A Convenient Grave, Discovered at the Right Moment

Avalon enters written record with Geoffrey of Monmouth, who says in his history of the kings of Britain, around 1136, that Arthur's sword was forged there and that he was carried there to be healed of his wounds. Geoffrey's later Life of Merlin describes the island of apples at length, self-cropping and ruled by nine sisters. Whether he was drawing on older Welsh material or composing is argued, and Geoffrey is not a reliable witness about his own sources.

Then Glastonbury Abbey burned in 1184. Rebuilding a great church required money, and pilgrims brought money. In 1191 the monks announced that they had excavated in the cemetery and found a hollowed log containing the bones of a large man and a woman, with a lead cross identifying the grave of Arthur in the isle of Avalon. Reports of the cross survive; the cross and the bones do not.

The timing has been noticed by every historian who has looked at it. A grave that funds a rebuilding, ends the Welsh expectation that Arthur will return, and does so under Angevin kings with an interest in that expectation ending, is a great deal of usefulness for one discovery. The abbey ruins are worth visiting and the marked site is worth seeing, provided one knows what one is looking at.