotion and from that date forward Arthur and Glastonbury were inextricably linked.

Establishing Joseph’s connection with Glastonbury however, remained a little more elusive. It was through William of Malmesbury who tells us how St. Joseph was sent over by St. Philip, and how a king of Britain, (to who he gives no name), gave Joseph and his companions the island called ‘Ynyswitryn’, where, by admonition of the Archangel Gabriel appearing to him in a vision, he built a chapel which he dedicated to the Virgin, but this could of course be later interpolation. After which two other kings, whom again he does not name, gave the twelve holy men the ‘Twelve Hides’ of Glastonbury. It was through William relating that St. Philip had sent Joseph of Arimathea to proselytise the British, that Glastonbury (if genuine) had written precedent and this was only by way of an ‘ut ferunt’ meaning ‘as is reported’. So after William had casually alluded to Joseph, it was not until St Patrick's Charter was fortuitously found in 1220 in the chapel at the top of the tor that Joseph's name was concretely linked to Glastonbury as having been of ancient standing.

 It seems apparent that this was in fact a fabrication of a non-existent document, supposedly burnt in the fire, which had been fortuitously duplicated and therefore coincidentally saved for posterity. For every monastic order, church or Abbey, it was essential to have as its head, a patron saint and Joseph was Glastonbury's, by a long-standing tradition not able to be substantiated except by a now fired wattle church. After the first fire, the re-establishment or firming up of Joseph’s connection with Glastonbury came mainly through John of Glastonbury's Cronica, which was written in 1340 and this as we have seen, consolidated all the previous chroniclers to concur that Glastonbury was the Isle of Avalon.

Geoffrey of Monmouth established the Welsh Arthurian tradition and Merlin prophecies which must have come from a Melkin source originally(as it tells of Arthur in Avalon), while England had an already established Joseph tradition based upon Melkin's manuscripts and especially latterly through the massaging of the prophecy of Melkin. Arthur was king of Dumnonia, the Belerion of Pytheas, that nowadays constitutes most of Devon and Cornwall. However it would seem that this Kingdom of long standing, possibly started by the descendants of Zarah (island of Sarras), grew from the valleys south of Dartmoor (that at Joseph’s arrival was fully forrested south of the moors)  and incorporated as far away as Tintagel in the west and possibly as far as Glastonbury in the east.

 This is kind of reiterated in the attestation in the Life of Gildas related by Caradoc of Llancarvan. He states that the King of Somerset had carried off King Arthur's wife, Guinevere, so that King Arthur brought up the whole forces of Cornwall and Devon to affect her release.

It is not known how widely Melkin’s works had permeated into other monasteries before the dissolution but it would appear there had been a suppression of his work in Saxon times. Melkin's manuscripts or even fragments of them, could still have existed before the dissolution, at the Abbey, as is attested, however the material extrapolated from them is scantly recorded. Melkin arrived in popular consciousness at the production of John of Glastonbury's Cronica quoting directly from the book of Melkin. It seems likely that Geoffrey of Monmouth's British ‘book of great antiquity’ which he says is his source, could have been one of Melkin's manuscripts, but Geoffrey had flights of fantasy and may have used Melkin’s work for ideas that eventually metamorphosed Arthur into a consolidated British king.

The other reference we have that there was a Book of Melkin, is from John Hardyng’s English history and he tells us citing Melkin as the source, that Joseph of Arimathea baptised King Aviragus and that Scotland was named after Scota the daughter of a Pharaoh, indicating by this new detail that he had seen another source quoting Melkin or a copy of his book was still extant after the fire. There is no reason to disbelieve Hardyng and it is interesting to note that Melkin probably understood more about a connection with Egypt, than is commonly accepted, but the subject is related in a muddled fashion by the Grail romances. Hardyng also says, as if he were quoting Melkin directly, Galahad created the order of the knights of Saint Graall, and was made King of Sarras, and that Galahad would achieve the Grail, and mentions the configuration of the table of the Knights.

‘Where thenne he (Galahad) made twelve knightes of the Saint Graal,in full signifycacyon of the table which Joseph was the founder, at Avalon, as Mewyn (Melkin) made relacyon; in token of the table refyguracyon, of the brotherhede of Christes souper and maundie, afore his death,of highest dignytee’.

Not only did Hardyng introduce previously unrecorded information from Melkin, but refers to him directly in the above text. This does imply that a book written by Melkin mentioning Avalon apart from Melkin’s prophecy had survived in Britain because one of his books is said to have been about Arthur and the round Table. However the very mention of ‘Saint Graal’ means that Hardyng has definitely sourced French material also.

Hardying has a problem with Scota however and calls her(and therby the Scots) ‘Doughte and bastard of kyng Pharao’. To Hardying the belief in the story of Joseph of Arimathea and the Holy Grail fitted in with his political agenda of the right of the English to rule Scotland which may have been just a reaction against a Scottish aspersion that Arthur was a Bastard.

‘Mewynus the cronycler in Britayne tonge full fine’  is mentioned only in Hardyings short Chronicle as if he were newly discovered. Hardying definitely had heard of Melkin’s prophecy because he refers to Joseph being buried at Glastonbuy along with his two ‘fyls’  as mentioned in the long version, but ‘Mewynus’ does not get a mention by name in that earlier long version.  In the short version however melkin is referred to five times, but he does not mention the phials in this version which might suggest when writing the long version he had not known of the derivation of the information regarding Joseph and the two phials. He seems to have come across a book in the interim and that book was written by Melkin.

Hardyngs first reference in the short version to Mewynus was  as his source for Joseph’s conversion of King Arviragus:

‘Joseph converte this kynge Arviragus

By his prechynge to knowe the lawe devyne

And baptised hym as wretn hath Mewynus

The cronycler in Britayne tonge full fine.’

 

 Scholars seem to think Melkin did not exist because why would he have written such a strange puzzle.  It is easier to think that he and his prophecy are an invention but then why are  chronichlers always appealing to him as a sound and acient witness. It is even posited that Hardyng in this last extract is using the word ‘Mewynus’ to rhyme with Arviagus which is extraordinary. I think the gift of Avalon by Arviragus to Joseph is confused with the twelve hides that may have been given at Glastonbury. If we assume Hardyng has just got this book since the Long version came out and this new information concerning the Shield of Evalak and Avalon is genuinely exposed in this British book and has not come from Grail literature.  This cannot be proved but to think that there was no Melkin and there was no book that Hardying is referencing is plain ridiculous. Just because scholars can’t work out the puzzle it does not mean that it is a twelveth or thirteenth invention. Why invent something no-one understands?

Anyway, Scholars tend to think that- because Hardying does not have Arviragus convert in the first long version and then susequently convert in the later shorter version,  Mewynus is a fabrication.  Mewynus is just a devise used for a rhyme with Arviragus to add credibility to the conversion story and therefore Mewynus as a source not genuine.

 Melkin is Mewyn because the name Mewyn pops up only two verses later  in Hardyngs text on the subject of the red-cross shield which Joseph presents to Arviragus yet we know it was Evalaks shield and as we will discuss later this was an ancient source that provided this material and so it reiterates the fact that Melkin is Mewyn.

‘The Armes were used in all Britayne

For comoun signe eche man’ to knowe his nacioune

Fro his enemyse which nowe we call certayne

Seynte Georges armes by Mewyns ynformacioun

Which armes here were hade after Crist passioun

Full longe afore seynt George was generate

Were worshipped hee of Mekell elder date.’

 

If Hardyng had invented his source to substantiate his theory (substantiating primary establishment of Chrisianity over Scotland) and proof derived from antiquity; why appeal to Mewyn, if as most say, he was a fabrication or even his prophecy was.  Hardyng was accessing information from a Melkin Manuscript because by appealing to Melkin he makes credible his claims of ancient English association with Joseph as his critics would know that there is no older source to appeal to.  

Now the next reference to Mewyn comes when Hardyng again casts aspersions on the antecedents of the Scots and after referring to an account in the ‘Historia regnum Britannie’ which states that the Scots are descended from intermarriage of the picts and the Irish…….clearly here he is referencing Melkin as a respected source as he says Melkin is contradicting this view.

‘But Mewynus the Briton cronyclere

Saith in his cronycles other wise’.

 

In his first and longer version he had simply followed Goeffrey of Monmouth’s account, but now he had come across Melkin who he respects………  so he then goes on to rather give his more correct account that the Scots had descended from the marriage of Gadolus and Pharaoh’s Daughter Scota as we mentioned before.

‘This Scota was as Mewyn the Sage saith Doughter and bastarde of Kynge Pharao that day’.

 

We know that Melkin wrote a book and it deals with King Arthur in connection with the Siege Perilous.

‘Which Joseph saide afore tyyme full’ longe

In Mewyns boke the Britouns cronyclere

As wreytn’ is the Brritouns Iestes amonge

That Galahaad the Knyght and virgyne clere

 Shuld it escheue………’

 

If Mewyns book were being confused with Merlyns from Geoffrey how does this follow then in the next verse

‘But the Knyghtes all than’of the Rounde Table

Conseived well and fully than beleued

He was the same person incomparable

Of whom Merlyne said ever shuld be well cheued

This has to be the Melkynus of John of Glastonbury’ .

 

Hardying says that Joseph was endowed with Avalon and Joseph baptizes Arviragus and shows him a figure of ‘Cristes pyne’ and gives him a shield bearing a red cross ‘of his own blode whiche from his neck did rynne’

Hardyngs real intent is more engaged in letting the reader know that…….. from ancient antiquity is this story of the establishment of the cross of St George. Of course the primacy this would establish of having been connected with Joseph of Arimathea is the goal…i.e comoun signe eche man to knowe his nacioun/from hys enemyse’…. thus establishing from antiquity St. George as patron saint of the Garter and of England.

Hardyng reveals that Galaad travels to Avalon to get Joseph’s Shield with the red cross which he takes to the Holy land but when he dies his heart is brought back to Avalon :

‘It to entere at Avalon anente

The sepultur and very monument

Whare Joseph lyeth of Aramathy so gode’…

 

This could well be the Avalon as an Island by the Sea that we are seeing as the one meant by Melkin rather than the fictitious one at Glastonbury created by the Monks. This whole scenario has duped the world into thinking that Glastonbury is Avalon that we have Scholars like James Carley saying:

 

‘The ‘Facts’ of the story- that is that Joseph’s relics were never located-seem incontestable, although it is difficult to understand why this is the case. Why would the later medieval community at Glastonbury not undertake some sort of exhumation, the finds of which could be associated with Joseph? Why did Melkin prophecy put the unearthing of Joseph’s grave squarely within an apocalyptic tradition? Surely it would have been more convenient to have physical relics on display to corroborate the so called ancient writings and to stand as an ecclesiastical parallel to the Arthurian relics’.

The fact that Joseph was never disinterred there, is that he is on an Island in Devon. They could not take the risk like they had done with Arthur for where was the Grail. Of course it would have been convenient to have relics on show but their corroboration in regards to complying to details in Melkin’s prophecy is the very fact that establishes the prophecy's antiquity and thus proves that Melkin existed and his prophecy was understood to be profound even though it, at that time, was not decipherable. It is modern scholarship’s presumption that Avalon is Glastonbury and the fact that no corpse has been found; which gives rise to the questionability of whether Melkin existed but as we shall find out, Joseph’s body is still yet to be discovered in Avalon.  

Hardyng stands out as an independent source and not part of the Glastonbury brotherhood of polemicists. The only other citation, that is said to come directly from Melkin, is in Capgrave’s ‘Nova Legenda Angliae,’ where Melkin's original prophecy is so reduced, (most probably because of the difficulties with its meaning) that the whole thing could have been précised from John's Cronica. John Hardyng writing a chronicle, starts the provenance of the English through Brutus the Trojan, first born of Locrinus and ‘heir to that part of Britain now called England’; then continuing his chronicle through Arthur to the end of his history. The interesting thing is that Hardyng comments that he follows the tradition of “Mewn the Britayn chronicler” thereby confirming that Melkin was a collator who drew from an ancient source. This tradition which he is following, we must assume is contrary to that in which Geoffrey of Monmouth has embellished Arthur’s Welsh and British role as opposed to a more historic southern tradition and Arthur’s genealogical connection to either Joseph or as we shall cover shortly, Jesus.

John Leland relates that he came across fragments of Melkin’s ‘Historiola De Rebus Britannnicis’ in the Glastonbury library and it is from these fragments that Leland tells us, that Melkin was the most famous and erudite of British writers, well-respected and was renowned since great antiquity which does go against modern scholastic opinion that his prophecy was a forgery. It is implied also by Leland, that Melkin thinks Arthur is buried at Glastonbury. This surely must be Leland's conclusion based upon the connection of the ‘oratori’ in Melkin’s prophecy because in his ‘Assertio Arturii’, Leland names Glastonbury as Arthur’s burial place, yet as we know Arthur is buried in Avalon and Melkin knew this since he has left specific instructions to show us where it is. Leland who wrote around 1530 says that the document here quoted is ‘a very treasured possession in the old Library of the Abbey. He calls it 'a fragment of history written by ‘Melchinus an Avalonian' which may infer he was one of the Hermits refered to in the Perlesvaus. The passage below from his Nova Legenda Angliae, is from a translation by Skeat and indicates the interest that Melkin’s prophecy generated and the seriousness with which it was treated was a reflection of its hidden veracity. It was taken seriously as a venerated ancient text but no one really understood what it meant and why it was made so ambiguous.

'The Isle of Avalon, hungry for the burial of the natives, once adorned, above all others in the world, by oracular circles ('sperulis vaticinantibus') of prophecy, will for the future also be furnished with worshippers of the Highest. Abbadare, mighty in judgement, noblest of natives, with one hundred and four knights ("milibus" for "militibus") fell asleep there. Amid whom, Joseph of Marmor, name of "Armathia", found his perpetual rest. And he lies inside the forked line near the southern angle of the oratory erected there (of wattles prepared before), over ("super potentem adorandam virginem") the powerful adorable virgin, by that circle of thirteen inhabiting the spot. Joseph forsooth, has with him in his tomb two cruets, white and silvery, filled with the blood and sweat of the prophet Jesus. When his sepulchre shall be found, it will be seen in future years complete and undamaged, and it will be open to the whole world. Thenceforth, neither dew nor rain shall ever fail those who inhabit this most noble island. Long before the judgement day in Josaphat, these things will be open and manifested to living people.'

It is evident from the time Melkin lived (sometime after Arthur’s death) up to the 11th century, that Melkin had played a big part in perpetuating the Joseph tradition in English history and had, single-handedly and effectively altered the English psyche by his occult riddle that gave directions to Joseph's resting place. This riddle somehow implied or transformed the finding of his tomb into a quest, that interchangeably became a quest for the Holy Grail. This seems to be rather circuitous because it was through Melkin’s mention of the ‘duo fassula’ in association with Joseph that we are made to assume a receptacle (or two) and this eventually become synonymous with the Grail that originated in France from Melkin.

The French Grail romances perpetuated a connection between Arthur and Joseph that had derived from Melkin’s Book of the Grail and shows no sign of acknowledgement of the Glastonbury connection. This is typical of the French vulgate cycle and shows that Melkin’s intent for his Book of the Grail was to convey historical information about the arrival of Joseph and the arcane information which arrived with him. Much of this arcane or occult knowledge lodged within the book, clearly went over the original Grail writers’ heads. There has been so much erudite work done on comparisons of all the different grail romances and their similarities  and it is impossible to enlighten upon all the scenarios of who might have used who as a source as one version embellishes less a certain part of a romance. One thing is absolutely clear and that is the very early troubadours clearly did not understand the occult depths to which the original Grail book enlightened upon a divine plan. The types of knighthood have a didactic purpose, overcoming cowardice ,Gawain yielding his pride, attainment through grades etc etc.  they did not understand the moral of the story being derived from another source and thus we have a very unclear portrayal of the original that is split into snapshot small histoires which originally would have been part of a better interrelated whole.

  

A lot depended on the interests of the story to what parts may have interested him from an earlier version or how good his memory was if he had only heard it and whether when he reiterated it , it was now in prose rather than rhyme. Thus the real clarity and profundity of the original written by melkin has become diluted and distorted. The Perlesvaus gets right into detail of a battle scene which must have been a personal quirk of the compiler. Certain facets in some romances have upheld geographical details, some specific historical details, but on the whole  all the romances interrelate and tell the story of Joseph coming to Britain after the passion, followed by the trials and tribulations of a bloodline that lived in the south west of England.

we shall see what vestiges of Historical truths are left in certain of these romance stories when we look at the Middle English poem called Joseph of Aramathie the Alliterative poem written supposedly and dated by its meter around 1330, but it’s content shows it is highly original and unique in that it adheres to what Melkin knew as fact and should be regarded as a more accurate portrayal of Josephs arrival in Britain. This virtually states that the coffin came to England whereas the Perlesvaus most emphatically indicates this but only subliminally in the various branches. In essence the Perlesvaus, in modern parlance, skirts the unsayable sacrilege by not emphatically stating or noticing the ‘gorilla in the room’  

Although the Estoire, the book of the ‘Sanctum Graal’ is cited as a source from which John drew much of his Joseph material; the early writings at Glastonbury distance themselves from association with the Graal from France because they seem to be trivialising what Glastonbury had always assumed was its monopolistic heritage of Joseph through its church. They were only interested in having the most prodigious saint buried within their grounds but got caught up by the associations of their saint with Arthur that was coming from French Grail stories and could not quite understand this at first due to the disparity in chronology but as we have seen turned this to their own advantage.

Overtime, the French Grail becomes a vessel from the obvious connection with (vassula) and the fact that Joseph had purportedly brought both (the vassula and the Grail), and thus they become inextricably entwined. The Graal in the French version of Melkin’s work was originally based upon ‘Arcane knowledge’ and the ‘duo fassula’ in Melkin’s English prophecy was understood to hold liquid, but this was only due to Melkin’s subtlety in constructing his riddle. The Duo fassula is the Turin Shroud, (duplico Fasciola) which we are getting subliminally hit with in most Branches of the Perlesvaus: Joseph himself placed the shroud of Christ in the Perilous Chapel and after his death his own body was buried outside the Grail castle.

This misconception eventually transformed the Graal into a receptacle which coincided with Helinand’s description as a plate. Melkin’s understanding of the Gradale and the knowledge he was trying to convey, had to do with processional stages or the three grades to gnosis which shall be elucidated later. The processional of the Grail is a misunderstood romanticised version of a divine plan that was originally conveyed in its Hebrew form by Joseph to Britain. This accompanied with references to the ‘bleeding spear’ in the French Grail book and the fact that the vessel purported to hold Jesus’ blood collected from the spear wound, got mixed up with Jesus’ role in the Divine plan which the original French Grail material enlightened upon. The Menorah also being alluded to in the French material from the original ‘Book of the Grail’, plays a definite allegorical part in this processional or gradual steps as the Divine plan unfolds. This arcane knowledge, as relating to the candelabra of the Grail processional, is confirmed in Zechariah: 4.

Most of the information within Melkin’s manuscripts in the intervening years from his death to the 11th century had initially been suppressed by the Saxons, probably in a bid to deny national pride and therefore his works were not widely known. It is also probable that those that understood and had knowledge of these traditions rather than being repressed themselves, eventually found safer haven with their Breton brothers, rather than living under Saxon rule, hence moving these traditions and original Latin Book of the Grail into France which eventually triggered the proliferation of the Grail romances.

The Melkin prophecy as we have seen did not locate Avalon at Glastonbury but a continual polemical transformation was in progress as is apparent from John's Cronica when he interprets part of Melkin’s prophecy, he states that ‘Joseph sepultus est et positus in linea bifurcara iuxta oratorium predictum’. 'Joseph is buried, and positioned in a line that bifurcates where the oratory was’. It appears that because of John's inference and reference that the ‘linea bifurcata’ is a dividing line associated to the position of the old wattle church; John has for ever more, located Joseph in Glastonbury. It could have been a scribal change of the latin word ‘orari’ an adjective meaning ‘of the sea, or sea shore’(where Avalon actually is located), or even ‘ora tor’ to ‘oratori’ in Melkin’s original text that has prevented Joseph's resting place from being discovered. It is possible that the amendment occurred in Melkin’s original work by a scribe, to be followed by all subsequent chroniclers. This cannot be stated unequivocally, but this would seem to be the case if others who have borne witness, to having seen Melkin’s manuscript, did not pick up on this discrepancy. Conversely Melkin played a deliberate ‘double entendre’ on the words ‘ora’ and ‘tor’ knowing that by association to Joseph’s established church at Glastonbury, everyone would conclude he was near the ‘oratori’. Most likely though is that the Grail Chapel of ‘Our Lady’ that existed on Avalon is actually being refered to.

This conundrum, we will never know as he could never have foreseen the active polemicism that was carried out by Glastonbury at a much later date. He might have assumed that if Joseph was never found at Glastonbury someone would keep looking for Avalon until it was found, but he could never have conceived that Glastonbury would become Avalon.

The fact that the word ‘oratori’ is followed by the word ‘cratibus’, meaning ‘wattled’ would tend to unhinge the supposition that it was not intentional obfuscation, unless of course Melkin had originally written ‘orari crater preparatis’, which would suggest a pre-prepared cave by the sea. We will see just how many scenario’s and permutations there are when we dissect Melkin’s prophecy, but it would seem that the inclusion of ‘adorandam virginem’ in addition to ‘oratori’ and ‘cratibus preparatis’; if no scribal changes took place, is a direct attempt by Melkin to perpetuate an association with the wattled church at Glastonbury. However this argument does not follow ontologically when he is giving specific directions elsewhere.

This leads to the question of how could Melkin know that we would find the St. Michael Ley line. However, we will deal with this point when disentangling Melkin’s prophecy shortly. If there had been a scribal correction, the total misunderstanding of the location of Avalon is compounded in the Lection which prefaces John's Cronica, that tells of St. David, adding a new chapel at the West of the old wattle church and at the point where the two chapels joined, ‘a pyramid on the exterior to the northern part on the outside and the platform (raised step) on the inside in the South, a straight line divided them, according to certain of the ancients, St. Joseph lies buried along with a great multitude of saints’.

Relevance for the inclusion of this information was to act as a conduit for redirecting people's thoughts back to the original triangles and squares that were associated with the mystery inferred by William of Malmesbury. Plainly, Joseph being joined by a multitude is a reference to the 104,000 saints which is how many exegetes translated Melkin’s riddle. It was William who had intonated that the solving of the geometrical puzzle would reveal Joseph's burial place within the Abbey grounds. It is because of these various assertions and possible interpolations that Joseph’s resting place has remained undiscovered until the present day.

Before moving on we should quote William of Malmesbury for the respect he confers on the old wattle church as pertaining to the relevance of the word ‘cratibus’-wattle, which initially confines any search for the Holy Grail, or Joseph's grave to Glastonbury by its association with the old church:

“The church of which we are speaking, from its antiquity called by the Angles, by way of distinction, "Ealde Chirche," that is, the "Old Church," of wattle work, at first, savoured somewhat of heavenly sanctity even from its very foundation, having breathed it over the whole country; claiming superior reverence, though the structure was rudimentary. Hence, here arrived whole tribes of lower orders, thronging every path; here assembled the opulent divested of their pomp; and it became the crowded residence of the religious and the literary. For, as we have heard from men of old time, here Gildas, a historian neither unlearned nor inelegant, to obtain among other nations, captivated by the sanctity of the place, took up his abode for a series of years. This church, then, is certainly the oldest I am acquainted with in England and from its circumstance, derives its name. In it are preserved the mortal remains of many saints, some of whom, we shall notice in our progress, nor is any corner of the church destitute of the ashes of the holy. The very floor, inlaid with polished stone, and the sides of the altar, and even the altar itself above and beneath are laden with the multitude of relics.

Moreover in the pavement may be remarked on every side stones designedly inter-laid in triangles and squares, and figured with lead, under which if I believe some sacred mystery to be contained, I do no injustice to religion. The antiquity, and multitude of its saints, have enhanced the place with so much sanctity, that at night scarcely anyone presumes to keep vigil there, or during the day to spit upon its floor: he who is conscious of pollution shudders throughout their whole frame: no one ever brought hawk or horses within the confines of the neighbouring cemetery, who did not depart injured either in them or in himself. Within the memory of man, all persons who, before undergoing the ordeal of fire or water, there put up their petitions, exulted in their escape, one only excepted: if any person erected a building in its vicinity, which by its shade obstructed the light of the church, it forthwith became a ruin. And it is sufficiently evident that the men of that province had no oath more frequent, or more sacred, than to swear by the Old Church, fearing the swiftest vengeance on their perjury in this respect.

The truth of what I have asserted, if it be dubious, will be supported by testimony in the book which I have written, on the antiquity of the said church, according to the series of years."

We should look at an extract from Dugdale's ‘Monasticon Anglicanum’, who plainly believes the legend of the arrival in Britain of Joseph of Arimathea, and who also attests that it was Joseph who built the first church, but he like other sources are overly keen to stress its construction to match in with Melkin’s ‘Cratibus’ ."Here St. Joseph, who is considered by the monkish historians as the first abbot, erected, to the honour of the Virgin Mary, of wreathed twigs, the first Christian oratory in England."

And again from the same source:

 The ancient church of wood or wicker, which legend spoke of as the first temple reared on British soil to the honour of Christ, was preserved as a hallowed relic, even after a greater church of stone was built by Dunstan to the east of it. And though not a fragment of either of those buildings still remains, yet each alike is represented in the peculiar arrangements of that mighty and now fallen minster. The wooden church of the Briton is represented by the famous Lady Chapel, better known as the chapel of Saint Joseph ; the stone church of the West-Saxon is represented by the vast Abbey church itself. Nowhere else can we see the works of the conquerors and the works of the conquered thus standing, though but in a figure, side by side. Wherein is proved by all kinds of testimonies, and authorities, that for certain, S. Joseph of Aramathia, "with divers other holy Associates, came into, preached, lived, dyed, and was buryed in Britayne, at the place now called Glastenbury in Summersetshire."

However John of Glastonbury waxes lyrical about the old church saying;

 No other human hands made the church of Glastonbury, but Christ's disciples founded and built it by angelic doctrine; an unattractive structure, certainly, but, adorned by God with manifold virtue; the high priest of the heavens himself, the maker and Redeemer of humankind, our Lord Jesus Christ, in his true presence dedicated it to himself and his most holy mother. On account of its antiquity the English called this church, the ‘ealdechirche’, which is ‘the old church’, and it is quite evident that the men of that region hold no oath more sacred or binding than one on the Old Church and they shun nothing through fear of punishment for their crime more than perjury. Glastonbury originally built of wattles, is first and eldest of all churches in England. From it the strength of divine sanctity gave forth its scent from the very outset and breathed upon the whole land; and though it was made of unsightly material, it was nevertheless esteemed greatly in worshipful reverence.

The real puzzle here is to find out whether it was in fact Melkin’s intention for the world to believe (for a time) that Joseph was buried at Glastonbury or was it later scribal changes of Melkin’s prophecy just after the fire, followed by later gradual rationalisation of interpretation, that eradicated any other location as a possible contender for Joseph’s resting place. We should not forget that for Melkin, Glastonbury was never synonymous with Avalon. In Archbishop Usher's ‘Britannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates’ he provides us a Chinese whispers variant of Melkin’s prophecy, which he says was found in the margin of Matthew Westminster's ‘Flores Historiarum’ which plainly shows the prophecy’s evolution:

'Joseph ab Arimathea nobilis decurio in insula Avallonia cum xi. Sociis suis somnum cepit perpetuum et jacet in meridiano angulo lineae bifurcate Oratorii Adorandae Virginis. Habit enim secum duo vascula argentea alba cruore et sudore magni prophetae Jesu perimpleta. et per multum tempus ante diem Judicii ejus corpus integrum et illibatum reperietur; et erit apertum toti Orbi terranum. Tunc nec ros nec pluvial habitantibus insulam nobilissimam poterit deficere’.

'Joseph of Arimathea, the noble decurion, received his everlasting rest with his eleven associates in the Isle of Avalon. He lies in the southern angle of the bifurcated line of the Oratorium of the Adorable Virgin. He has with him the two white vessels of silver which were filled with the blood and the sweat of the great prophet Jesus. And for a long time before the day of judgement, his body will be discovered whole and undisturbed; and will be opened to the whole world. At that time neither dew, nor rain, will lack from that noble island’.

"Nobilis decurio" is St. Jerome's translation in the Vulgate of St. Mark's "honourable counsellor" and also Rabanus Maurus 776 – 856AD the archbishop of Mainz, in 'The Life of St. Mary Magdalene' uses the same appellation along with Helinand. If, (as we shall show later) Helinand is copying directly from his source, then this term of 'Decurion' was used in connection to Joseph, all prior to 800AD, so this is not of the Grail writers invention, but a genuine appellation from different sources. Many have taken it to mean that Joseph was a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin. Some commentators assume Joseph was a member of a provincial Roman Senate as ‘decurions’ are reported as being in charge of mining districts.

The Glastonbury propaganda machine was able to firmly establish Glastonbury as an island in association with the Tor, but it could not by any distortion, render its location by the sea. If Melkin did not write the words ‘orari’ or ‘ora’ and ‘tor’, the addition of letters to make ‘oratori’ brings the Island of Avalon away from the sea and into the Abbey grounds. This is onlt conjecture to what may have happened, but again an unlikely set of events is set out by John in his Cronica to convince the unsuspecting, that Avalon is in Glastonbury:

This Glasteing (a person) pursued his sow through the territory inland of the Angles near the village called ‘Escebtiorne’ all the way to Wells, and from wells by a trackless and watery path which is now called the ‘Sugewey’, that is ‘the sow’s way’. He found her suckling her piglets next to the Old Church on the aforesaid island, beneath a fruit tree; hence it continues down to our own day that the fruit of that tree are called ‘ealdechirchiness-apple’, that is ’apples of the old church’. This Glasteing, then, after he had entered the island, saw that it was rich in all manner of good things and came to live on it with his whole family. And since at the first, he found apples of the most precious sort in those parts, he called it the ‘Island of Avalon’ in his own tongue, that is ‘island of apples’, and he spent his life there and from his family and progeny, who succeeded him that place was originally populated. Finally, the Saxons who conquered it called the land ‘Glastonbury’ in their own tongue, by translation of the former name, that is ‘Ynswytryn’, for in English or Saxon ‘glas’ means ‘glass’ and ‘bury’ means city.

Now, in Melkin’s prophecy he had mentioned the word ’cratibus’, loosely meaning a hurdle, wattle or interwoven sticks, precisely the method employed to construct the old wattle church which seems quite a coincidence as the rest of his clues are telling us to look elsewhere. The reader might note from the references above that the construction method of the old church suddenly became unduly highlighted, after the miraculous discovery of Arthur's bones while fiction upon later rationalisations became embedded in popular history.

It was from this time, that it was repeatedly mentioned as part of an intentional confirmation and reassertion that, the original church (later dedicated to St. Mary or ‘Our Lady’) was built from wattle by St. Joseph. It is however the ‘adorandam virginem’ which convinces every investigator that Melkin was referring to the ‘oratori’ at Glastonbury; as this spells out the association with the Old Church. It seems more than coincidental that a rededication needed to take place; firstly to match references in the Perlesvaus to the Grail chapel (where Joseph was buried and the Grail rested) and secondly to fit in with ‘adorandam virginem’ from the prophecy.  Melkin is in fact giving us the most precise detail of the whole puzzle in these words, which lead us to the entrance of the underground vault on Burgh Island and has nothing to do with Glastonbury or the old church. This gradual transformation to fit details at Glastonbury so that they concur with the prophecy………… is the very proof that establishes the prophecy’s antiquity and its substance as the real and only genuine set of instructions that mark out the whereabouts of Joseph and the Grail in Avalon.

We will get to the ‘bronze plaque’ as the final deception, but it is William of Malmesbury’s words  ‘I believe some sacred mystery to be contained, I do no injustice to religion’; that lay the foundation for inferring that Melkin’s geometry has relevance at Glastonbury.  It is this one sentence that opens the way for future geometric speculation into hidden geometry within Melkin’s prophecy; specifically its relevance to the ‘bifurcated line’ that was to be later portrayed by the ‘bronze plaque’ as defining the whereabouts of the chancel of the old church. ‘and lest the site or size of the earliest church should come to be forgotten by reason of such additions, this pillar is erected on a line extended southward through the two Eastern Angles of the same church, and cutting off from it the chancel of the aforesaid. And its length was sixty feet westward from that line; its width twenty six feet; the distance of the centre of this pillar from the middle point between the said angles, forty eight feet’.   The reason for this of course was to make the geometry seem relevant to the word ‘oratori’ and at least provide a fictional line that somehow defines the whereabouts of the relics of Joseph of Arimathea. Some conscientious monk may well have measured this out accurately as it pertains to the old church, but this was not the object of the exercise (unless he of course really believed Joseph’s remains were under the church), rather it pretended to be in someway relevant to the instructions in Melkin’s prophecy. This was the final smoke that prevented any unlocking of Melkin’s code because not only the Bifurcated line now purports to show Joseph’s resting place near the church, but also the Island of Avalon (that was tidal according to the Perlesvaus and all Grail literature) was now also firmly identified as pertaining to Glastonbury tor. Religious lies all of it, but the biggest lie was what the religion is founded upon and is soon about to be exposed.

Melkin’s prophecy ultimately is what re-establishes Glastonbury Abbey, but it is through the prophecy that the British people believed that Joseph's burial site exists somewhere. The theme perpetuated through a combination of the Grail Romances and Melkin’s prophecy, that alludes to the island of Avalon. This, coupled with the mystery of Joseph of Arimathea's resting place has somehow become a quest or endeavour of occult meaning, that has today entered the psyche of the British people and Jesus’ visit to Britain is now celebrated in the anthem ‘Jerusalem’ which asks the question ‘and did those feet of Jesus walk in England’s green and pleasant land’, which was broadcast abroad around the world at the opening ceremony of the 2012 olympics.

Chapter 9

The relationship of Melkin’s prophecy to the French Grail material.

Father William Good, a Jesuit priest, born at Glastonbury, served mass in the Abbey at Glastonbury as a boy just before its dissolution. This was before Queen Elizabeth I changed the religion of the country to Protestantism. He also held a secret as to the whereabouts of Joseph of Arimathea’s burial place. Father William was educated in Glastonbury, and later attended Corpus Christi College in 1546 where he became a fellow in 1548, and studied for his Master of Arts in 1552. Throughout all the early days of his life while he studied and before he came to the priesthood, he carried around with him the information that was passed on to him by Abbot Richard Whiting at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539.

As was usual in those days, secret knowledge was handed down to chosen choirboys or likely candidates for the priesthood, by Bishops and Abbots rather than writing it down and running the risk of having it discovered by persons who were not privileged. Just before Richard Whiting was about to be hanged on Glastonbury Tor at the start of the dissolution, he related to the young William Good, that Joseph of Arimathea was ‘carefully hidden in Montacute’, most probably with the added instruction to say nothing to anybody. Father Good, while Queen Mary reigned in the interim, obtained the benefice of Middle Chinnock in Somerset, the prebend of Comba Octava in the Church of Wells, and was given the head-mastership of a school in Wells.

When Elizabeth I came to the throne, he travelled to Tourni where in 1562 he was admitted into the Society of Jesus, thereafter travelling to Ireland to become a missionary for many years. Afterwards he travelled to Belgium, where he met Robert Parsons, who persuaded him to become a member of the Jesuit order, while the rest of his days were passed as confessor to the English College in Rome.

It was during this time in Rome that he passed on the message to alleviate himself of the burden he had carried with him since he was a boy. He left to posterity at the English college in Rome the information conveyed to him by Richard Whiting with the added addition of his own précis of the last part of Melkin’s prophecy, indicating how important he felt it was; “The monks, never knew for certain the place of this saints burial (Joseph’s) or pointed it out. They said the body was most “carefully hidden” on a hill near Montacute and that when his body would be found, the whole world would wend their way there, on account of the number and wondrous nature of the miracles worked there”.

In Archbishop Usher’s account describing the Arms of Glastonbury, he quotes from an account given by William Good, and refers to him as “a Jesuit born at Glastonbury in the reign of Henry VIII”:

"Antiqua arma Glastoniensis Monasterii sunt hujusmodi. Scutum album, in quo per longum erigitur stipes crucis viridis & nudosas, & de latere ad latus extenduntur brachia seu rami crucis stipiti consimilia. Sparguntur guttse sanguinis per oninem aream scuti. Utrinqwe ad latera stipitis, & sub alis crucis, ponitur ampulla inaurata. Et haec semper denominabantur insignia Sancti Josephi, qui ibi habitue pie credebatur, & fortasse sepultus esse”.

‘Such are the ancient Arms of the monastery of Glastonbury. A white shield in which, for a long time, a green and gnarled stake of a cross sticks out, and from side to side stretch branches or boughs as if they were the beam of the cross. Drops of blood are spattered around the whole expanse of the shield. And at the sides of the stake, under the beam of the cross, is placed a gilded flask. And these were always referred to as the tokens of St Joseph, who is believed to have lived piously, and perhaps to have been buried there.’

The Reverend Walter Skeat makes his own remarks on Father Good’s passage; “The knotted cross evidently refers to the legend of St Joseph's thorny staff (from which a tree had sprouted at Glastonbury until recently…… cut down by vandals), the drops of blood denote his receiving the blood of Christ in the Holy Grail, and the two cruets are the "duo fassula" mentioned in the book of Melkin, which resulted from the duplication of the Grail of the original legend”. We can conclude from this, that Father Good had read Melkin while in the British Isles and had been privately engaged investigating the whereabouts of the sepulchre of Joseph. It would seem that Father William assumed that within the Heraldry depicted on the shield, there could have been a clue to where Joseph lay. It would also appear that he was probably taking this line of investigation, having previously read the Seint Graal, and its associations with Joseph, where "a white knight relates to Galahad the mystery of a certain wonderful shield." It is fairly evident that Father Good had tried to locate the burial place of Joseph having been motivated by the possession of a clue, but unfortunately he didn't piece together the relevance of Montacute.

Figure 22 Showing the Folly tower where there once stood a chapel dedicated to St.Michael on this hilltop ‘marker’ site.

Geoffrey of Monmouth writing in 1130 makes no allusion to the Graal, or to Lancelot or Gawain, or to the prophecy of Melkin and does not say much about Joseph of Arimathea in his popular Historia Regum Britanniae. Geoffrey wrote many works, all in Latin, but in his History of the Kings of Britain, he writes about Arthur, Merlin and Vortigern at length, but draws nothing from Melkin’s genealogy of Arthur, yet includes the previously unknown prophecies of Merlin. Geoffrey claims in his dedication that his book is a translation of an "ancient book in the British language that told in orderly fashion the deeds of all the kings of Britain", given to him by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford. Much of his material was invented, but the main body of manuscript text was supplied by the Archdeacon of Oxford, which mainly came from Welsh sources, most probably derived from a Melkin manuscript. These were embellished upon and subsequently they place Arthur in a Welsh backdrop. Geoffrey's works seem to show acquaintance with the place names of the region and most commentators think Geoffrey was Welsh and spoke Welsh. He seems to have come from the French-speaking Welsh border country and was probably educated in a Benedictine monastery. There were probably many French speaking Bretons in this region from the monastic houses that were to influence the likes of Gerald of Wales (Gerald de Barri), who is half Welsh, half Norman and Walter Map. Maep or Mapes was born on the Marches of Wales and calls the Welsh his countrymen, and England ‘our mother.’ It is posited that the Bretons and the Welsh spoke a similar language and it was from this connection that the Grail stories were easily assimilated with a similar Arthurian tradition that existed in Wales. William of Malmesbury the product of intermarriage between Norman and Saxon noticed but a slight difference in his time between Welsh and Breton: ‘Lingua nonnihil a nostris Brittonibus Degeneres’ and Giraldus calls the Breton an old-fashioned Welsh : ‘Magis antiquo linguae Britannicae idiomati appropriato’.

This tradition could have existed in Wales through copies of the works of Melkin that remained in Britain but as we have covered, it seems that the Book of the Grail went to France caused by the Saxon invasion and later returned to revitalise and mix with Welsh legend after having metamorphosed from a French romanticization of original, yet overlapping historical Material. The route of this information having probably travelled to Mont- Saint-Michel near St. Malo and Avranche which of course would have had links with the tin traders since ancient times. We will cover in a later chapter the probable landing point of Melkin and show why Helinand is the first to mention the account of the Graal and the supposed apparition to the Hermit (in Britain), taking place in 707 or as Walter map has it as 717AD. It becomes apparent later that Melkin probably took this book to France in his old age and thus an account of a British monk experiencing an angelic apparition was known in France.

Geoffrey’s omission of the Joseph material, meant that the French tradition that linked Arthur to Joseph was not as widely known in Britain, (despite his book's popular success)until the full pervasion of the romance material intermingled. This did not seem to take hold in popular culture until the arrival of the Grail material after Geoffrey’s death in 1154. If there was an early tradition that included the Nicodemus and Joseph stories at Glastonbury or anywhere else, it was ignored by William and Geoffrey, but then it proliferated at the advent of the French Grail material as if in response, to set the record straight and counter the more Welsh and strictly Arthurian material. That's not to say that the legends had not persisted about Arthur and his connection with Joseph before then, this being evidenced by St. Augustin's argument with the Britons, "who preferred their own traditions before all the churches in the world", which of course is a referral to the Joseph tradition and possibly the bloodline ties of Arthur to Joseph.

Helinand, the Cistercian Abbot of Froidemont or in latin Frigidus Mons on the river Tera near Beauvais, wrote a chronicle and the date provided for the first mention of the Graal. Here in the diocese of Beauvais was a Cistercian monk who died circa 1220, who wrote a chronicle of events in history which terminates with the year 1209 and seems to have heard an account of Melkin having had an apparition of an Angel. Coincidentally, this account seems to relate to the Grail and matches the date when Melkin possibly visited Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy around 700AD.

John of Tynemouth, writing later quotes an extract from Helinand (below) referring to the Graal for the first time by its name at a date given in his chronicle as 707A.D. As the chronicle was laid out by date and it was at this point in time where the extract was inserted in the chronicle, it infers that the Graal was so named at this date. There has been much discussion about the early date of the insertion of this reference to the ‘Graal’ and due to preconceived ideas of the ‘Graal’ being an invention of the Grail writers……… commentators have looked for reasons to show this date to be inaccurate and a fabrication of a later date.

The extract from Helinand:

De loseph centurione: Hoc tempore in britannia cuidam heremitae demonstrata fuit mirabilis quaedam visio per angelum de loseph decurione nobili, qui corpus domini deposuit de cruce, et de catino illo vel parapside in quo dominus cenavit cum discipulis suis; de quo ab eodem heremita descripta est historia que dicitur gradale. Gradalis autem vel gradale gallice dicitur scutella lata et aliquantulum profunda, in qua preciose dapes divitibus a solent apponi gradatim, unus morsellus post alium in diversis ordinibus. Dicitur vulgari nomine greal, quia grata et acceptabilis est in ea comedenti, tum propter continens, quia forte argentea est vel de alia preciosa materia, tum propter contentum ordinem multiplicem dapium preciosarum. Hanc historiam latine scriptam inuenire non potui sed tantum gallice scripta habetur a quibusdem proceribus, nec facile, ut aiunt, tota inueniri potest.

‘At this time a certain marvellous vision was revealed by an angel to a certain hermit in Britain concerning St. Joseph the noble decurion who deposed from the cross the body of our Lord, as well as concerning the paten or dish in which our Lord supped with his disciples, whereof the history was written out by the said hermit and is called ‘Of The Graal’ (De Gradali). Now a platter, broad and somewhat deep is called in French ‘gradalis’ or ‘gradale’, wherein costly meats (with their sauce) are want to be set before rich folk by degrees (gradatim), one morsel after another in divers orders, and in the vulgar speech it is called graalz, for that it is grateful and acceptable to him that eateth therein, as well. For that which containeth the victual, for that haply it is of silver and other precious material, as for the contents thereof, to wit, the manifold courses of costly meats. I have not been able to find this history written in Latin, but it is in the possession of certain noble written in French only, nor, as they say, can it easily be found complete. This however, I have not hitherto been able to obtain from any person, so as to read it with attention. As soon as I can do so, I will translate into Latin, such passages as are more useful and more likely to be true.’

The fact that Helinand could not find a copy of an early French source indicates to the contrary as most commentators have proposed. The commentators have supposed that the reason that Helinand is unable to locate a French copy is because of its recent popularity and production. The opposite is probably true, in that it is not widely copied and those bits that have been obtained derive from the original Latin version held by the noble family that have had it translated into French. It could be that parts of this French version were distributed to troubadours to expand upon and thus……… would part explain the erraticness of most of the early versions storylines. It is more likely, the reason for the books scarcity is that it had been in possession of an un-named French noble family from a very early date and from which troubadours close to that family accessed and romanticised its material, possibly picking bits and translating them into the French. The fact that Helinand is not finding (but has heard of the Latin original) shows us that he has come across Grail extracts in French from which he understands are derived from a Latin source.

 It is quite astounding that one of the most scholarly books that looks at comparisons of several romances and comments on how they interrelate with the Perlesvaus and which might be derived from another has this to say : ‘Note.—I have not considered it necessary to discuss the question, whether the romance existed originally in a Latin form. The mention of Josephus and several other passages in the romance (pp. 1, 79, 152) to my mind show clearly that the Latin original claimed by the author is a fiction’.

 If a whole French version exists is unclear as it appears it only exists in certain extracts and not as a complete version. The fact that it is purportedly only fragmentary or not easily found complete, adds to the veracity of this supposition that early on a Grail writer or writers were commissioned by this noble family to make sense of its obviously difficult story. It is these early French translations that provide separate bases for certain romances. The translations may have been exacerbated by Melkin’s different form of Latin and also the difficulty of the subject because as we know even in Melkin’s Latin original he did not categorically state that Jesus and the Shroud were brought to Britain otherwise one of the translators would probably have disclosed this. It seems most of the confusion stems (like the misunderstanding of Melkins English prophecy) from his inability to disclose directly what he saw in the Tomb and thus chooses to leave sublimal hints for the adept to pick up on.

Was the sense of the Graal as assumed by Helinand and elaborated upon as relating to a Dish, originally conveying the sense of a ‘container’ of the Graal and can this container be the Grail Ark or box that contained the Grail that Joseph of Arimathea conveyed to Britain.

Let us assume that a French noble family possessed a manuscript of Melkin’s original compilation of ancient Joseph material written in Latin and later had it translated into French, to be called or referred to as the ‘Book of the Graal.’ The reason behind this assumption is, we know definitively that Melkin has knowledge of Joseph’s whereabouts around six hundred years after his death. He knows also of the place where Arthur is buried because it is the same location at which Joseph was buried and Melkin is the only one who appears to know where Avalon is.

Melkin was said to have written a book about Arthur entitled ‘De Regis Arthurii mensa rotunda’,(which stayed in Britain) and indicates he lived contemporaneously with Arthur or soon thereafter. Given Melkin’s understanding of directions to the tomb and his accuracy in describing what will be found within it, we must conclude he entered it at Arthur’s death. It must be remembered that Melkin’s description of the ‘duo fassula’ (which applies to the Turin shroud) shows long before Perlesvaus (which is a derivative of his Grail book) also subliminally portrays the Shroud is where the Grail is. This of course, long before the shroud form was known or its appearance 600 years afterward but Melkin describes it perfectly.

It would also seem probable that Geoffrey sourced the location of Arthur’s burial as being in Avalon from Melkin’s work that remained in Britain and Geoffrey’s 'Arthur's grave is nowhere seen, whence antiquity of fables still claims that he will return', is either based upon Melkin’s knowledge that Joseph’s grave would be found thus uncovering Arthur or as we covered earlier it was a response to the unexplainable fact that such an illustrious figure had suddenly vanished.

The probable scenario is that Melkin, witnessed Arthur’s interment in Avalon, but it is still unfathomable how Melkin was able to give us such accurate co-ordinates to Burgh Island not only geometrically but topographically describing the locale, in a clearly well-constructed puzzle, if he had not visited the site.

The inclusion of the Grail in French, Welsh, Irish and English variations of the romances, makes it virtually impossible to divine its substance, provenance, or essential meaning and most elucidations are fraught with supposition and contradiction. So, digressing slightly, let us assume as we posited earlier, that the book of the Grail was written in Latin. It used as its material a source that included Hebrew arcane terminology and also used an account of Joseph and his associates journey to Britain with the Grail Ark. It was expanded upon, with information of a bloodline that existed from Joseph (or possibly Jesus through the Magdalene) down through Arthur……… inclusive of his exploits and that of the family from Roman to Saxon times. This book was originally written as a compilation of this body of knowledge, giving the origins of the religious nature of the Grail. This really has two aspects to it, 1) the gradual steps or degrees to the enlightenment of Man, that conveyed a higher notion of honor and righteousness expressed in knightly endeavour and should also be understood as the meaning behind the processional and 2) The Grail as an artefact directly relating to the death of Jesus. This as we shall cover shortly is his body preserved in Cedar oil contained within the Grail Ark.

Hardyng, Leland, Capgrave and Bale all cite Melkin as an ancient authority on Arthurian and British history and of the four titles he is supposed to have written that are referenced by these later chroniclers, let us assume a crossover of material between these manuscripts and the ‘Book of the Grail’. Melkin’s Grail book in France not only contained a historical account of Joseph’s journey to Britain but also occult temple knowledge having come directly from Jerusalem that explained or gave meaning to the original purport of the Grail. Let us also assume that this Gnostic material from the Temple contained an account of the Divine plan, the striving of man for spiritual enlightenment and its history through the Davidic heritage. Over time the Grail metamorphosed into an object and this transformation was partly due to Melkin who had written his riddle which included a description of the ‘duo fassula’. Now this misrepresentation of the ‘duo fassula’ as a vessel or vessels was said to contain liquids of blood and sweat and thus the necessity for a receptacle to hold a liquid or two containers. This puzzle or prophecy survived in one of his four British books or was duplicated in other manuscripts to be reproduced by John of Glastonbury.

Melkin’s book ‘Arthurii mensa rotunda’ obviously supplying much of the early Arthurian material for Welsh manuscripts that would, of necessity be void of the specific Grail material that was to emanate from Melkin’s Book of the Grail that had wound up in the hands of a noble family in France.

The Welsh Greal material however, contains the adventures of Gwalchmei Peredur and Lancelot, and of the Knights of the Round Table; but these are not found in Malory’s "Morte d'Arthur". The Peniarth manuscript is dated to Henry VI, the earlier part of the fifteenth century. This is similar to that of the "Mabinogion of the Llyvr Coch Hergest", which is of that same date, but it is probably transcribed from an earlier copy and it is not known when it was first translated into Welsh……… some scholars saying it was written around 1070 or in Henry I’s time, but this is debatable. Whatever the date of the Welsh version, the translator had no great mastery of the original French from the source and the Welsh scribe by his own volition chose not translate portions, because the French was difficult to translate and the story was itself erratic and for the most part misunderstood by the French collator. It can be seen that some of the Welsh versions have been assimilated from French sources and sometimes changed or interpolated or polemicized conferring a Welsh perspective to names places and events, as can be witnessed in the early Welsh versions, which gives a differing outlook from those in the French and can be seen by these next examples. Perceval in the Welsh is called Peredur. Perceval's father, Alain li Gros, is in the Welsh Earl Evrawg, and his sister Dindrane becomes Danbrann. King Arthur becomes Emperor Arthur while Queen Guenievre becomes Gwenhwyvar and so on. This leads to a comparable lack of rigour with place names; Cardoil becomes Caerlleon on Usk, Pannenoisance, Penvoisins; Tintagel translates into Tindagoyl and Avalon becomes Avallach. These are examples of deliberate alterations, and it is probable that those capable of such practice would have been prepared to usurp Arthur’s Cornish heritage.

This passage in the History of Fulke Fitz-Warine, originally written around 1260 is the first to mention the Graal from Welsh sources

‘And when Kahuz was awake, he put his hand to his side. There hath he found the knife that had smitten him through, so telleth us the Graal, The Book of the Holy Vessel. There the King Arthur recovered his bounty and his valour when he had lost all his chivalry and his virtue’

Thus it seems that "The Graal, the Book of the Holy Vessel" to which the Welsh biographer of Fulke refers is from a French source. It would seem that because he uses the definite article, it indicates that he thought this book to be the original authority on the subject, either having heard about it from a different source or seeing this in his written source. Melkin’s works had been in amongst older books at Glastonbury now lost, burnt or dispersed which John of Glastonbury describes as “Vetustissimi”. The Vetustissimi were the books of very ancient scribes, copied before the Norman Conquest, so copies of Melkin’s original Arthurian material had plenty of time to be transformed to a Welsh arena. In around 1280, the troubadour Sarrazin also refers to ‘The Graal’ as ‘li Graaus’ with the same definite article, when he was trying to assert a confirmation of established fact that King Arthur was at one time ‘Lord of Great Britain’. The references to ‘The Graal’ or ‘Book of the Graal’ as being the established authority or source for all the Grail literature even before Chrétien de Troyes, is further evidenced by Sarrazin’s following statement ‘the Romance that Chrestien telleth so fairly of Perceval the adventures of the Graal’. The statement tells us that Chrétien had used a source and had portrayed or conveyed the contents with clarity and it commends him for doing so. It is plain to see Chetièn’s Perceval and even later contiuations have a commonality with the Perlesvaus, one mybe having been transcribed from earlier French written material while the other composed by memory and by reference.

Let us assume the Grail (apart from its physical aspect) is an account of a religious rite or process of which a written explanation came to Britain with Joseph. Because what he brought was connected with Jesus, what was originally an account a of spiritual nature became synonymous with the box, Grail ark or receptacle that Joseph was believed to have brought to Britain. This gets even more confused if the French Troubadours heard news of the British account of a ‘Vessel’ buried with Joseph, which at least would have given them something physical to romanticise rather than what seemed to be some kind of unexplainable processional religious quest………… and hence the very erratic nature of the early Grail stories.

If Helinand’s date is correct it would explain the lack of continuity and provenance in the early French versions. It would also allow for Melkin’s Arthurian material to be corrupted in Wales, but we must not forget that Melkin’s intention was to obfuscate. It is clearly the Glastonbury institution who must be responsible for putting together the misinterpreted ‘duo fassula’ as receptacles that were buried with Joseph from British sources, rather than the French sources that were a Processional and was described as a singular plate or receptacle. The turning point of the Grail is when it became a physical object that singularly tried to encapsulate Jesus’s body, the Turin Shroud and an account of occult meaning and this will become clear shortly.

If there was knowledge of the Ark of the covenant’s whereabouts in Melkin’s ‘Book of the Graal’, coming directly via Joseph (a Sanhedrin member), there could be some substance in the rumour that the Templars possessed the Arc. It could have been Eleanor of Aquitaine during the second crusade, who could have made use of this knowledge as she was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Western Europe. As well as being Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right, she was queen consort of France (1137–1152) and of England (1154–1189) but more importantly she was patron to Chrétien de Troyes. Eleanor of Aquitaine is the only woman to have been Queen of both France and England and as Queen of France, she participated in the unsuccessful second crusade but may also have been the personal owner of Melkin’s Book of the Grail as Helinands noble family may suggest. Eleanor had two Daughters by Louis VII, Mary who in 1164, married Henry, the great Count of Champagne and Alix, who became Countess of Chartres by marriage to Theobald. This same Theobald earlier had made Eleanor, while travelling, avoid Blois in 1152 because of his eagerness to have Eleanor as wife, after her divorce from Louis. Henry and Theobald were brothers whose sister Alix had married Louis VII in 1160, eight years after Eleanor’s divorce. The family ties that were forged were fantastic, especially for Queen Eleanor, who, besides her two French daughters, had eight children as Queen of England. Her second son, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, born in 1157, was affianced in 1174 to a daughter of Louis VII and Alix, a child only six years old, who was sent to England to be brought up as future queen. Eleanor’s son Richard the Lionheart could also have found opportunity to recoup the Arc on the third Crusade if anyone did in fact achieve this goal.

The name of the original author of the Book of the Grail is recorded nowhere, but we know that Melkin had knowledge of Joseph who brought and was buried with a relic of Jesus. So the probability that Melkin wrote a tract specifically covering this same subject matter of Grail material, that disappeared to France is highly likely. What has made it difficult to work out how this common subject matter came from different directions is because Melkin left evidence and crossover material that existed in other works in Britain. The concurrence of two existing bodies of information that were to re-emerge and confirm their united theme at the advent of the gradual release of French material, through the Troubadour tradition, gives us an answer as to why British history was emanating from France.

Many have thought that the originator of the French material is referred to in the "Elucidation", prefixed to the rhymed version of "Percival le Gallois" under the name of "Master Blihis" and this pseudonym seems to refer to Henry de Blois who in French circles would have been known as Monseigneur Blois, but in British circles as Henry of Blois (1101–1171). He was often known as Henry of Winchester and was Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey from 1126, and Bishop of Winchester from 1129 to his death.

Henry de Blois was the nephew of King Henry I, and he was one of five sons of Stephen II, Count of Blois, by Adela of Normandy (daughter of William the Conqueror) and the younger brother of King Stephen. Henry’s father died in the Crusade at Razes when Henry was only two years of age. After an exeptional education and at the young age of 23, Henry was appointed Prior of Montacute in Somerset which becomes relevant later in our investigation, where his uncle Henry I, was planning to create a royal abbey and it is for this reason we can be assured that the information which Father Good gave us about Montecute could only have come from Melkin’s book in France through Master Blihis.

The poem of Chrétien de Troyes is the earliest surviving literary version that mentions the Grail and Chrétien, as he himself admits, was not inventing, but re-telling, an already popular tradition concerning the matière de Bretagne. The process of romanticising arcane knowledge contained in Melkin’s book had already begun with various degrees of interpretation and misunderstanding which had built layer upon layer of variant versions from the core relevance of the original purport of the Gradatim as a spiritual pattern or divine plan laid out for mankind. If Henry of Blois is the author of the Perlesvaus or ‘High history of the Grail’ it would explain the reverence with which he treats the subject even if he had to uncomprehendingly interpret the depth of information revealed by Melkin’s original and certainly he would have been in a position to correlate this evidence with extant material at Glastonbury.

 It might appear that he is one of the causes that Avalon was thought to be at Glastonbury if he is indeed Master Blihis but not even he knew where Avalon was. It would appear that corruption of Melkin’s text into the French had taken place already and he may be looked uon as the collator of various strands of romance material that were extant as he was being educated in France and those that he came across as they pervaded into court in Britain. It was probably Henry’s understanding of the ‘duo fassula’ as a vessel; understood certainly as a receptacle(s) in Britain, that might have transformed the religious rite, processional or quest of the French material into an eventual reliquary or Chalice. Henry of Blois does know however that Melkin the Hermit is recounting what Joseph as an eye witness 500 years earlier had written down as an account that becomes the basis for the story of the Graal coming to Britain and this is seen (as we will show later) as Joseph being the one refered to in the text as the authority for the Story.

This high story records and testifies that Josephus, (Joseph) who records it for us, was the first priest to sacrifice the body of our lord and we should therefore believe in his words.
Gawain is told ’you will be told the meaning of anything you wish to ask about, by the testimony of Joseph the good clerk and good hermit (Melkin) that tells us these things and his(Melkin’s) knowledge of them comes from the pronouncements of the Holy Spirit and the Angel.

Hear ye the history of the most holy vessel that is called Graal, wherein the precious blood of the Saviour was received on the day that He was put on rood and crucified in order that He might redeem His people from the pains of hell. Josephus set it in remembrance by annunciation of the voice of an angel, for that the truth might be known by his writing of good knights, and good worshipful men how they were willing to suffer pain and to travail for the setting forward of the Law of Jesus Christ, that He willed to make new by His death and by His crucifixion.

The High Book of the Graal beginneth in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. These three Persons are one substance, which is God, and of God moveth the High Story of the Graal. And all they that hear it ought to understand it, and to forget all the wickednesses that they have in their hearts. For right profitable shall it be to all them that shall hear it of the heart. For the sake of the worshipful men and good knights of whose deeds shall remembrance be made, doth Josephus recount this holy history, for the sake of the lineage of the Good Knight that was after the crucifixion of Our Lord. Good Knight was he without fail, for he was chaste and virgin of his body and hardy of heart and with courage, and so were his conditions without wickedness. Not boastful was he of speech, and it seemed not by his cheer that he had so great courage; Nonetheless, of one little word that he delayed to speak came to pass so sore mischances in Greater Britain, that all the islands and all the lands fell thereby into much sorrow, albeit thereafter he put them back into gladness by the authority of his good knighthood. Good knight was he of right, for he was of the lineage of Joseph of Abarimacie. And this Joseph was his mother's uncle, that had been a soldier of Pilate's seven years, nor asked he of him any other favour of his service but only to take down the body of Our Saviour from hanging on the cross. The delight to him seemed full great when it was granted him, and full little to Pilate seemed the favour; for right well had Joseph served him, and had he asked to have gold or land thereof, willingly would he have given it to him. And for this did Pilate make him a gift of the Saviour's body, for he supposed that Joseph should have dragged the same shamefully through the city of Jerusalem when it had been taken down from the cross, and should have left it without the city in some mean place. But the Good Soldier had no mind thereto, but rather honoured the body the most he might, rather laid it along in the Holy Sepulchre and kept safe the lance whereof He was smitten in the side and the most Holy Vessel wherein they that believed on Him received with awe the blood that ran down from His wounds when He was set upon the rood. Of this lineage was the Good Knight for whose sake is this High History treated.

Henry of Blois was educated at a monastery in Cluny in the region of Bourgogne in eastern France. This was a Benedictine Cluny Abbey, founded by Duke William I of Aquitaine in AD 910 which adhered to the principles of Cluniac reform, including a sense of intellectual freedom and humanism, as well as adherence to a high standard of devotion and discipline. Here Henry studied in the seven liberal arts; trivium (rhetoric grammar, and logic), quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, music and astronomy) along with architecture and he was essentially renowned later in life, with all this schooling, as a sage. It was, probably while in France during his formative years, that he heard of these early tales of the Grail and later while at Glastonbury he combined later material that comprises the High history of the Grail.

It is interesting to quote from Miss Jesse Laidlaw Weston’s revealing book ‘From Ritual to Romance’ as this gives a clear impression of the early Grail writers development.

while the poem of Chrétien de Troyes is our earliest surviving literary version, there is the strongest possible evidence that Chrétien, as he himself admits, was not inventing, but re-telling, an already popular tale. The Grail Quest was a theme which had been treated not once nor twice, but of which numerous, and conflicting, versions were already current, and, when Wauchier de Denain undertook to complete Chrétien's unfinished work, he drew largely upon these already existing forms, regardless of the fact that they not only contradicted the version they were ostensibly completing, but were impossible to harmonize with each other.

It is of importance for our investigation, however, to note that where Wauchier does refer to a definite source, it is to an evidently important and already famous collection of tales, Le Grant Conte, comprising several 'Branches,' the hero of the collection being not Chrétien's hero, Perceval, but Gawain, who, both in pseudo-historic and romantic tradition, is far more closely connected with the Arthurian legend, occupying, as he does, the traditional position of nephew, Sister's Son, to the monarch who is the centre of the cycle; even as Cuchullinn is sister's son to Conchobar, Diarmid to Finn, Tristan to Mark, and Roland to Charlemagne. In fact this relationship was so obviously required by tradition that we find Perceval figuring now as sister's son to Arthur, now to the Grail King, according as the Arthurian, or the Grail, tradition dominates the story. The actual existence of such a group of tales as those referred to by Wauchier derives confirmation from our surviving Gawain poems, as well as from the references in the Elucidation.

On a couple of occasions in the re-telling of these Gawain tales Wauchier refers to what he thinks is the original author by name and calls him ‘Bleheris’ the first time. On the second occasion he states specifically that this Bleheris was of Welsh birth and origin, ‘né et engenuïs en Galles’. He says this in connection with a tale being told to a certain, Comte de Poitiers, whose favourite story it was, saying ‘he loved it above all others’, which would infer that it was not the only tale the said ‘Bleheris’ had recounted to the Count.

Even though it is posited that Henry was born in Blois Castle in France, this cannot be substantiated but if Henry is the composer, he used much Arthurian material for the Elucidation which might have made others think he was Welsh. Henry could possibly be the Link that combined Arthurian Welsh and the essentially British Glastonbury Joseph material that had remained separate from the French source material of Melkin that combined the Arthurian with Joseph and Nicodemus material owned by Eleanor of Aquitaine. The ‘Elucidation’ prefaces its account of the Grail Quest by a solemn statement of the gravity of the subject to be treated as ‘God moveth the High Story of the Graal. And all they that hear it ought to understand it, and to forget all the wickednesses that they have in their hearts’.

These stark warnings are said to have come from a certain Master Blihis, concerning whom we hear no more but the warning does seem to derive from a firm believer with an understanding of the Grail’s sanctity in connection with a divine plan or the mysterious Grail. A little further on in the poem we meet with a knight, Blihos or Bliheris, who, made prisoner by Gawain, reveals to Arthur and his court the identity of the maidens wandering in the woods of the Fisher King and the Grail, and is so good a story-teller that none can weary of listening to his tales. This in a form, is autobiographical by Henry speaking of Blihis as other than himself and is confirmed by the Count of Poitiers’ commendation of Blihis’s storytelling.

‘Monseigneur’ is an honorific appellation in the French language and it would seem that it has been mistranslated or wrongly scribed for ‘Monsieur’ and then ‘master’ by later translators from the French. It has occasional English use as well, as it may be a title before the name of a French prelate, a member of a royal family or any court dignitary; all of which might be applied to ‘Monseigneur Blois’. It would seem that having studied rhetoric and Grammar, Henry would qualify in some degree as a raconteur of Grail material to William X, Count of Poitiers between (1126 - 1137), Father of Eleanor of Aquitaine just as it was said that Master Blihis had done and not forgetting, Henry would have been abreast of the Glastonbury material since 1126. Also some scholars seem to think that the originator of the Perlesvaus, (due to his lack of detail in some areas compared with Chretien or Gautier) may have comiled much fro memory rather than transcribing all.

William IX, known as the Troubadour, 1071 - 1126 was Duke of Aquitaine and Gascony and Count of Poitou between 1086 and 1126. He was the son of William VIII of Aquitaine by his third wife Hildegarde of Burgundy. He inherited the duchy at the age of fifteen. In 1088, at the age of sixteen, William married his first wife, Ermengarde of Anjou the daughter of Count Fulk. It is interesting to note that the biographer of Fulke in the History of Fulke Fitz-Warine the first to mention the Grail in Welsh literature and more importantly the book of the Holy vessel, is Eleanor of Aquitaine’s Grandmother’s family name (Fulke). William IX’s greatest legacy in history was his renown as a poet. He was the first known troubadour or trouvère, a lyric poet employing the Occitan or Langued’oc tongues. Eleven of his songs survive and they are attributed to him under his title as Count of Poitou. This seems to have become a family tradition as the first Romance poets of the Middle Ages emerged as founders of the troubadour tradition……… because like his father before him, William X, Eleanor’s father was a patron of troubadours, music and literature. He was an educated man and gave his two daughters an excellent education. Henry of Blois was obviously entirely fluent in French and had family ties to Eleanor (His cousin Theobald was married to Eleanor of Aquitaine´s daughter, Marie) who also was a patron to Chrétien de Troyes and thus makes the Aquitaine’s the most likely ‘noble family’ (from Helinand), to possess Melkin’s ‘Book of the Grail’ and to provide Henry with the French source material. In the fragmentary remains of Thomas's Tristan we have a passage, in which the poet refers, as source, to a certain Bréri, who knew "all the feats, and all the tales, of all the kings, and all the counts who had lived in Britain." With Henry’s privileged education and fascination with books he would have found available at Glastonbury, in conjunction with his royal connections; he does appear to be the obvious person to correlate British and French sources that had been temporarily separated. Blois became Bleheris which was mispronounced as Blihis which got Latinized into Bledhericus and far from the bounds of our enquiry at the moment one can trace Henry in other writings. Strangely enough one wonders if Robert de Boron (who is most notable as the author of the poem Joseph d'Arimathe) knows about a master blihis as the priest Blaise: ‘I’d like you to set it down in a book’ Merlin tells Blaise ‘ for many people who hear my words will benefit from them and then he assures him that the ‘Book of the Grail’ will be heard most gladly’. The accounts in The Vulgate Cycle appear to be derived from Blaise's texts. Merlin brings Blaise (In the Didot-Perceval ) to the Grail Castle to pass the time there while in the Vulgate Merlin, Blaise takes up residence in Camelot just prior to Merlin's death. As we will investigate shortly the Grail castle on Avalon is just opposite what became known as Kamaalot in Perlesvaus.

Briefly, Giraldus Cambrensis refers to the ‘famosus ille fabulator’, Bledhericus, who had lived "shortly before our time" and whose renown he evidently takes for granted and was familiar to his readers not necessarily for his personage, but rather for the material said to have been written by him. Now if Gerald of Wales was writing around 1210 this would be when the High History of the Grail was at its most Popular. Although Henry employed his own pseudonym in his work, it would seem that other appellations from other writers; the Bleheris who, according to Wauchier, had told tales concerning Gawain, and Arthur's court, one of the tales of which was certainly the Grail adventure; the Master Blihis, who knew the Grail mystery, and gave solemn counselling about its revelation; the Blihos-Bliheris, who knew the Grail, and many other tales; the Bréri, who knew all the legendary tales concerning the princes of Britain; and the famous story-teller Bledhericus, of whom Gerald of Wales speaks, are not separate people, or mere inventions of the separate writers. It would seem as if Henry, may well have deserved the title ‘famosus ille fabulator,’ but he was only accounted as the originator of the Grail because people thought Monseigneur Blois wrote the original. However,he was just the consolidator of much of the Melkin material and as we now know, Melkin was the writer of the original book of the Grail. It was however the coincidence of his being privy to knowledge from British and French sources that led to his reputation and renown as master Blihis, but it seems as if we can account Henry in some way responsible for the Grail’s evolution as an object.

 In 1126 at the age of 29, Henry was appointed Abbot of Glastonbury and would certainly have come into contact with the works of Melkin which were extant at that date. He joined the Abbey in a state of decline when the monks lived in penury. Abbot Henry took immediate action, proving himself as an excellent leader and architect. He renovated and restored the monastery and it was through his efforts that by 1143, Glastonbury Abbey is noted in the Doomsday book as “the wealthiest in England”.  Henry definitely would have profited if he could persuade others that Glastonbury was Avalon. Henry’s brother, King Stephen with Queen Matilda were two of the greatest benefactors to the Templars and it is through the Templar connection of Eleanor and her proximity to the Crusades that threads of Templar material got embedded in the romances and as we shall find out became the main guardians of the truths behind the Grail.

It would seem therefore that Henry can be accredited for having written one of the first compilations of Grail Romances called ‘The High History of the Holy Graal’.
It appears to have been not only collated sourcing from Chrétien de Troye’s work and from sources which Eleanor’s family owned, but also it becomes clearer because of his family connections and the likelihood of Henry and Chrétien’s paths crossing.
King Arthur is alive in the story, so how is it we know where he is buried especially when we see Lancelot’s visit to the Isle of Avalon were he sees Guinevere’s grave. The person who told this story had seen Guinevere's Grave and knew it was on Avalon and the only person who could have known this is Melkin. Henry was just a consolidator of some of the original book of the Grail, but all seem to think Henry wrote it.
If our assumptions are correct, the ‘Book of the Grail’ was written by Melkin which approximately concurs with Helinands’ date. Henry of Blois was also aware of Melkin’s other writings at Glastonbury, adding to the fact that it is also credited in the Latin version of the ‘High History of the Holy Graal’ to have been written by a monk at Glastonbury who, incidentally must have been fluent in some dialects of the French.
Melkin appears to be single handedly responsible for coalescing the Joseph tradition in Britain and the Grail literature that emanated from France. Thus to make a delectable tune to your ear, history goes masking as fable. (R. Wace)

Melkin through the construction of his English prophecy kept alive a tradition from great antiquity through conjoining the Quest of the Grail (from French literature) with a search for Joseph and what was with him in his tomb. It would seem also that Henry de Blois (as a later propagator) was the ‘famous fabulator’ named ‘Master Blihis’ in the prologue called the Elucidation of Le Conte Del Graal where it says, Master Blihis is ‘one who knew all the stories of the Graal’.

Chrétien de Troyes working for Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughters states that he had been given a Grail book by them, to be romanticised, (inferring a more historical or factual account), so that it could be read out at court to provide pleasure for its listeners. It would appear therefore, that the French noble family in possession of Melkin’s work which contained the historical Joseph account including the gospel of Nicodemus (which Chrétien was aware of), and the various tales up to king Arthur were all derived from Melkin’s ‘Book of the Graal’ in the possession of Eleanor.

Henry of Blois was uncle to Theobald V, Count of Blois and Troyes who was married to Alix de France, daughter of Louis VII, King of France from his first wife Eleanor d’Aquitaine. Theobald’s brother Henry was married to Marie, Eleanor’s other daughter; so through the Aquitaine’s possible ownership of Melkin’s book of the Grail, it is not difficult to see how Henry of Blois, appraised of the fact that Melkin was the originator of these truths, and being acquainted with the Glastonbury tradition could have been the one responsible in part for the British re-emergence. This helped through Crusader and Templar influences of the Joseph and Arthurian histories, couched and propagated as popular troubadour tales.
In addition, the Count of Blois’ court in Troyes became a renowned literary troubadour centre. Walter Map was among those who found hospitality there along with Chrétien.
We should not forget that Melkin was probably the hermit (pious monk) referred to by Helinand and that Melkin had to have been aware of arcane Joseph material, to have portrayed the Joseph and Grail material as the base for his Prophecy. As we shall see further in our investigation, it is through Melkin’s thorough understanding of the essence of the Grail that he can link its discovery with the unveiling of the tomb with a specific point in time. It is partly due to this prediction of the unveiling that subsequent commentators referred to his extract about Joseph’s tomb and the ‘duo fassula’, as a prophecy.
Henry for reasons regarding his ecclesiastical position, would not wish to be  openly associated with the more romanticised and plainly embellished Grail material proliferating at the time that many thought trivialised into fable, the Lord’s relics and the personage of a saint. Henry understood the Grail’s sanctity in that it was a relic of Jesus in some form and may have been aware of some of its more arcane meaning as an expression of God’s work in man. He Knew that it was a subject (although not fully comprehended by him) that should not be treated irreverently and so ‘The High History of the Grail’, was written and alluded to himself by a pseudonym or nickname.

Henry was brought to England by King Henry I, to be Abbot of Glastonbury. On 4 October 1129, he was given the Bishopric of Winchester but allowed to keep his beloved Glastonbury Abbey. He was consecrated as bishop on 17 November 1129. He had ambitions to become Archbishop of Canterbury but was thwarted. However he did not abandon his work at Glastonbury. Except for a few brief months in 1141 when he changed his alliance to Empress Matilda, when he thought he would be on the winning side, Henry supported and advised Stephen his brother and is credited as one of the clergy who helped convince William of Corbeil, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to crown Stephen. Soon after his appointment to the See of Winchester, Henry came to resent his subservience to Canterbury. Henry was the patron of great writers one of whom was Archdeacon, Gerald of Wales (who later unwittingly referred to him as Bledhericus) and through his family connections, had links to the Templars and the Crusades and was well acquainted with William of Malmesbury.
One of the finest buildings Henry had constructed, was the Hospital of St. Cross on the outskirts of Winchester. A few years after completion, Henry was to assign the guardianship over to the Knights Templar. In William of Malmsbury’s work, ‘De Antiquitate Glasttonie Ecclesie’, (which he dedicated to Henry), he tells us that “the monk he knew personally and in fact whom he “served” was shy, learned and a great writer”. Henry of Blois gave some sixty books to the great library at Glastonbury and had ancient books copied, such as Pliny’s Natural History, the book of Enoch, and several other books of Origen, St. Jerome and St. Augustine which probably would have been lost except for his efforts. Mostly he will be remembered for sponsoring the Winchester Bible, the largest illustrated Bible ever produced (which was still unfinished at his death).
It is in 1155 though, that Master Robert Wace completes his "Roman de Brut," a version of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s "History" in French. Wace dedicated his work to Eleanor of Aquitaine his patron, and is remembered as being the first writer to introduce the concept of the "Round Table" to the Arthurian cycle but its derivative is somewhat lost in the embellishment and may have a connection to the ‘cercle d’or’.

 Was it Eleanor who had provided him with a source containing arcane geomatria supplied by Melkin’s book mixed with the information from British sources found at Glastonbury supplied by Henry of Blois that were to be included in the Architecture of Chartres then under the jurisdiction of the Counts of Blois. Of King Arthur Robert Wace says,

"I know not if you have heard tell the marvellous gestes and errant deeds related so often of King Arthur. They have been noised about this mighty realm for so great a space that the truth has turned to fable and an idle song. Such rhymes are neither sheer bare lies, nor gospel truths. They should not be considered either an idiot's tale, or given by inspiration. The minstrel has sung his ballad, the storyteller told over his tale so frequently; little by little he has decked and painted, till by reason of his embellishment the truth stands hid in the trappings of a tale. Thus to make a delectable tune to your ear, history goes masking as fable.

Melkin was a geometer, which was not only borne out by his Prophesy, but also if we take into account information regarding Montacute as a marker on the ley line from Avebury to Burgh island. This information may have been derived from the Grail book originally and passed on by Henry of Blois. Henry could however, have gleaned this from another work of Geomatria by Melkin. Henry was probably the first Abbot to pass on this clue that seems to have come down through the ages to Father Good.

 
It was generally understood that Joseph was hidden within some geometric puzzle, all the clues of which seem to emanate from Melkin, the one man who knew the whereabouts of Joseph.
It also seems a little suspect that he chose to be appointed at the young age of 23, as Prior of Montacute. The one person we suspect of having read Melkin’s Grail book and who most likely discovered that there was a connection between Montacute and finding Joseph just happens to be prior there. Henry had come across this Montacute information regarding the burial site of Joseph……. material from a source that Melkin must have written, since the line that he is sending us to find (the 104 nautical mile line from Avebury to Burgh Island), runs right through St. Michael’s hill Montacute. Since no-one at the time knew it was a ‘confirmation clue’ or knew where the Island of Avalon was, it obviously did not help Henry. Since this piece of material evidence was not spoken of or referenced in the Grail literature that emanated from France, one would assume that this information was found in a Melkin manuscript that existed in Britain before the fire. The only reason for not thinking this is that…… why at such a young age had Henry come straight from France to Montacute? This indeed would be an extraordinary coincidence if he had not come across this clue while in France.

 
Strangely enough, it was Eleanor who married King Henry II, the same King Henry who was supposedly told by a sage the exact place to start digging at Glastonbury Abbey to find King Arthur’s bones there between two pyramids. As we have covered Henry II was already dead when Arthur was unearthed but the story could have a grain of truth, if indeed Henry had learnt of Arthur’s burial in Avalon from Eleanor or her material. If it was widely accepted that Joseph was buried in Avalon and because of Joseph’s Glastonbury connection to the church there……… it is possible that the King, learning Arthur was also buried in Avalon also from the French source, may indeed have put this very idea of Avalon being equated with Glastonbury into the monks heads. It is possible that subsequently after the king’s death, they eventually (having lost their patron), decided to carry out the bogus unearthing of Arthur citing him as a witness.
Although John Leland, in 1534 says that the book he saw of Melkin’s dated to 450AD we do not know how he arrived at that date. The passage from Helinand’s chronicle relates the angels appearance to Melkin occured in 717,(and we will cover later how this date is probably accurate)……… so somewhere in-between both Arthur and Melkin lived.

 
One can only deduce that Helinand is referring to Melkin, as Melkin deals with the same two subjects, that of Joseph and the Grail in his Prophesy. It will become apparent to the reader, as we progress, that Melkin’s ‘Book of the Graal’ or ‘Of the Grades or by Degrees’ had express knowledge of what the Gradatim was, as a series of ‘grades’ toward spiritual enlightenment and this revelation of the Grail was known and understood by Melkin. He knew that it would be marked by an event in time, i.e. the unveiling of the tomb at a predestined point in time, but we will deal with this explanation of ‘Time’ later.
One cannot be certain if Helinand’s extract is the first passage which refers to the Grail directly at this early date, but the same date was quoted by Walter Map, an early Grail writer in reference as a source. If it is genuine, it is the closest we get to the original source of Melkin the consolidator of material found in the tomb. This is the point at which it becomes a question of faith for those who believe in Angels or for the pragmatic to answer……… ‘from where did Melkin receive instruction’? If we consider the Grail as arcane knowledge linked to a Divine Plan, then divine intervention by apparition should not be excluded especially when we consider Melkin’s link to an apparition by St. Michael that is attributed to St. Aubert at Mont-Saint-Michel discussed in a later chapter. Because Melkin states in his Prophecy precisely what was in the vault on Burgh Island and gives a description of the Turin Shroud long before it was supposedly first shown in public……. it seems more probable that he visited the vault or cave given the precise directions to the entrance.

Who imparted the knowledge for the original arcane source material, if it was not an angel that indeed gave Melkin his insight? More importantly, how were they or he able to leave behind such exact geometrical and geographic instructions with surveying pin point accuracy? One must remember that if Melkin did live around 450 to 700AD then where was this source and in what language, before Melkin transcribed all its information into the Latin book of the Grail? This source and the Grail book will be found at the unveiling of the tomb……… the Grail book being returned when the Templars hid their treasure there.

The arcane source material will have remained in the tomb but certainly the Grail book was returned to the tomb by the Templars as by now it would have surfaced along with their treasure. From the testimony of Helinand regarding the possession of the French book (only existing incomplete)……… makes one think that the original was only translated piecemeal and the parts translated and woven into a story were those parts that inspired individually the original transcribers. Each of the early troubadours elucidating and embellishing on an individual basis according to their penchant for the more spiritual essence or fight scenes or the transference of historical or geographically accurate detail.

There must be an arcane source book for Melkin to have transcribed from Hebrew to render Shirei ha Ma'a lot’, because to understand and relate in the Grail book about the Grades of Enlightenement would indicate some exterior source or divine inspiration.
In Helinand’s chronicle, he derives ‘graal’ from ‘gradalis’ and sets the date for the British hermit's vision of the Grail at 707 or 717 A.D, but we are told that Melkin was ‘before’ Arthur and Merlin. This proposition now seems inaccurate if we take this date and the fact that Melkin knows where Arthur is buried. It is still not certain how this transition of the ‘Grades’ evolved into an object except from obvious misinterpretation, but Helinand's ‘gradalis’ did not resemble a chalice but rather a dish on which meats were served. This semantically fits with the other descriptions of the Holy Grail as a receptacle, since Joseph of Arimathea uses the Grail to catch blood and sweat from French tradition and alluded to by Melkin (in the misunderstood British prophecy) and implies that it is a vessel that holds liquid. Helinand states that Gradalis or Gradale means a dish, wide and somewhat deep by definition, in which rich meats are served to the rich in degrees- gradatim.
This is the point where I am sure that I will loose many readers as the duality of the Grail is on one side derived from arcane understanding. Is this not a misunderstanding of the transcribers and the original purport of the processional alluded to the spiritually rich as opposed to the waste-land or dearth which is cured on attainment of the Grail in the romances. This is a complex subject as the consciousness of man is refered to in Biblical expression through the prophets as ‘land’. The waste-land is an allusion to a spiritual state.

The singular Chalice is often thought of as the receptacle used at the Last Supper or is a relic of the Passion in which both blood and sweat were contained. Some scholars posit that the concept of the Grail as a platter preceded the notion of the Grail as the "Kiddush Cup" from the Last Supper positing that primarily it was a Paschal Dish and not the Eucharistic vessel used by the twelve disciples. The physical Grail is none of these, because Melkin describes it so accurately, he leaves no doubt as to its composition.

When Chrétien de Troyes refers to the ‘Graal’ in ‘le Conte du Graal, Chrétien refers to his object not as “the Grail”, but as “un graal”, “a grail”, implying that in the source document it was used in context as a common noun and that there were more than one. Melkin alludes to the Grail as either the body of Jesus in Grail ark or the shroud that was formed in it, but he also is recounting in the ‘Book of the Grai’l about Grades or Degrees to enlightenment, which is the whole essence of the other half of understanding what the Grail is……… an objective description of the ‘Divine Plan’ and the romances have in a way achieved a heightened awareness or preparation in readying the world as a form of pre-cognition.

It is difficult to ascertain whether Melkin, did survey the angles and distances that we will be elucidating when we investigate Melkin’s prophecy, because this art was supposedly lost in the sixth century Dark Ages, when European mapping techniques were still very crude. Melkin, however, passes on precise and accurate information given in his riddle, so where did he get it from? If it was not Melkin who surveyed the British landscape by his own skill, which points to where Joseph and Jesus were buried in the Island of Ictis, then how was it that he could leave us such precise directions? Was it truly by divine intervention as Helinand posits, or was there original ancient mapping instructions which indicated and marked Ley lines from which Melkin compiled his prophecy? The reason for considering this is that ‘Mons Acute’ or Montacute was the place Henry of Blois went to long before the Templars built the marker St. Michael churches. So was Mons Acutus the mount that marked out the thirteen degrees from the ley line from Avebury and got named as such…… long before the Templars built their St. Michael edifice to mark their treasure hoard.
If one considers that an entire body of knowledge may have existed since very early days from the offspring of Zerah through a line of Kings that ended with Arthur, then Melkin could have had access to this when he buried King Arthur. Was he, like Father Good, just the messenger, perpetuating a tradition and preserving directions to Joseph’s resting place to be found in a future generation? The hardest question to answer is…… “who did the original surveying and at what stage in history were the coordinates of these Ley Lines recorded and surveyed as pertaining to what was hidden in Ictis”? If we assume that the Templars possessed knowledge of this Ley line system (which will become apparent), then the French Book of the Grail may also have been contained this geometry. If this assumption is correct then it might explain where Henry of Blois got the information about Montacute that was passed on to Father Good down through the ages by the Abbots. What part does the island play in relation to the original St.Michael Ley line before the Templars put their stamp on it and named it as such.

If the extract that gives account of the Grail noted by Helinand was written in Latin around 707AD, it indicates that, before the five main romance writers, Guiot le Provencal, Chrétien de Troyes, Walter Map, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Albrecht von Scharfenberg, began their works, there was a Latin original that contained geomatria which would explain (given his connections to the noble family), how Henry of Blois might have made the Montacute connection that was passed to Father Good. If it was not picked up to feature in any of the French transcripts by the French writers, maybe Henry had gleaned it from the original. But then one has to question whether Henry actually saw the French original translation of the Grail book (if there ever was one) or the original Latin from Melkin. It seems that if there ever was a complete transcription of the whole Grail book the various varients would concur more in their subject matter. As Helinand bears witness there probably was no complete French volume but the French material existed as seperate extracts or exerpts compiled by the original writers allowed to see the latin text.
As regards to when the original was written given the Saxon connection to Arthur, it would seem soon after Arthur’s demise and possibly even written in France although Helinand’s source seems to indicate an Apparition as taking place in Britain. The original Latin version written by Melkin we should guess at around 650 AD to be followed by the French excerpts translations and the French volume that Helinand presumes exists, never did. Because Eleanor’s father and Grandfather were captivated by these stories and the fact that Chretien is working off another’s work…… what we think all became a tradition at one time probably had much earlier strains as well. It is with this family that the troubadour tradition concerning the Grail commenced, to evolve into the various forms of romances. Before any of the early named Grail writers mentioned above came on the scene, there was most probably a more oral court tradition and it would seem these early troubadours recognised at this early date that the Grail book contained sacred information.

The Grail books appearance was either then ascribed the date by Helinand or more probably given the date of when his source wrote of the Latin originals first appearance at court. Because of the book’s profundity, knowledge and the nature of its material, it may have been assumed that it could only have been delivered by an angel to the hermit (better known as Melkin). In a later chapter we will cover the possibility that Burgh Island’s association as a Tomb in connection with St. Michael preceded even the Templars and if indeed it is the cause for the naming of Mont- Saint-Michel as Mons Tomba and its association with an angelic apparition by St. Michael to a monk.
It was Robert de Boron circa 1170 who relates the story of the shield that was later to become the template for the Arms of Glastonbury, that had probably inspired Father Good’s investigation to find a clue to Joseph’s burial site. The shield given to Evalak by Josaphes, Joseph of Arimathea’s son, had a red cross on it that was also to become the symbol of the Rosicrucians and the Templars. Robert tells us that, following Evalak's victory over Tholomer, the red cross upon it disappeared, then Josaphes, just before his death, asked Mordrains to bring the shield to him. Continuing the story he then recounts that Josaphes with his own blood inscribed another cross on the shield and gave it back to Mordrains, and afterward it was placed upon the grave of Duke Nasciens, until Galahad would come and retrieve it. Galahad then posseses a sword which had belonged to King David, the hilt of which was covered by King Solomon with precious stones and the story ensues with an adventure with the holy bleeding lance, and Galahad’s eventual achievement of the Saint Graal, followed by his death at Sarras. Now here is the quirk. If the sword of Solomon was brought by Joseph then if he left Jerusalem with it, would he not know where the Arc is, presuming they were cached in the same place beneath the temple. Is this why these Knights originally wound up at the Temple Mount rather than the ruse of protecting the way of pilgrims?
Thomas Malory's ‘Morte D’Arthur’ has very much the same elements within his story with his own additions, the early French tradition keeping links with the Holy Land threaded throughout the narrative. Is Solomon’s sword’s iconic appearance in the original sources hinting at the inter-relationship of the two twins Pharez and Zerah’s separate bloodlines, as far back as King David, Solomon’s father, but somehow imputing the transference of kingship to Britain. The shield obviously being transformed in the tale with blood marks on it, to a Rosicrucian emblem and an association with the Templars, who not only were probably at this stage in possession of the Latin source in France after Eleanor but were now releasing their source material in response to the new interest shown in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s widely read history of the kings of Britain.

Evalak’s shield then by close association with Joseph was adopted as the Arms of Glastonbury. Glastonbury substituted the knotted wooden cross from the staff planted by Joseph at Glastonbury and then added the two vessels each side to coincide with the ‘duo fassula’ while the blood inscribed cross of Evalak also become the Templar emblem.

The subject matter of our investigation seems so wide, and interrelated from Ictis to Avalon via Glastonbury and the Grail stories. Evalak king of Sarras, Knights looking for the Graal in the East, Egypt, Jerusalem, the Templars’ cross, stories of Jesus in England, Joseph of Arimathea being buried with the Grail, Arthur, the oil with which Josaphes was consecrated, being kept in the Grail-ark. This oil with which a line of Kings are consecrated, while being kept at Sarras, swords and ships from Solomon, pyramids at Glastonbury, and prophecies in riddle form, but all of these having a link to Jesus.

Man from the dawn of consciousness, has advanced and gained a large amount of knowledge from stories recounted by previous generations that sometimes lived millenia before him while the individual has to learn and judge the validity of this corpus of knowledge in his short 70 years of life. The relevance of the stories in this enquiry are for mankind as a whole, as if we are being prepared for a revelation…… occult information couched within the Grail stories subliminaly some of it derived from understanding the Prophets of Israel, and bardic prophecies, without which, we would not comprehend a coming of heightened consciousness, and the proof that mankind needs.  A proof that aligns with scriptures held as sacred by the Abrahamic religions i.e. the Prophets. The proof that is necessary for Mankind to progress in consciousness is the knowledge that there is some form of divine intervention which directs events. If Man were to have a more intellectual knowledge of God rather than wholly Faith based, there would be a shift in the consciousness of Mankind. There is understanding of this expectation even outside the arena of our investigation in the prophecy of Paracelcus, and the reformation of the whole world order.

Quod utilius Deus patefieri sinet, quod autem majoris momenti est, vulgo adhuc latet usque ad Eliæ Artistæ adventum, quando is venerit.

"God will permit a discovery of the highest importance to be made, it must be hidden till the advent of the artist Elias." He also states;

Hoc item verum est nihil est absconditum quod non sit retegendum; ideo, post me veniet cujus magnale nundum vivit qui multa revelabit.

"And it is true, there is nothing concealed which shall not be discovered; for which cause a marvellous being shall come after me, who as yet lives not, and who shall reveal many things."

In Malachi 4:5 See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. This passage comes straight after an admonishment to obey the Law of Moses the very subject the Archangel is supposed to dispute with the Dragon. Jehosaphat mentioned in Melkin’s prophecy, is the same day to which Malachi refers; so is St. Michael synonymous with Elijah? It would seem that the different religions would need a proof of provenance of some sort to reunite them, especially those of the Abrahamic tradition, as all have been derived from one heritage and been guided by one divine plan. Of course, in Jewish, Moslem and Christian traditions this unifier is Michael the Archangel, attested by Enoch first and then confirmed later by the Biblical prophets. The very purpose of prophecy is realisation or gnosis to bring together these three Abrahamic faiths and there will be a need to eradicate religion in all its divisive forms of theological dogma and creed.

The very reality of what was foretold by these prophets needs to actually transpire and then there will be the proof needed by mankind. The problem is that gnosis of an omnipotent God needs be ‘re-cognised’. The Grail stories with what they reveal, when aligned with the prophets are just the vehicle to bring about this paradigm shift of consciousness. After all, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand and has been for 2000 years, but it is only a heightened consciousness that will recognise this fact when this shift in consciousness occurs and this is at the discovery of the Tomb and what it reveals to mankind.

Chrétien de Troyes poem tells of the passages through life of a young knight called Percival, but it is written in an uneasy form and suddenly goes from a story about Percival into the adventures he has on the way to being a knight. Percival is the first of the three Grail stories to be published and in the narrative it describes the vessel of the Holy Grail as a golden dish and also speaks of a Lance dripping with blood that appears with the Grail conveyed ceremoniously at times throughout a meal he is having. The Grail romances cover too many variations to be discussed here, but as we focused on the essential information provided by Pytheas that led us to the Island of Ictis, so too, must we look at the essential core of what the Grail romances have in common, to understand their meaning. It is evident that the Grail writers were not really concerned with historical time or anachronistic chronology as they interwove their various versions from a core body of material.
The essential threads of information that align themselves even semantically and allegorically seem to consist of Joseph of Arimathea, the Grail, Knightly pursuits and a quest, but essentially it was a British matter. Joseph has a connection to Jesus and most of the Grail heroes have a connection to Joseph and so it would seem a bloodline or inheritance is inferred. The Grail seems to be an object with direct connections to Jesus having been brought to Britain by Joseph. The quest appears to be, to find the Grail but the Grail seems hard to define and thus looking for it makes it all the more difficult. The Grail although greatly connected to Jesus (who was the one responsible for a major part of Man’s enlightenment) is also synonymous with the developmental stages of enlightenment in the individual, referred to as grades in the Book of the Grail and allegorised as the righteousness of knightly pursuits.

Melkin having prior knowledge of this process or divine plan would in effect equate him as having equal standing with Biblical prophets, informing us of future events in ’Time’ but also having knowledge that his prophecy relates in part to degrees of Spiritual enlightenment which are set in a finite timespan.

Chapter 10

The Montacute connection to the Glastonbury Pyramids and the Ley line, that Melkin has shown us leads to Avalon.

Father William Good, died at Naples in 1586, and was buried in the college of the Jesuits in that city. Father Good wishing to pass on the small nugget of information said that Joseph of Arimathea is “hidden carefully in Montacute. Let us look however at the connection with Montacute and the actions taken by previous unknown people that must have heard of this same information that Father Good had been trusted to pass on.

It becomes clear that before Father Good’s time, an attempt had been made to establish Montacute as the most holy site by the finding of a holy relic. This seems to be a completely arbitrary act unless an Abbot or monk had prior information about the sanctity of who was purportedly laid there. The only certain information passed down to us, was that Joseph of Arimathea was buried, ‘very carefully in Montacute’. It becomes apparent that the inclusion of Hamdon Hill being named after Montacute as the precise location was probably a later interpolation following the discovery of the Black Rood of Scotland, otherwise known as the Holy cross of Waltham. The coincidence of this find having great similarities to the discovery of the leaden cross that was fabricated to establish King Arthur's Avalon as Glastonbury.

Holyrood Abbey, founded in 1128 by King David I of Scotland, once possessed a fragment of the original holy cross from Calvary brought by St. Margaret to Scotland from Waltham Abbey and known thereafter as the Black Rood of Scotland. Supposedly the right hand man of King Canute 1016-1035, a man called Tofig had a vision and found a large black flint crucifix -The Holy Cross, on a Hill at Montacute, he then took it to Waltham. The story goes that he put the cross on an ox-cart, but the oxen would only go in one direction and would not stop until they reached Waltham and there it was housed in the Abbey. It was then re-appropriated back from the Scottish by the English in 1346 to Durham Cathedral as one of its holy relics. The Black Rood of Scotland disappeared at the Reformation, while at the same time, the same fate befalling Waltham Abbey's Holy Cross.

The reason for relating these points is, firstly, the Holy Cross of Waltham, originally found buried at Montacute, seems to have been transformed on its journey to Scotland from a flint object into the actual Cross from Calvary, and secondly, that coincidentally becoming intertwined, Scotland's Holy Rood and the cross which was dug up at Montacute were both black, thereafter leaving for posterity a complete muddle of fake relics.

However, to have located such a holy relic in Montacute in the first place would have certainly added credibility to the possibility that Joseph of Arimathea also was buried there. Probably what really transpired was that one of Father Good’s predecessors from Glastonbury, (Montacute being a possession of the Glastonbury Monastery), while in possession of the same secret information as William Good, tried to find Joseph of Arimathea in Montacute, and not wanting to turn up empty-handed, enacted very much the same deception as his other brothers of Glastonbury had done by fabricating a lead cross for King Arthur. Somebody within the Glastonbury institution at some stage knew of the connection, with Joseph of Arimathea and Montacute…… a deception of a discovery was organised, but it did not have the desired effect of finding Joseph. The deception did not materialise as intended and instead, a cross was found, with stories of miraculous circumstances and then an early date apportioned to the find, so that Pilgrims could be persuaded of Montacute’s sanctity. In fact it would not be going too far to postulate that it was the same Abbot responsible for both deceptions. This was most probably Henry de Sully, Richard I’s nephew, Abbot of Glastonbury, who was the perpetrator of the Arthur fiasco. This in the context of not forgetting Richard was Eleanor’s of Aquitaine’s son who appointed Henry de Sully not so many years after Henry Blois’ death. It was probably Henry of Blois, as we have covered, who originally obtained this nugget of information however, from Melkin’s geometry contained in Eleanor’s Grail book and it was passed on to Henry de Sully. There is a small possibility that this clue was given in extant Melkin manuscripts at Glastonbury and kept quiet so as not to detract from Glastonbury’s monopolisation of Joseph. There is though, partial evidence for the Grail book having contained geomatria that has come down in the form of the Grail tables, these of course found in the geomatria of Chartres Cathedral and the three table’s connection in relation to Arthur obviously been woven in to the Grail romances.

The one fact that we can draw from this Geomatric clue of Montacute is that the Montacute connection to Joseph of Arimathea was prior to the time that there was a proliferation of St. Michael dedicated churches. This seems to indicate that the present day St. Michael's Hill at Montacute on which a St. Michael church was built has only had that appellation since the early 1400’s and hence the reference to Hamden hill or confusion with Ham hill.

Archbishop Usher in his Antiquitates, who quotes from Maihew’s Trophea ;’Quod autem ad montem illum Hamdenhil nuncupatum,in quo aliqui S.Josephum ab Arimathea sepultum perhibent spectat habebatur sane olim sacellum in illo monte constructum inter sacra et veranda angliae loca.’

'As for the mountain called Hamden hill, in which some claim Joseph of Arimathea is buried, clearly from the looks a chapel was once located here, built on that mountain, among the sacred and revered places of England',

The Hamden Hill, mentioned in this text, is referring to the one we have already established that is called St Michael's Hill today, which, as the quote reports had a Chapel on it. However, this is clear for two reasons, the first being that the proliferation which makes up the design of St. Michael churches that we have previously established, did not appear until the very late 13th, and early 14th century and was not mentioned at the time when the holy cross of Waltham was fabricated. St. Michael's Hill was not named, and was thus called Hamden Hill at the time. The line we have been sent to find by Melkin tangentially touches St.Michael’s hill at its base, 200 yards from where the chapel stood as we can see in figure 24. The Ley lines length of 104 miles runs from Avebury to Burgh Island as seen in figure 23. It now becomes obvious that the intended meaning of ‘hidden carefully’, relates only to St. Michael's Hill as part of the Ley system acting as a marker on the ley line, for the long awaited discovery of Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb on the Island of Avalon in Devon.

There are other observations worth noting from the passage left by Father Good from his manuscript in the English College at Rome. The original Latin for the brief passage quoted above was printed by Archbishop Usher in his 1687 edition of ‘Antiquitates’ quoting as his source Edward Maihew’s ‘Congregat Anglican ordinis Benedict’. Maihew, while he was a student in the English College in Rome after Father Good's death copied this following text from the signed manuscript which Father Good had left for posterity. It is unclear which copy of Maihew, Archbishop Usher used as his source, but there appears to have been an attempt to cover up this following passage from being widely made public, since the copies of Maihew's Trophea in the British Museum, in the Bodleian library and in the library of Trinity College, Dublin are all missing this specific passage. The passage quoted here actually comes from Stillingfleet’s private collection that was sold to Archbishop Marsh’s library in 1704. It is interesting to note that there remains no trace of the St. Michael church at Montacute and it also seems as if an attempt with the same aim, has been made to cover-up the clue to Joseph's whereabouts left by Father William Good. Maihew writes:

For this man (Father Good) was situated until now in the same monastery (Glastonbury) in a flourishing position, a boy brought up as a priest to devote himself to sacrifice for the mass, after the overturning of the rule of the Catholic Queen Mary; however, while Queen Elizabeth was persecuting the Catholics, he was made a member of the clergy of the Fellowship of Jesus. And when the church of the Anglican college was decorated with pictures, he was the first to assemble in that place an enumeration of the distinguished holy men of England, with him as leader, to ensure that the appearances and deeds of those very men in that place were portrayed with a faithful likeness to the truth. However, concerning the convent of Glastonbury and Saint Joseph of Arimathea, he leaves behind the following, written in his own hand and signed in that place with his own name:

‘at Glastonbury there were bronze plates as a perpetual memorial, chapels, crypts, crosses, arms, the keeping of the feast(of St Joseph) on July 27, as long as the monks enjoyed the protection of Kings by their charters. Now all these things have perished in the ruins. The monks never knew for certain the place of this Saints burial, or pointed it out. They said the body was hidden most carefully, either there (Glastonbury), or on a Hill near Montacute called Hamden Hill, and that when his body should be found, the whole world should wend their way thither on account of the number and wondrous nature of the miracles worked there. Among other things, I remember to have seen, at Glastonbury, a stone cross, thrown down during this Queens reign, a bronze plate, on the which was carved an inscription relating that Joseph of Arimathea came to Britain 30 years after Christ's Passion, with eleven or twelve companions: that he was allowed by Arviragus the King to dwell at Glastonbury, which was then an island called Avalon, in a simple and solitary life: and that he had brought with him two small silver vessels in which was some of the most holy blood and water which had flowed from the side of the dead Christ. This cross, moreover, had been set up many years before to mark the length of the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin, made by Saint Joseph with wattle. The length was measured by a straight line from the centre of the cross to the side of the chancel afterwards built of hewn stone, under which also there was of old, in a subterranean crypt the Chapel of St Joseph. Outside, in the wall of this Chapel of the blessed virgin, there was a stone with the words ‘Jesus, Maria’, carved in very ancient letters. The old arms of the monastery of Glastonbury confirm (the traditions). These arms are a white shield on which is placed vertically the stem of the green cross, and from side to side the arms of a cross in like manner. Drops of blood are scattered over the field of the shield; on both sides of the upper right and under the arms of the cross are set golden ampullae. These were always called St Joseph's insignia for he was piously believed to have abided there; and even perhaps to have been buried there. There was in that same place (at Glastonbury) a long underground sanctuary where a very famous pilgrimage was established to the stone statue of that saint there; and there were many miracles done there, even while I was a boy, who was born there (in Glastonbury), and I served mass in the sanctuary as an eight-year old, and I saw it destroyed by the impious man, William Goals, under Henry VIII.’

Thus far go the words of that man (Father Good); as I said, he signs his name in his own hand under these things: I copied them down from the manuscript itself when I was a pupil of the same Anglican college in Rome, and always I kept them safe with me, across sea and land, amid the most savage persecutions of heretics. Nevertheless, it points towards that mount named Hamden Hill, on which some claim the tomb of St. Joseph of Arimathea to be, the sanctuary on that mount was kept safe for some time, built among the sacred and revered places of England. In fact I remember when sometimes I myself would traverse that mount, a certain old man who lived not far from that place would receive me through trust in my worthiness, often, during the reign of Elizabeth the heretic, to visit that place, and there, in a particular place he was accustomed to pray on his knees.

It is interesting to note that the quotes ‘The monks never knew for certain the place of this Saints burial, or pointed it out’, and ‘even perhaps to have been buried there’ tend to denote a certain acquiescence in Father Good’s day that previous generations of monks had fabricated the whole legend. It would seem that the subterranean chapel in Glastonbury might have been an attempt at establishing a place of worship where Joseph was supposed to be buried. However, as we posited earlier, without the discovery of the Grail for all to see, this would lack credibility with pilgrims. As Father Good bears witness, the miracles which were prophesied by Melkin and which were supposed to happen at the unveiling of the grave, were already taking place at this underground chapel, but not even Glastonbury would have the effrontery to fabricate the Grail. Father Good, although he attests that Glastonbury is Avalon as we have seen previously, is unconvinced that Joseph is actually buried there, thus his investigation into the Arms of Glastonbury. The fact that Maihew went to Montacute circa 1620 and witnessed a man on his knees praying indicates that maybe the chapel was still standing then and his reference ‘in a particular place’ is meaning St.Michael’s hill as opposed to Hamden hill also known as Ham hill.

Possibly subsequent searchers being newly appraised of this hitherto un-published clue, dismantled the chapel to search beneath for the Grail. This does seem likely as all the copies of Maihew’s Trophea were meddled with, to avoid this information being spread abroad. The very fact that the monks did not point out the site in Glastonbury and that there was equivocation as to whether Joseph's remains were in Montacute or Glastonbury (even by the possessors of the Montacute clue), leads one to deduce that there could have been a general suspicion of fabrication even by the monks. It would surely seem as if an attempt had been made, prior to Father Good’s days, to establish an underground Chapel to bring pilgrims into close proximity with Joseph believed to lie within the grounds.

The second half of Melkin's prophecy is assuredly prophetical, in that it speaks of the future unveiling of Joseph’s sepulchre and the events that will accompany the discovery. It deals with the consequences of unveiling Joseph's tomb and infers a global reaction. However Melkin’s prophecy might be partially divinely inspired and partly instructional. If Melkin had been present at Arthur’s burial he would certainly know the lay of the land around the grave site of Avalon. This is described in his puzzle but does not explain how he was able to survey 104 miles across the landscape and take an angle from an invisible Ley line. So is his riddle less prophetical than instructive……… as if relating facts from a source? We can only conclude that it is both for he knows the outcome of the discovery and yet describes not only its geographical location but physical features of the island.

We can assume that the second-half of the prophecy is prophetical. Prophetical in the sense that it is foretelling of the global reaction, but maybe not divinely inspired as it could be asserted that anyone could predict a stir at the unearthing of Jesus's bones……… as ‘Abbadare’ in Melkin’s Prophecy is a pseudonym for Jesus. It is Melkin’s references to biblical time which should convince us that he understood the purport of the material that Joseph brought with him concerning the Divine plan and later laid out, in his Book of the Grail.

Apart from his now famous prophesy, which, shortly we shall discuss and dissect at length, it is worth looking at what other references are made to his lost books. John Leyland says he saw fragments of Melkin’s work, even a volume of great antiquity while Bale, Capgrave, Hardyng and Pits either give the titles of the books, supposedly written by him or incidental added information. The three books which John Pits sites, ‘De antiquitatibus Britannicis’, ‘De gestis Britannorum’ and ‘De Regis Arthurii mensa rotunda’, could have been written by Melkin and within one of these three the prophecy probably existed and Bale confirms that it was Melkin who wrote the ‘Arthurii mensa rotunda’ which surely could be just an abbreviation of Pits’ title. It is unclear how much of the historical information that we have today regarding Arthur and Joseph was derived from the works of Melkin but these titles seem to concur that Melkin wrote a manuscript about King Arthur and the Round Table and also of British history to his time. None of these later chroniclers mention the more important ‘Book of the Graal’. So it would seem our assumption that the Book of the Gradali was the source for the French Grail stories which left Britain in the Saxon era. The source for the Arthurian material that supplied Geoffrey and the Welsh tradition we should assume stayed in Britain, but both originate from Melkin. Melkin then was the common source to both and hence the overlap of material. This would explain the Welsh corruption of Arthurian material until the advent of the French material. It would also explain another piece of evidence that appeared at the time of the Grail material in Britain. The ‘Acts of Pilate’ are different from the ‘Gospel of Nicodemus’ for they had been around since at least the fourth century and were originally written in Greek. The Gospel of Nicodemus seemed to surface around the time that Henry of Blois came from France; so was the Nicodemus material gleaned from Melkin’s Grail book? If so it would add to the evidence of the Graal material (that which explains the Divine Plan) originally having come from the Holy land with Joseph.

The passage below, quoted in John's Cronica giving an extract on the genealogy from Joseph of Arimathea through to Arthur is most probably derived from Melkin, as this passage is next to that of Melkin’s prophecy in John's work and others relate it is from him. It also testifies to the proximity in relationship between the Grail stories and the material found in Melkin’s prophecy, and should go a long way to convincing the reader that, Melkin’s manuscripts and the Grail romances had a common source.

‘Hae seriptura testatur, quod rex Arthunts de itirpe Joseph descendit’, This passage bears witness that King Arthur descended from the stock of Joseph.

‘Helaius, nepos Joseph, genuit losue. losue genuit Aminadab. Aminadab genuit Castellors. Castellors genuit Manael. Manael genuit Lambord & Urlard. Lambord genuit filium, qui genuit Tgemam, de qua rex Uterpendragun genuit nobilem & famosum regem Arthurum; per quod patet, quod rex Arthurus de stirpe Joseph descendit. Item de eodem, Petrus, consanguineus Joseph ab Armathia, Rex Oiganise, genuit Krlan. Erlan genuit Melianum. Melianus genuit Arguth. Arguth genuit Edor. Edor genuit Loth, qui duxit in uxorem sororem regis Arthuri, de qua genuit quatuor filios, scilicet Walwanum, Agraneyns, Gwerehes & Geheries.'

Helians, Joseph's nephew, begat Josue. Josue begat Aminadab. Aminadab begat Castellors. Castellors begat Manael. Manael begat Lambord and Urlard. Lambord begat a son, who begat Igerna, of whom King Utherpendragon begat the noble and famous King Arthur, by which it is evident that King Arthur descended from the stock of Joseph. Again on the same subject; Peter, cousin of Joseph of Arimathea and King of Organiana begat Erlan. Erlan begat Melian begat Arguth begat Edor. Edor begat Loth, who took to wife King Arthur's sister, of whom he begat four sons, namely Gawain, Agravains, Guerrehes, and Gaheriet.

The first thing to notice is that the genealogy starts with Joseph’s Nephew and this raises the question of what relation was Helians to Jesus.

Figure 56 showing the Bifurcation point or the two forked line of Melkin’s prophecy which bisects inside the Avebury stone circle. The line which Melkin has sent us to find is 104 nautical miles away from Avebury and runs right through St. Michael’s hill just as Father William Good had instructed us as to where Joseph of Arimathea was ‘carefully hidden’. The angle at which the bifurcation toward mons-acutus or Montacute bisects the Saint Michael ley line is 13 degress as Melkin had let us know.

John of Glastonbury ends his quotation from Melkin with the words ‘thus far Melkin’. He then continues on to say that ‘also in this island of Avalon, which is called the tomb of saints, rest, Coel, King of the Britons, father of St Helen, mother of the great emperor Constantine, and Caradoc Duke of Cornwall.’ He then follows on to say ‘King Arthur rests there with his Queen Guinevere; in the year of the Lord's incarnation 542, Arthur was fatally wounded by Mordred in Cornwall near the river Camlann, was brought to the island of Avalon for the healing of his wounds, died there in summer, around Pentecost, and was buried in the monks Cemetery.

We are able to see here in this last caption how John had ended, quoting directly from Melkin but continuing with most of Melkin’s material except for ‘and was buried in the monks Cemetery’.  The part that states ‘King Arthur rests there with his Queen Guinevere’, which evidences clearly another example of his polemicism may well be accurate as regards the real Avalon in Devon but I feel that John here is just backing up the Glastonbury fable of Guinivere’s unearthing. The information about the tomb being occupied by Arthur’s forebears from Cornwall fits with the account that all the Kings were anointed from the Grail Ark which is also in the Tomb.

This passage however, does highlight that there was essentially an early southern tradition built upon later by the Welsh. Caradoc, who seems to feature more prevalently in the Silurian tales of knight’s, has his roots and those of King Arthur firmly fixed in Cornwall according to genuine Melkin material. After all, Arthur was the son of Uther Pendragon and Igraine. Igraine was wife to Duke Gorlois of Cornwall, at the time she conceived Arthur and therefore Arthur was illegitimate, but Cornish.

How much John of Glastonbury has interpolated this additional information as is seen in reference to Guinevere, the time of year, the date for king Arthur and his ‘burial in the Monks cemetery’ after having thus confirmed ‘here ended Melkin’ we shall not know.

Almost all of Christendom laid claim to St. Helen’s relics and her inclusion by John, could be his own interpolation mixed with Melkin's factual account. The St. Helen legend, made popular by Geoffrey of Monmouth, claims that Helena was a daughter of the King of Britain, Coel of Camulodunum. She gave birth to Constantine, but as history spells out, Constantine did not spend much time in Britain. However, Caradoc seems to have been supplied by the Melkin source, the same source that would have left Arthur with the southern and Cornish tradition, and Caradoc as Duke of Cornwall.

Just to reiterate, when William of Malmesbury wrote his ‘De Antiquitate’ Joseph of Arimathea was not included in the text, except that some annotations in the margin by a later hand, related that he and twelve of the disciples had been sent from Gaul by St Philip. This annotation had been made sometime in the middle 13th century and tells how Joseph built the wattle church at Glastonbury and that the church was dedicated to St Mary, (vital points to make by the polemicist). The Church then fell into disrepair and was then renovated by two Roman missionaries called Phagan and Deruvian, the same tale of events being told in St. Patrick's charter much later, with barely a mention of Joseph of Arimathea before that time.

John of Glastonbury writing later included these annotations from a later hand interpolated into William’s work quoting from it as if it were all from his hand. John’s intention here is to have us believe that his source is entirely William’s work only and not that of interpolators to add credence and historical weight to Glastonbury propaganda. In fact John is swaying our opinion by saying this is the William of Malmesbury who wrote an account of the Abbey ‘from the coming of St. Joseph down to the time of Henry of Blois’. Had it not been for the annotations, Joseph of Arimathea, leader of the band of 12 would have barely received a mention. There is another later marginal annotation that states that ‘Joseph of Arimathea, the noble councillor, with his son Joseph and many others, came to greater Britain and there ended his life and is attested to by the book of the deeds of the famous King Arthur’, and then again, another reference referring the reader to the fourth and fifth books of Geoffrey of Monmouth. This is quite strange since William of Malmesbury did not know the location of the Isle of Avalon and chose not to include any part of the Joseph story.

John of Glastonbury is primarily responsible for putting the whole legend together as we know it today, conglomerating the Gospel of Nicodemus and the Acts of Pilate, Joseph's connection with St. Philip, being extracted from the charter of St. Patrick, Joseph’s arrival in Glastonbury, and the building of the wattle church. The wattle church substantiated and overstated in its method of construction purely based upon rationalising it with Melkin’s ‘cratibus’.

William of Malmesbury's book ’On the antiquity of the Church of Glastonbury’ has not reached us in its original form, suffering many interpolations at the hands of the scribal polemicists at Glastonbury, the forged book which must necessarily and manifestly have been composed fifty years after his death. Luckily we can see this by William of Malmesbury's third edition of his Gesta Regnum which he released circa 1140 in which he repeated verbatim much of which was in his ‘Antiquitates’, related by Adam of Domerham, and through this, we can detect later interpolations.

William of Malmesbury tells us that the Bishop of Rochester after fleeing from York covered the wattle church in wooden boarding as a repair. This quite possibly was how William of Malmesbury viewed the repaired church when he visited Glastonbury, after having been repaired once by Phagan and Deruvian and then again by St. David, so was it ever wattle and is this the fixing point that allows no further indecision. ‘Cratibus’, ‘oratori’ and ‘adorandam virginem’ are the glue that ties the prophecy to Glastonbury. The Rhygyfarch,  a Welsh text, relates that Glastonbury was one the churches St. David founded; this contradicting the Joseph tradition, but William aware of this assertion and being able to peruse many of the ancient manuscripts at Glastonbury was aware that it had a history prior to 500 AD. William wrote that David only visited Glastonbury intending just to ‘rededicate’ the abbey, as well as to donate a travelling altar as well as the Great Sapphire while en route and passing through…… and while there, he fortuitously had a vision of Jesus, who said that "the church had been dedicated long ago by himself (Jesus) in honour of His Mother, and it was not seemly that it should be re-dedicated by human hands".

 So instead, St. David, we hear, commissioned an extension to be built to the Abbey, east of the Old Church and he was probably not responsible for any rebuilding of the old church. The old church, with its wooden boarding is probably the state in which William witnessed it, even though in the ‘Antiquitates’ there is an account that it was covered from top to bottom with lead, but this could have been referring to the roof only or a protection of the wattle which like Cob crumbles when soaked. Whatever light the construction of the church may be viewed in, it seems likely that even before William of Malmesbury wrote, which was before the fire; the church’s construction became a focal point to concur with Melkin’s ‘cratibus’ in the time even prior to finding Arthur’s bones as this was physical evidence of the wattled church dedicated to the adorable Virgin and hence the very place of which Melkin prophesied that Joseph would be found.

Certainly the church’s construction had already been overtly publicised, but afterward through John of Glastonbury’s repeated confirmation of its construction being made from wattle, it seemed like overcompensation to marry ‘cratibus’ to wattle.

It was the ‘Magna Tabula’ that Archbishop Usher refers to, that would have publicly associated Joseph's name with the chapel at Glastonbury other than the fabricated St. Patrick’s charter. The Magna tabula was a folding wooden frame containing two wooden leaves like the pages of a book and all six interior faces were covered in parchment manuscript that used to hang in Glastonbury Abbey, which for the most part, quotes John of Glastonbury. It was put there for pilgrims to view and to confirm to public awareness, the heritage of Glastonbury.

In the last section of this Tabula, after following John of Glastonbury's work, there is new material added and is headed, ’of the Chapel of Saints Michael and Joseph, and all Saints, who rest in the cemetery’, followed on by a commentary that Abbot John Chinnock in 1382 had repaired this Chapel that stood in the midst of the cemetery. This Magna Tabula related the tales of King Arthur, St Patrick’s charter, Joseph of Arimathea and the translation of the body of St. Dunstan, among many other things, bringing into the public domain and to all pilgrims, the association with Joseph of Arimathea. Not only were the pilgrims now made aware of the original church that Joseph had built, by the mystical instructions on the ‘bronze plaque’ but the placing of the Tabula within the abbey, publicised its propaganda to every visiting pilgrim.

To the North of the Lady Chapel stood a column (Father Good relating that it was a Cross), close to the site where the pyramids used to be, the column foundations being uncovered in 1921. The function of the bronze plaque placed on the column was duly following the Glastonbury tradition of self-promotion and propaganda. The column ostensibly being built to indicate the exact site of Joseph's church. The existence of the column still standing with the bronze plaque can be traced back to the second quarter of the 17th century, and relates the story of the arrival of Joseph of Arimathea, the dedication of the original church by our Lord in person, and how the church was built to honour his Virgin mother.

It also related the vision of St. David, the positioning of the Chapel added by him, and a gift from him, of the sapphire. The plaque then goes on to relate as we have seen earlier: ‘and lest the site or size of the earliest church should come to be forgotten by reason of such additions, this pillar is erected on a line extended southward through the two Eastern Angles of the same church, and cutting off from it the chancel of the aforesaid. And its length was sixty feet westward from that line; its width twenty six feet; the distance of the centre of this pillar from the middle point between the said angles, forty eight feet’.

The plaque seems to have carried out its intended function……… J.Blome on 10th June 1345, having obtained his royal permit, set out to search for Joseph within the Glastonbury grounds, most probably making full use of the information provided by the plaque, thinking this is relevant to Melkin’s instructions of a Bifurcated line, to find Joseph.

So it was after the fire of 1184 that the stories of Joseph blossomed and a presumption that he would be buried close by his own church was generally assumed. The Isle of Avalon having found its geographical position at Glastonbury, was all part of Glastonbury re-inventing itself, but that was only the start, because without that there could be no synonymity with Melkin’s prophecy if Avalon was elsewhere.

When we take into acoount the usurpation of a location by the sea it is incredible that the Monks managed to pull it off for so long. The persuasion with the leaden triangles and squares on the church floor is made to make us think some geometric puzzle is hidden within and Melkinhas actually given us a geometric puzzle, but it has nothing to do with Glastonbury 

All this confusion connects the circles of portentous prophecy, bifurcated lines, a southern angle and a meridian from Melkin, together with, lines extending southwards through two Eastern Angles indicated on the plaque………… it all leads one to believe that these are purposeful directions, intended to lead the quester to Joseph's burial site, which of course held the Holy Grail. The placing of the plaque, not only confirming for pilgrims in posterity, the longevity and the veracity of Glastonbury's long-standing association with Joseph, but also for evermore, keeping the quester’s gaze firmly fixed within the confines of the Glastonbury Abbey grounds.

Continued on

http://templartreasure.blogspot.co.uk/

Showing the Island of Avalon described in the Perlesvaus