No town in Britain has an ecclesiastical history more important than
Glastonbury, whose tradition stretches back to the very beginning of
Christianity in the Island. Legend has it that St. Joseph of Arimathea,
who begged the body of Christ and buried it, came here in the year 63
and was the founder of the abbey. He brought with him, tradition says,
the Holy Grail; and a thorn-tree staff which he planted in the abbey
grounds became a splendid tree, revered for many centuries as the Holy
Thorn. The original tree has vanished, though there is a circumstantial
story that it was standing in the time of Cromwell and that a Puritan
who undertook to cut it down as savoring of idolatry had an eye put out
by a flying chip and was dangerously wounded by his axe-head flying off
and striking him. With its awe-inspiring traditions--for which,
fortunately, proof was not required--it is not strange that Glastonbury
for many centuries was the greatest and most powerful ecclesiastical
establishment in the Kingdom. The buildings at one time covered sixty
acres, and many hundreds of monks and dignitaries exerted influence on
temporal as well as ecclesiastical affairs. It is rather significant
that it passed through the Norman Conquest unscathed; not even the
greedy conquerors dared invade the sanctity of Glastonbury Abbey. The
revenue at that time is said to have been about fifty thousand pounds
yearly and the value of a pound then would equal twenty-five to fifty of
our American dollars. However much the Normans respected the place, its
sanctity had no terrors for the rapacious Henry VIII. The rich revenues
appealed too strongly and he made a clean sweep, hanging the mitered
abbot and two of his monks on the top of Tor Hill. The Abbey is the
traditional burial-place of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, and four of
the Saxon kings sleep in unmarked graves within its precincts.
Considering its once vast extent, the remaining ruins are scanty,
although enough is left to show how imposing and elaborate it must have