some differences: the island is called Avalon, whereas in the first section it is Yniswitrin: stress is laid on the twelve portions of land granted to the earliest settlers, but there is no explicit allusion to the Twelve Hides: and, most noticeable of all, Joseph of Arimathea is not mentioned at all. If William of Malmesbury's hand is to be discovered at all in this mass of legendary narrative, it is in this second section that we shall be inclined to begin to look for it.
Now the first of the Glastonbury insertions in the third edition of the Gesta Regum[1] (pp. 23-9) is introduced thus:
But since we have touched upon the times of Kenewalch, and the question of the monastery of Glastonbury has come up for consideration, I will unfold the rise and progress of that church, so far as I shall be able to gather up the facts out of the mass of memorials, setting out the tale from the beginning.
This corresponds with the closing words of the Dedicatory Letter to Bishop Henry of Blois (De Antiq., p. 4): 'so far as I have been able to gather up the facts out of the mass of your (v. l. our) memorials '. Earlier in the same Letter we find the words 'the start and progress of that church', and the same Virgilian tag 'repetens ab origine pandam' (cf. Aen. i. 372). The insertion at once proceeds as follows:
Annals of good authority record that Lucius king of the Britons sent to Eleutherius, the thirteenth pope after the blessed Peter, with the prayer that he would enlighten the darkness of Britain by the light of Christian preaching. A high-souled king was he, who essayed a deed worthy of all praise, in that of his own accord he sought after a faith of which he had bvit heard, at a time when well-nigh all kings and peoples were persecuting the very offer of it.
These are the exact words which open the second section of the De Antiquitate in the form in which we now have it. They are there followed by a passage in which the magnanimity of K. Lucius is compared with the generosity of K. Ethelbert, who long afterwards offered a welcome to another band of missionaries from Rome. This passage is not quoted in G. R.3, but it is quite in William of Malmesbury's manner: it was however no more than a rhetorical patch. The next sentences in the two books run thus:
| Gesta Regum3, p. 23. | De Antiquitate, pp. 8 f. | |
| There came therefore by the sending of Eleutherius preachers to Britain, the effect of whose work will last for ever, though their names have | There came therefore by the sending of Eleutherius, (as) preachers to Britain, these two most holy men, Phagan and Deruvian, even as is |
- ↑ It will be convenient to speak of this edition as G. R.3
