The abbey of Glastonbury is without doubt one of the very earliest ecclesiastical foundations in England. In the words of Mr Freeman (“King Ine,” Ρrοc. of Somersetshire Arch. Soc., 1874), “it is on any showing a tie between the Briton and the Englishman, between the older Christianity of our island and the newer, the one church of the first rank which lived through the storm of English conquest, which passed into the hands of our victorious fathers as a trophy of victory undestroyed and unplundered.” But unfortunately “everything relating to its early history is so enveloped in legend that one has to tread one’s way with the greatest caution at every step.” As Canon Stubbs remarks, the extravagant claims of the monks in regard to the antiquity and celebrity of their church ‘ ‘ doubtless provoked criticism, and criticism forced on them the need of a forged history to assert, and of forged monuments to support these pretensions. The fabrication of such evidence must have gone on at Glastonbury on a scale proportioned to the claims; and William of Malmesbury, it would almost seem, undertook to erect the story out of materials which he distrusted. This did not content his employers, and they interpolated his work to a degree which makes it impossible to rely with confidence on any part of it.’’

Though Glastonbury is not mentioned either by Bede or by the authors of the Saxon Chronicle as one of the early foundations, its existence (continues Prof. Stubbs) is proved by the incontrovertible authority of the letters of St Boniface and the life of the same by S. Willibald. The name of Glastonbury however is of comparatively modem origin, being a corruption of the Saxon Glccstingaburh or town of the Glaestings. By the Britons the spot seems to have been called Ynys yr Avalion (Latinized as Avallonia), the Island of Apples, or Ynyswitrin, the Glassy Island; and it became the local habitation of various fragments of Celtic romance.

According to the legends which grew up under the care of the monks, the first church of Glastonbury was a little wattled building erected by Joseph of Arimathea as the leader of the twelve apostles sent over to Britain from Gaul by St Philip. About a hundred years later, according to the same authorities, the two missionaries Phaganus and Deruvianus who came to king Lucius from Pope Eleutherius established a fraternity of anchorites on the spot, and after three hundred years more St Patrick introduced amongst them a regular monastic life. About 546 David of Menevia is said to have built a new church near the old one, and in the 7th century the old one was encased with boards and covered with lead by the care of Paulinus of York. In the early part of the 8th century the great West Saxon king Ine (c∕ ’. charter in Kemble, Codex diplomat icus ceυi Saxonici, vol. i. No. lxxi.) built and endowed a monastery at Glastonbury, which, in spite of the preceding establishments, may almost be considered as a new foundation. From the decadent state into which, like other monasteries, Glastonbury was brought by the Danish invasions, it was brilliantly recovered by the powerful hand of Dunstan who had been educated within its walls and was appointed its abbot about 946. The church and other buildings of his erection remained till the installation, in 1082, of the first Norman abbot, who inaugurated the new epoch by commencing a new church. His successor Herlewin (1101-1120), however, dissatisfied with the meanness of the edifice, pulled it down to make way for a finer structure. Henιy of Blois (1126-1172) added greatly to the extent of the monastery, building a bell tower, a chapter-house,' a cloister, a dormitory, a refectory, a palace, a brew-house, &c. In 1184 (on 25th May) the whole of the buildings were laid in ruins by fire; but Henry II. of England, in whose hands the monastery then was, entrusted his chamberlain Rudolphus with the work of restoration, and caused it to be carried out with much magnificence. The great church of which the mins still remain was then erected. In the end of the 12th century, andon into the following, Glastonbury was distracted by a strange dispute, caused by the attempt of Savaric the ambitious bishop of Bath to make himself master of the abbey. The conflict, carried on alternately by blows and bribes, was brought to a close by the decision of Innocent III., that the abbacy should be merged in the new see of Bath and Glastonbury, and that Savaric should have a fourth of the property. On Savaric’s death his successor gave up the joint bishopric and allowed the monks to elect their own abbot. From this date to the Reformation the monastery continued to flourish, the chief events in its history being connected with the maintenance of its claims to the possession of the bodies or tombs of King Arthur and St Dunstan. As early at least as the beginning of the 11th century the tradition that Arthur was buried at Glastonbury appears to have taken shape; and in the reign of Henry II., according to Giraldus Cambrensis and others, the abbot Henry de Blois, causing search to be made, discovered at the depth of 16 feet a massive oak trank with an inscription “Hic jacet sepultus inclitus rex Arthurus in insula Avalonia. After the fire of 1184 the monks asserted that they were in possession of the remains of St Dunstan, which had been abstracted from Canterbury after the Danish sack of 1011 and kept in concealment ever since. The Canterbury monks naturally denied the assertion, and the contest continued for centuries. In 1508 Warham and Goldston having examined the Canterbury shrine reported that it contained all the principal bones of the saint, but the abbot of Glastonbury in reply as stoutly maintained that this was impossible. The day of such disputes was, however, drawing to a close. On 1539 the last and 60th abbot of Glastonbury, Robert Whyting, was, in the words of a contemporary lettter (MS. Cotton, Cleop. E., iv. fol. 996), “arraigned, and next day put to execution for robbing of Glastonbury church.” His body was quartered, and his head fixed on the abbey gate. A darker passage does not occur in the annals of our English Reformation than this murder of an able and high-spirited man, whose worst offence was that he defended as best he could from the hand of the spoiler the property of his charge.

The nιins of the abbey are now comparatively few, and as the work of destruction has in many places descended to the very foundations it is impossible to make out the details of the plan. Of the vast range of buildings for the accommodation of the monks almost nothing remains except the abbot’s kitchen, noteworthy for its octagonal interior, the porter’s lodge, and the abbey barn. Considerable portions are still standing of the so-called chapel of St Joseph at the west end, which Mr Willis has identified with the lady chapel, occupying the site of the old wicker church. This chapel, which is the finest part of the ruins, is transition work of the 12th century. It measures about 66 feet from east to west and about 36 from north to south. Below the chapel is a crypt which Professor Willis shows to be a construction of the 15th century inserted in a building which had no previous crypt. Between the chapel and the great church is an Early English building which appears to have served as a Galilee porch. The great church itself was a cruciform structure with a choir, a nave, and transepts, and a tower surmounting the centre of intersection. From east to west the length was 410 feet, and the breadth of the nave was about 80 feet. The nave had ten severies, and the choir six. Of the nave three bays of the south side are still standing, and the windows have pointed arches externally and semicircular arches internally. Two of the tower piers and a part of one arch give some indication of the grandeur of the building. The old clock, presented to the abbey by Adam de Godbury (1322-1335), and noteworthy as the first recorded example of a clock striking the hours automatically with a count-wheel, is still preserved, although not in its entirety, in the cathedral at Wells.

The Glastonbury thorn, planted, according to the legend, by Joseph of Arimathea, has been the object of considerable comment. According to Loudon {Arboretum et Fmιticetu∕m) it was probably Crataegus prcecox, and he reports that he received from Glastonbury in December 1833 a thorn branch in full blossom, having also on it ripe fruit. The actual thorn visited by the pilgrims was destroyed about the Reformation time, but specimens of the same variety are still extant in various parts of the country.

See william of Malmesbury, “De Antiq. Glastoniensis Ecclesiae,” in Rerum Anglicarwn Script. Vet., tom. i., 1684 (also printed by Hearne and Migne); John of Glastonbury, Chronica sive de Hist, de Rebus Qlast., ed. by Hearne, Oxford,

1726, 2 vols; Adam of Domerlιam, De Rebus Gestis Glast., ed. by Hearne, Oxford,

1727, 2 vols.; Hist, and Antiq. of Glast., London, 1807; Avalonian Guide to the Town of Glastonbury, 1839, 8th ed.; Warner, Hist, of the Abbey and Town, Bath, 1826; Rev. F. Warre, “Glastonbury Abbey," in Proc, of Somersetshire Archoeol. and Nat. Hist. Soc., 1849; Rev. F. Warre, “Notice of Ruins of Glastonbury Abbey,” ibid., 1859; Rev. W. A. Jones, “On the Reputed Discovery of King Arthur’s Remains at Glastonbury," ibid., 1859; Rev. J. R. Green, “Dunstan at Glastonbury,” and “Giso and Savaric,” ibid., 1863; Rev. Canon Jackson, “Savaric, Bishop of Bath and Glastonbury^’ ibid., 1862, 1863; E. A. Freeman, “King Ine,” ibid., 1872 and 1874; Dr W. Beattie, in Joum. of Brit. Archoeol. Ass., vol. xii., 1856; Rev. R. Willis, Architectural History of Glastonbury Abbey, 1866. Views and plans of the abbey building will be found, says Mr Willis, in Dugdale’s Monasticon, 1655; Stevens’s Monasticon, 1720; Stukeley, Itinerarium Curiosum, 1724; Grose, Antiquities, 1754; Carter, Ancient Architecture, 1800; Storer, Antiq. and Topogr. Cabinet, vols, ii., iv., v., 1807, &c.; Britton’s Architectural Antiquities, vol. iv., 1813; Vetusta Monumenta, vol. iv., 1815; and New Monasticon, vol. i., 1817.