The Wild Hunt: A Midwinter Tale

“Right at the South end of South Cadbury Church stands Camelot. This was once a noted town or castle, set on a real peak of a hill, and with marvellously strong natural defences..... Roman coins of gold, silver and copper have been turned up in large quantities during ploughing there, and also in the fields at the foot of the hill, especially on the East side. Many other antiquities have also been found, including at Camelot, within memory, a silver horseshoe.” [John Leland, Itineray] 

Arthur's Hunting Causeway
On Midwinter Night Arthur and his knights are said to ride over the hill fort at South Cadbury, (Cadbury Castle) in Somerset and down through the ancient gateway where their horses drink at a spring beside Sutton Montis church. Whether or not they can be seen, their hoof beats can be heard. Below the hill are traces of an old track running towards Glastonbury, called Arthur's Causeway or Hunting Path, where the din of spectral riders and hounds goes past on winter nights.

This is Arthur leading the Wild Hunt, a folkloric theme common throughout northern Europe, generally described a noisy phantom group of huntsmen on horseback racing through the sky at night accompanied by a pack of spectral hounds. The hunt is said to occur on dark winter nights with a full moon, from Samhain until May Eve, peaking on the night of midwinter, the shortest day of the year.

The hunters may be either faery or the deceased, but the leader is often associated with the Germanic god Woden (Odin). Other leaders of the hunt include such figures as Herne the Hunter, King Herla and Wild Edric.  The Anglo Saxon Chronicle entry for the year 1127 records an apparent sighting of the Wildhunt:

“Let no one be surprised at what we are about to relate, for it was common gossip up and down the countryside that after February 6th many people both saw and heard a whole pack of huntsmen in full cry. They straddled black horses and black bucks while their hounds were pitch black with staring hideous eyes. This was seen in the very deer park of Peterborough town, and in all the woods stretching from that same spot as far as Stamford. All through the night monks heard them sounding and winding their horns. Reliable witnesses who kept watch in the night declared that there might well have been twenty or even thirty of them in this wild tantivy as near as they could tell.”

A 13th century French version, probably of Breton origin, is known as the Chasse Artu. The French tale records how a woodcutter met the Wild Hunt on a moonlight night near the Mont du Chat, so named from Arthur's fight with a monster cat. The woodcutter was told that the hunting-party was of Arthur's household and his court was nearby.

A similar tradition survives in southwest England where King Arthur is said to lead the Wild Hunt out from Glastonbury Tor along the trackway to South Cadbury. In the 16th century the King's antiquary John Leland recorded a memory of King Arthur and his Knights sleeping under the hill at Cadbury. Another local tradition claims that if one leaves a silver coin with one's horse on the trackway at Cadbury on Midsummer's Eve, the horse will be found to be re-shod in the morning.

The causeway, also known as King Arthur's Hunting Path, links the hill fort at South Cadbury directly to Glastonbury Tor in a straight line, 11 miles distant. Glastonbury Tor is the abode of that other well-known “conductor of souls to the place of the dead”, and leader of the Wild Hunt, Gwyn ap Nudd.

The Wild Hunt

Gwyn the Huntsman
Gwyn son of Nudd is in origin a Celtic deity, his name means “white, bright, shining” commonly associated with reference to Otherworldly, Sacred. He is son of Nudd, cognate with the Celtic deity Nodens, associated with healing, whose adoration in Britain is attested at the temple complex at Lydney Park in Gloucestershire, overlooking the Severn. At Lydney a number of stone or bronze statues of dogs have been found suggesting a connection with hunting. The dog is often found alongside Celtic deities linked with hunting and healing.

Gwyn's association with hunting may have led to his inclusion in Arthur's retinue in Culhwch and Olwen, in which he leads the hunt for the supernatural boar Twrch Trwyth.

In the medieval poem The Dialogue of Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwyddno Garanhir, from the 13th century compilation known as The Black Book of Carmarthen (Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin), Gwyn relates his exploits on the battlefield and his role as a psychopomp who gathers the souls of fallen British warriors:

“I have been where the soldiers of Britain were slain
From the east to the north
I am the escort of the grave.
I have been where the soldiers of Britain were slain.
From the east to the south
I am alive, they in death!”

His role as a psychopomp is paralleled in his role as leader of the Wild Hunt, in which he leads a pack of supernatural hounds known as the Cŵn Annwn to harvest human souls. In Welsh folklore, to hear the baying of Gwyn's hounds was a portent of an imminent death in the family. In The Dialogue poem Gwyn is also accompanied by a hound, named as 'Dormarth of the ruddy nose', and witnessed a conflict before Caer Vandwy, an Otherworldy fortress mentioned in the early Arthurian poem Preiddeu Annwn.

In later tradition Gwyn became known as the king of the Tylwyth Teg, and in The Life of Saint Collen he is again linked to Glastonbury Tor which seems to have been a portal to the Otherworld.

The Cŵn Annwn
In The First Branch of the Mabinogi Pwyll Prince of Dyfed is hunting at Glyn Cuch when he encounters another pack of hunting dogs which are of a colour he has never seen before on a pack of hunting dogs; they were a brilliant shining white, and their ears red; “and as the exceeding whiteness of the dogs glittered, so glittered the exceeding redness of their ears”. Pwyll had come across the dogs of Arawn king of Annwn, these are the Cŵn Annwn.

Another name for this phantasmal canine pack is 'Cŵn Mamau' (Hounds of the Mothers), or 'Cŵn Cyrff' (Corpse-Dogs); the Hounds of Annwn, the white, red-eared hounds of Celtic myth, were death omens, described as chained and led by a black-horned figure. These spectral dogs appeared only at night to foretell death, sent from Annwn to seek out corpses and human souls. Usually heard or seen in midwinter, the hounds are associated with the sounds of migrating wild geese. The howling of these demonic dogs is generally seen as a death portent to anyone who heard them.

In England they are known as the Gabriel Hounds, or 'Gabble Retchets'. These are essentially a regional variation of The Cŵn Annwn, and many others can be found across Northern Europe. In Dartmoor it is said you can hear the baying of the Wisht Hounds as they hunt for un-baptised babies. The legend of the Wisht hound is said to be the inspiration behind Conan Doyle's ‘Hound of the Baskervilles'. In the Parish of St Germans in Cornwall the legend of 'Dando's Dogs' tells how a priest became a demon huntsman.

Dormarth the Gatekeeper
In the poem The Dialogue of Gwyddno Garanhir and Gwyn ap Nudd, Gwyn tells us:

“handsome my dog and round-bodied,
And truly the best of dogs;
Dormach was he, which belonged to Maelgwn.

Dormach with the ruddy nose! what a gazer
Thou art upon me! because I notice
Thy wanderings on Gwibir Vynyd”  

Here the name of Gwyn's dog Dormath (Dormach), means “Death's Door” as such it relates to the ancient belief in dogs as guardians of the gateway to the Otherworld. For example, in Egyptian mythology, Wepwawet, whose name means “opener of the ways”, is often depicted as a wolf standing at the prow of a solar-boat; the basic Indo-European myth, of the dog that keeps watch over the realm of the dead. There are many more throughout the mythologies of the world.

The Glastonbury Zodiac is an envisaged circle, some eleven miles in diameter, of twelve giant effigies present in the Somerset landscape, each representing one of the signs of the zodiac first studied by Katharine Maltwood in the 1920s. Maltwood saw gigantic figures of the zodiac outlined by tracks, field boundaries and the courses of streams and rivers combining natural and man-made features and claimed it was the original of King Arthur's Round Table on which she first published anonymously in the 1930's.

Maltwood was inspired by Sebastian Evans 1898 translation of The High History of the Holy Grail. Originally written in the early 13th century in Old French and intended as a continuation of Chretien de Troyes' unfinished work Perceval, or the Story of the Grail. The author of the work is not recorded but toward the end it states:

“The Latin from whence this history was drawn into Romance was taken in the Isle of Avalon, in a holy house of religion that standeth at the head of the Moors Adventurous, there where King Arthur and Queen Guenievre lie”

From this Maltwood was convinced The High History was written at Glastonbury and  King Arthur's Round Table was a planisphere drawn on the Somerset landscape.

The Girt Dog of Langport (Mary Caine)

Situated outside the circle of the Zodiac, Maltwood saw the shape of a giant dog with its nose situated at Burrow Mump, its ear is at Earlake Moor, near Othery, and its tail at Wagg, with the course of the River Parrett forming the line of its belly. This is the Girt Dog of Langport. The Glastonbury Zodiac remains controversial but the Girt Dog is the most convincing landscape figure of them all.

The earliest reference to the dog is in a folk song sung at wassail time, which was first recorded in 1895 and published by Cecil Sharp in a collection of folk songs in 1909, yet, the Wassail tradition is an ancient one, still practised in Somerset.

Thus, the Girt Dog seemingly guards this star temple, the entrance to the Glastonbury Zodiac and Avalon, like Cerberus of Greek mythology, the watchdog at the entrance to Hades. As guardian to the entrance to Avalon the Girt Dog has been likened to Gwyn ap Nudd's dog Dormath; indeed, as we have seen, “Dormarth” means “Death's Door.”

At 24 metres (79 ft) high, Burrow Mump is located where the River Tone and the old course of the River Cary join the River Parrett. In the surrounding low lying land of the Somerset Levels it is a an unusual high spot and has the appearance of being an artificial, man-made sighting point. On top of the mump is ruined chapel, dedicated to St Michael, built in the late 18th century on the site of an earlier church built in the 15th century, in turn thought to have been constructed over an early Saxon chapel.

Indeed, with the ruins of St Michael's Church on top of Burrow Mump it bears all the hallmarks of a miniature Glastonbury Tor, 11 miles distant. The alignment from Burrow Mump to Glastonbury Tor   aligns perfectly with the sunrise on 1st May and by extension, from Cornwall to Norfolk, has been termed the St Michael Line.

There is little doubt that the 'burrow' or 'mump', both words mean 'hill', has been shaped by the hand of man. The A361 road, from Glastonbury to Taunton, runs dead straight past Burrow Wall to circle around the Mump, the dog's nose, before crossing the river Parrett. The 'Mump' is geologically described as a natural outcrop of Triassic sandstone capped with Keuper Marl, typically red in colour.

The definition of “ruddy”, as in the description of Dormath's nose, is "healthy red colour", the same as the red clay of the artificial mound of Burrow Mump. So here we find a gigantic dog, the Girt Dog of Langport, with a red nose guarding the way to Avalon, bearing an uncanny similarity to Gwyn's dog, Dormarth, with the name meaning “Death's Door” also with a red nose.

The Somerset Parallelogram (after Nicholas Mann) - not to scale

Katherine Maltwood wrote that Alfred's fort at Athelney (Burrow Mump) and Camelot Castle of South Cadbury are both equidistant from the Isle of Avalon (Glastonbury), recognising this arrangement formed a closed triangle with two equal sides, 11 miles each. At each point stood a church dedicated to St Michael.

Significantly, the tip of the Girt Dog's, or Dormath's, nose sits at the end of another 11 mile line, exactly parallel to Arthur's Causeway, the line of the Wild Hunt, extending from Burrow Mump to Hamdon Hill near Montecute, and the intersection with the St Michael Line. Nicholas Mann plotted these points within an accuracy of 200 yards, that is within one percent. Linking these sites, Yuri Leitch has extended Maltwood's Triangle to a four-sided geometric pattern he describes as the Somerset Parallelogram. Surely this arrangement of four ancient sites, 11 miles equidistant, designated by a Gatekeeper Dog, is beyond coincidence?

Whether one believes in the Glastonbury Zodiac or not, surely Maltwood was correct when she suggested that “these ancient landmarks should reveal more than one lost secret.”



Copyright © 2016 Edward Watson
http://clasmerdin.blogspot.co.uk



Sources:
Bruce Lincoln , The Hellhound, in Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology & Practice, 1991
Alby Stone, Hellhounds, Werewolves and the Germanic Underworld, Mercian Mysteries, 1994.
Bob Trubshaw, Black dogs: guardians of the corpseways ,  Mercian Mysteries, 1994.
Yuri Leitch, The Maltwood Triangle in Signs & Secrets of the Glastonbury Zodiac, Avalonian Aeon Publications, 2013, pp.109-118.
Thomas Green, Concepts of Arthur, Tempus, 2008.
Katharine Maltwood, Guide to Glastonbury’s Temple of the Stars, James Clarke & Co, New Edition, 1987. (First published 1935).
Katharine Maltwood, The Enchantments of Britain: King Arthur's Round Table of the Stars, James Clarke & Co, New Edition, 1987. (First published c.1933).
Mary Caine, The Glastonbury Zodiac: Key to the Mysteries of Britain, (self published), 1979.
Jennifer Westwood, Albion: A Guide to the Legendary History of Britain, Grafton, 1985.
Nicholas R Mann, Glastonbury Tor: A Guide to the History and Legends, Triskele, 2nd Edition, 1993.


Edited 22/12/16
Updated 26/12/16

* * *

The Execution of Richard Whiting

The Last Abbot of Glastonbury Part II

“....the Abbot was arrayned, and the next daye putt to execution, with ii. other of his monkes, for the robbyng of Glastonburye Churche ; on the Torre Hill, the seyde Abbottes body beyng devyded in fower partes, and his heedd stryken off, whereof oone quarter stondyth at Welles, another at Bathe, and at Ylchester and Brigewater the rest, and his hedd upon the abbey gate at Glaston." - Letter of 16th November 1539, Lord Russell to Thomas Cromwell.

The Final days of Richard Whiting
The years from 1530 – 1539 were a politically complex time driven by a desperate monarch wanting for a legitimate male heir and financial gain. The Dissolution of the Monasteries provided a means of achieving both. Systematic eviction of the religious communities from their houses with seizure of their assets for the crown was the order of the day, the buildings extensively robbed, with lead, glass and facing stones removed for reuse elsewhere.  Glastonbury, the penultimate Abbey to be dissolved, survived until the autumn of 1539. Finally, with the fall of Waltham Abbey, the scheme faltered with the death of Thomas Cromwell, the Vicar General, sent to the block in 1540 for his disastrous involvement in the arrangement of Henry VIII's fourth marriage to Anne of Cleves, who the king divorced just six months later.

The Last Abbot of Glastonbury, Richard Whiting, along with two other monks, the Abbey treasurers John (Arthur) Thorne and Roger James (Wilfrid), being indicted of treason, were sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.  On 15 November 1539, following a mock trial at Wells the previous day, the three were taken to Glastonbury. On the outskirts of the town the old Abbot was spread-eagled across a horse drawn hurdle and dragged through the streets of Glastonbury, past the desolate Abbey and up the Tor for the vile execution.

Imprisonment and execution of the head of the establishment was not unusual during the dark days of the Dissolution. John Marshall, the last Abbot of the Benedictine Abbey of St. John's at Colchester, was convicted of treason and hanged on 1st December 1539. His crime was to refuse to acknowledge the King of England, Henry VIII, as head of the Church, and to resign the property of his abbey over to the crown. Indeed, on the same day as the execution of the three Glastonbury monks, the last Abbot of Reading, Hugh Cook Faringdon, along with two other monks John Rugge and John Eynon, were executed, also suffering the ultimate humiliation of the traitor's death.

Like Whiting and many other Abbots, in 1530 Faringdon signed petitions to the Pope supporting Henry VIII’s divorce and in 1536 took the oath of Royal Supremacy. The King had even called Faringdon “his own abbot”, and made him Royal Chaplain in 1532. But like Abbot Whiting, Faringdon's fall from grace in 1539 was swift, predetermined and terminal.

There were rumours that Faringdon was connected to the Exeter Conspiracy and he was accused of funding the rebels in the Northern uprisings, a brief period of Roman Catholic dissent against the Church of England and the dissolution of the monasteries following the closure of Louth Abbey resulting in the Lincolnshire Rising. It would seem that at the trial some attempt was also made to implicate Eynon in the brief York uprising, known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, which followed.

Yet, ultimately the charges levelled against Faringdon were of upholding papal supremacy on three separate occasions. Faringdon had refused to retract his loyalty to Rome, “they had confessed before and written it with their own hands that they had committed high treason against the king's majesty,” He was subsequently imprisoned at the Tower and indicted of high treason and taken to Reading where, on November 15th, after being dragged through the town, he and two fellow monks, were hung, drawn and quartered before the Abbey gates. After his death the Abbey was dissolved, its lands and goods taken by the Crown with the monks, under suspicion of complicity in their Abbot's alleged treason, not awarded pensions normally provided under the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

But the Abbot of Glastonbury made no such admission; Whiting asks “forgiveness, first of God, and then of man, even of those who had most offended against justice in his person and had not rested until they had brought him to the gallows”. In their final moment, his two monks, John Thorne and Roger James, begged forgiveness of all and "took their death also very patiently." Even Pollard, the Royal Commissioner who had played no small part in orchestrating the Abbot's downfall, seemed moved by the moment, showing a rare touch of compassion, added "whose souls God pardon."

Yet, unlike the Abbots of Colchester and Reading, there appears to be no evidence of the Abbot of Glastonbury denying the King of England as head of the Church, or refusing to resign the property of his abbey to the Crown. Whiting had after all signed the petition to the Pope supporting Henry VIII’s divorce and in 1536 he had taken the oath of Royal Supremacy. Although records for Whiting's interrogation and trail are incomplete with key documents missing from archives, from what sources that have survived, the charge of treason seems to have been changed at the mock trial at Wells at the last minute to one of robbery, suggesting that treasures that the Royal Commissioners thought to be in Glastonbury Abbey could not be found. What were they searching for?

Too much of the last days of Richard Whiting fail to make any sense. Glastonbury was the largest and wealthiest Abbey in England, the Benedictine Monastery owned extensive lands and manors in the West Country. There was no attempt to preserve the Abbey for the Crown. Pillage of the Abbey treasures was the soul aim. The buildings ripped apart, lead, glass and facing stones removed, and the library ransacked with books sold off for a quick price. The King needed cash, not more property to maintain. Within a few weeks of the Abbot's execution, Abbey lands were being passed down to those who assisted the Crown in its downfall, like vultures picking over the carcass. One such was the knight Sir Thomas Dyer, member of parliament for Bridgwater during the mid-sixteenth century, who acquired lands from the former holdings of Glastonbury Abbey, obtaining Sharpham Park, which included the Abbot's manor, immediately after the dissolution in 1539 and a few years later the Manor of Street. Dyer soon held former Abbey lands at Weston, Middlezoy, Othery, Glastonbury, Greinton, and elsewhere.

The whole episode of Glastonbury Abbey's downfall and the execution of its Abbot raise some startling questions: why was Whiting and his two fellow monks executed on Glastonbury Tor; why not outside the Abbey gates as with the Abbot of Reading; why the Tor? 

The execution is reminiscent of a scene from the crucifixion. The hanging and dismemberment on the Tor possesses elements of ritual execution. One is compelled to agree with Arthurian scholar, the Avalonian Geoffrey Ashe, who knows the Tor better than many and states, “If the object was to strike terror, the place to do it was in the town. The ascent of the Tor was the act of madmen or mystics …”

In 1538 Abbot Whiting had received assurances from the Vicar General, Thomas Cromwell, that the Abbey was not under threat. At some time there appears to have been a change in the game plan. When the Royal Commissioner Richard Layton visited the abbey in 1535, he had given it a complete clean bill of health, reporting that “there is nothing notable; the brethren be so straight kept that they cannot offend,” he even praised the Abbot to Cromwell. In the same year Nicholas FitzJames, as friend of the Abbot, had written to Cromwell supporting Richard Whiting and petitioning against the Vicar General's impracticable injunctions upon Glastonbury.

Yet when he returned a few years later in 1539 Layton retracts his praise of Abbot Whiting with these odd words: “The Abbot of Glastonbury appeareth neither then nor now to have known God, nor his prince, nor any part of a good Christian man’s religion.” Further, according to a letter written by Pollard on the 16th November, Nicholas FitzJames was one of the jurors at the trial of the Glastonbury three at Wells, along with Thomas (Jack) Horner, the Abbot's steward. Friends turned into enemies, trustees became traitors. Why did fortune change for Whiting in just a few short years?

Indeed, Pollard's comments make Whiting sound like an ungodly man who worshipped something else. Clearly Whiting's faith had no bearing on the matter and the old Abbot went silently to his death like the guardian of some great secret. And with the destruction of the Abbey the Secret of Glaston, which some say to this day lies beneath the floor of the old Abbey, was irretrievably lost.

"This church, then, is certainly the oldest I know in England, and from this 

circumstance derives its name (vetusta ecclesia)... In the pavement may be seen 

on every side stones designedly inlaid in triangles and squares and figured with 

lead, under which, if I believe some sacred enigma to be contained...." 1

*

Continued in Part III: The Bones of Richard Whiting


Copyright © 2011 Edward Watson
http://clasmerdin.blogspot.co.uk/


Notes
1. This mysterious passage is contained in the history of the Abbey written by William of Malmesbury in the early 12th century; De Antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecclesiae.

Bibliography: 
Geoffrey Ashe, King Arthur’s Avalon, 1957, fiftieth anniversary edition Sutton, 2007.
Francis Aidan Gasquet, D.D. Abbot President Of The English Benedictines, The Last Abbot of Glastonbury & other essays, George Bell & Sons, 1908.

* * *

The Last Abbot of Glastonbury

The final days of Glastonbury Abbey and the last Abbot Richard Whiting

An upright and religious Monk
Richard Whiting was the sixtieth and last Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey during the years 1525 to 1539. The most likely date for his birth has been suggested as 1459; he was probably in his mid-sixties when he commenced his tenure as Abbot. Unfortunately for Whiting he had been elected to preside over a community of Benedictine monks at the most turbulent time in English ecclesiastical history; the Dissolution of the Monasteries during the reign of King Henry VIII. He was executed for unclear reasons on Glastonbury Tor on 15 November 1539.

Whiting's family was of a west-country origin and distantly connected with that of Bishop Stapeldon of Exeter, the generous founder of Exeter College, Oxford, who possessed considerable estates in Devon and Somerset. Whiting came of a junior branch of the family from the valley of Wrington. Members of this family were destined to work in the church; another Richard, probably an uncle, was chamberlain at the monastery of Bath, and a Jane Whiting had taken the habit as a nun in the convent of Wilton. Later, two of Abbot Whiting's nieces were admitted into religious orders at the English Franciscan house at Bruges.

Whiting went on to Cambridge to complete his education, taking his MA in 1483. After completing his degree the young Benedictine monk returned to his monastery at Glastonbury and was probably occupied here in teaching. Whiting received the minor order of acolyte in the month of September, 1498. In the two succeeding years he was made sub-deacon and then deacon. On the 6th March, 1501, he was ordained into the priesthood at Wells by Bishop Cornish in the now destroyed chapel of the Blessed Virgin.

For the next 25 years, we know very little of Whiting's activities; it is likely he worked in seclusion carrying out his duties at the Abbey. In 1505, he returned to Cambridge and took his final degree as Doctor in Theology. At the monastery he held the office of Chamberlain, which would give him the care of the dormitory, lavatory, and wardrobe of the community, and placed him over the numerous officials and servants necessary to this office in so important and vast an establishment as Glastonbury then was.

In February 1525 Abbot Bere died after worthily presiding over the Abbey for more than thirty years. After failing to agree on a successor the Glastonbury monks charged Cardinal Wolsey to make the choice of their abbot. After obtaining permission form the King, Wolsey declared that Whiting was his choice as Abbot, stating that he was "an upright and religious monk, a provident and discreet man, and a priest commendable for his life, virtues and learning." Whiting had shown himself to be, "watchful and circumspect" in both spirituals and temporals, and had proved that he possessed "ability and determination to uphold the rights of his monastery.” As a result of his election as head of the Abbey he obtained a distinguished seat in the House of Lords. John Leland, antiquary to Henry VIII, referred to Whiting as "a man truly upright and of spotless life and my sincere friend."

Five years after Abbot Whiting's election, the fall of Cardinal Wolsey opened the way for the advancement of Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex, and one of the strongest advocates of the English Reformation, the English church's break with the papacy in Rome. On the fall of the old order he built up his own fortune. “For ten years England groaned beneath his rule - in truth it was a reign of terror unparalleled in the history of the country.” As chief minister to King Henry from 1532 to 1540, remorseless and tenacious in pursuing his aims, Cromwell 's power grew as he became the chief political contriver of  religious change in England.

The King's Divorce and the Suppression of the Religious Houses
In 1530 a curious document was presented to Abbot Whiting which turned out to be the beginning of the end for him and his monastery. The letter addressed to Pope Clement VII called for the papacy to dissolve King Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon. The letter had been drawn up at the King's court and was now being passed around the  Spiritual Peers and the Lords Temporal for endorsement. Whiting, like most of his fellow subjects, did not approve. Henry had grown frustrated by his lack of a male heir and since 1526 had begun to separate from Catherine because he had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, one of the Queen's ladies, and sister to one of the King's mistresses.

The Abbot of Glastonbury did eventually sign the letter along with twenty one other Abbots but Rome still refused to grant the King a divorce. By December 1532 Anne was pregnant and insisted on the status of Queen. Now relying on the devious counsel of Thomas Cromwell, Henry was forced to act to avoid any issues to the legitimacy of the child. In January 1533 Anne and Henry were secretly married. Although the King's marriage to Catherine was not dissolved, yet in the King's eyes it had never existed in the first place, so he was free to marry whoever he wanted. On May 23 the marriage of Henry and Catherine was officially proclaimed invalid by Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the English Reformation.

With the conclusion of Henry's divorce case came the end of the peaceful years of Abbot Whiting's rule. Now began the anxious days which were to end for him in execution on Glastonbury Tor as a traitor.

As part of the King's scheme for a National Church, enforcing a break with Rome, Cromwell inaugurated a policy of dissolving the religious houses and confiscating their wealth. Dissolution of abbeys and convents was nothing new. The British monarchy had sold French monastic possessions in England seized during the Hundred Years War. Even Thomas Wolsey had closed a number of small priories. However, on these occasions the proceeds had been used for charitable courses. But in 1532 with Cromwell's rise to power a new precedent was set with the Augustinian house at Aldgate being required to sign a deed of gift to the monarch. Cromwell saw this as a legitimate means to solving the King's financial problems.

On 3rd November, 1534, the "Act of Supremacy" was hurried through Parliament, and a second statute made it treason to deny this new royal prerogative. Resistance was futile with the oath of royal supremacy taken wherever it was tendered, and Glastonbury was no exception. Abbot Whiting and fifty-one of the Glastonbury community attached their names to the required declaration, renouncing obedience to the Pope. However, this should not be misconstrued as an act of betrayal to their faith by the Benedictine community. Indeed, many did not see the oath of royal supremacy over the Church of England as being derogatory to Rome. Whereas King Henry was seen as the head of the Temporal church he was never seen as the head of the Spiritual church by many religious houses.

Within a year of general oath taking the whole approach to religious houses changed in 1535. Cromwell, now Henry’s vicegerent, was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Church and ordered that all religious houses should be visited by one of his representatives. He constructed a program of inspection, known as the ‘Valor Ecclesiasticus’ to determine how much property was owned by the Church in England and Wales. Royal commissioners toured the religious houses, the methods they employed, leave no doubt that the real object was the destruction of the monasteries under the cloak of reformation, then submitted a report, of questionable accuracy, back to Cromwell.

The ‘Valor Ecclesiasticus’ combined with the inspections proved to be a difficult problem for the religious houses. Cromwell claimed the intention was not to abolish monasticism but to purify it. Many of the visits were carried out by 'royal commissioners' Thomas Legh and Richard Layton, perhaps the most trusted  of Cromwell's employees. These two ambitious men were aware of the result required by Cromwell, their reports appropriately tailored accordingly to provide the information he desired.

Following the 'inspections', Cromwell set out injunctions that were so exacting in detail that essentially they were meant to be unworkable. In the hands of Cromwell's agents they were, as they were designed to be, intolerable. And at Glastonbury, as elsewhere, the injunctions were more than simply impracticable, but restrictive in the principles of religious discipline. Abbot Whiting, like so many religious superiors at this time, petitioned for some mitigation. Nicholas Fitzjames, a neighbour, dispatched an earnest letter to Cromwell in support of the abbot's petition.

Duly, the royal commissioner Richard Layton arrived at Glastonbury on Saturday, 21st August 1535. After his inspection of the Abbey he  wrote to Cromwell stating he could find nothing untoward  under Abbot Whiting's rule; “At Bruton and Glastonbury there is nothing notable; the brethren be so straight kept that they cannot offend : but fain they would if they might, as they confess, and so the fault is not with them."

The act of suppression of 1536 had condemned houses with an annual income of less than £200, suggesting they might wish to voluntarily surrender. However, by 1538 rumour was rife of the forthcoming dissolution of even the greatest religious houses, with one after another falling into the King's hands all across the country. However, Cromwell issued a letter denying the intention of general suppression of all the monasteries. This letter could scarcely have done much to reassure Abbot Whiting as to Cromwell's real intentions, in view of the obvious facts which each day made them ever more clear. Bath and Keynsham, had fallen shortly after the Christmas that year with Benedictine Athelney and Hinton Charterhouse following, where upon rigid questioning on the matter of royal-supremacy one of the Hinton community had been imprisoned for "affirming the Bishop of Rome to be Vicar of Christ.” For weeks the royal wreckers swarmed over Somerset, like a biblical plague, "defacing, destroying, and prostrating the churches, cloisters, belfreys, and other buildings of the late monasteries; and the roads were worn with carts carrying away the lead melted from the roofs, barrels of broken bell-metal, and other plunder."

By the beginning of 1539, Glastonbury was the only religious house left standing in the whole county of Somerset; Abbot Whiting must have been aware of the fate that awaited him.

The Final Days of Glastonbury Abbey
In April 1539 The Second Act of Suppression came in to force that included a retrospective clause covering the illegal suppression of the greater monasteries which had already passed into the king's hands, which granted to Henry all monasteries which shall hereafter happen to be dissolved, suppressed, renounced, relinquished, forfeited, given up or come unto the king's highness. The Act included a clause referring to such other religious houses as "shall happen to come to the king's highness by attainder or attainders of treason.” By the summer of 1539 few of the great houses remained undissolved and it is surprising that such an attractive house as Glastonbury had survived this long. But after several reassurances to the Abbot there seemed to be a change of plan and the Vicar General revealed his end game.

The sequence of events from September through November are not all together clear and a full account of the beginning of the end of Glastonbury Abbey and Abbot Whiting's final days is not available due to the absence of key documents amongst the records relating to the closing years of Cromwell's administration. Yet, among Cromwell's memorandum, still extant in his own handwriting, dated from the beginning of September, 1539, the Vicar General's intention are quite unambiguous; "Item, for proceeding against the abbots of Reading, Glaston and the other, in their own countries."

On 16th September in a letter to Cromwell, indicating future intent, Richard Layton requests his pardon for praising Abbot Whiting at his previous visit in 1535; "The Abbot of Glastonbury, appeareth neither then nor now to have known God, nor his prince, nor any part of a good Christian man's religion."

Three days later, on Friday, September 19th, the royal commissioners, Layton, Pollard and Moyle,  arrived at Glastonbury at about ten o'clock in the morning without warning. The Abbot was at his grange at Sharpham, about a mile from the monastery. Whiting was questioned there then taken to the Abbey. In his study they found a book of arguments against the King's divorce and a copy of the life of Thomas Becket. They sent him, a weak and sickly man, to the Tower of London so that Cromwell might interrogate him further.

A week later, on 28th September, the royal commissioners write to Cromwell saying that they have found treasures and monies hidden in secret places in the Abbey, sufficient to have "begun a new abbey.” They concluded by asking what the King wished to have done in respect of the two monks who were the treasurers of the church, John (Arthur) Thorne and Roger James (Wilfrid).

The commissioners gathered, or constructed, statements from local informers about the Abbot's treasonable opinions. On the 2nd October the inquisitors write again to say that they have discovered evidence of "divers and sundry treasons" committed by Abbot Whiting, "the certainty whereof shall appear unto your lordship in a book herein enclosed, with the accusers' names put to the same, which we think to be very high and rank treasons." The book has long since disappeared but creases in the original letter seem to indicate it was enclosed therein.

By now, with Whiting in the Tower, the monks were quickly dispatched and Glastonbury Abbey already considered a royal possession. But from the very beginning of the suppression Whiting had co-operated with the king and his agents. He had signed the petition to the Pope concerning the royal divorce and subscribed to the oath accepting royal supremacy. Yet Cromwell's notes reveal the Vicar General had already decided the Abbot's fate; in a memorandum dated before the end of October, he wrote: 'Item, the Abbot of Glaston, to be tried at Glaston and also executed there with his complices'

Whiting should have been tried by parliament by act of attainder but this was totally ignored in his case; evidently his sentence had been decided before Parliament came together. The House was due to have sat on 1st November and would have considered the charges against Whiting at that time but assembly was delayed till the arrival of the King's fourth wife, Ann of Cleeves. Whiting would remain in the Tower till then.

Pollard took the frail old Abbot, who must have been nearing eighty years of age by now, back to Somerset on 14th November where he was taken immediately into the Bishop's Palace at Wells, without giving the condemned man even time to recover from his journey. Lord Russell had assembled a jury, which included John Sydenham, Thomas Horner, and Nicholas Fitzjames, the same who, but a year or two before, had written to Cromwell on Abbot Whiting's behalf. Friends and allies turned against the Abbot for a share in the rich booty to be had at the Abbey. Pollard directed the indictment, which Cromwell had drafted based on evidence revealed during the secret interrogations conducted during Whiting's two months' imprisonment in the Tower. From the crowd gathered at Wells tenants, and others, came forward to testify against him with new accusations of wrongs and injuries committed against them by the Abbot. No doubt they had been paid their piece of silver by Cromwell's agents. At the last minute the charge seemed to have been changed from treason to one of robbery. Whiting, absurdly accused of robbing his own abbey, was tried amongst common felons, four accused of rape and burglary who were condemned to hang the next day. The records of the trial fail to make clear the charges, or indeed the verdict. No defence or cross examination was allowed; it appears to proceed immediately to the execution.

This was clearly no more than a mock trial; as we have seen above, Abbot Whiting's fate was already settled, at Cromwell's own hand, before he left the Tower, the Vicar General, acting alone as prosecuting counsel, jury and judge, had already reached his decision. Cromwell ruled Whiting guilty and determined that he should suffer before all the world the ultimate indignity and destined for him the gruesome death of a traitor in the sight of his own subjects who had known and loved him for many years on the scene of his own former glory. Cromwell decreed the Abbot was to be hung, drawn and quartered at Glastonbury.

The following morning, 15th November, Whiting and the Abbey treasurers John Thorne and Roger James, were taken to Glastonbury. On the outskirts of the town he was spread-eagled across a hurdle which was tethered to a horse, and then dragged through the streets of Glastonbury, past his beloved Abbey and up the Tor where the gallows had been erected by the side of St Michael's tower.  Pollard writes that the Glastonbury three "took their deaths very patiently” and added "whose souls God pardon."

Whiting's lifeless body was cut down, the head hacked off and his corpse divided into four parts. One part despatched to Wells, Bath, Ilchester, and the fourth to Bridgewater, whilst the head was fixed over the Abbey gates.

Following the fate of Glastonbury, only one more monastery was to be dissolved, that of Waltham Abbey. At the start of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536, there were over 800 religious houses in Britain. By 1540 there were none with more than 15,000 monks and nuns dispersed and the buildings taken into ownership by the Crown to be sold off or leased out. The process had taken just four short years. Many of these religious communities owed their very existence to the wave of monastic enthusiasm that had swept across England and Wales in the 11th and 12th centuries, many as with Glastonbury, claiming to built upon early Celtic or Anglo-Saxon foundations. Glastonbury appeared early in that wave with tradition claiming it to be the site of the first Christian church in England, established by Joseph of Arimathea in the first century AD. It is difficult to disagree with the description of the suppression of the monasteries as simply "an enormous scheme for filling the royal purse."

Less than a year after Whiting's execution, justice, perhaps in part at least, was had when Cromwell fell from favour after arranging the King's disastrous marriage to  Anne of Cleeves. He was charged with treason and heresy and executed on Tower Hill on 28 July 1540. With Cromwell's death the  Dissolution of the Monasteries quickly ran out of steam.

True to his faith to the end, Richard Whiting is considered a martyr by the Roman Catholic Church, which beatified him on 13 May 1896.  Beatification provides the title of "Blessed," a recognition accorded by the Catholic Church of a dead person's entrance into Heaven and the third of the four steps in the canonization process, the act by which the Christian church declares a deceased person to be a saint.


Copyright © 2011 Edward Watson
http://clasmerdin.blogspot.co.uk/


Continued in: Part II - The Execution of Richard Whiting
                     Part III - The Bones of Richard Whiting

*

Note:
According to a traditional account Thomas Horner, one of the jurors at Whiting's mock trial at Wells, which sent the old Abbot to be hung, drawn and quartered on Glastonbury Tor, is said to be the Abbot's steward, famed in the “Little Jack Horner” nursery rhyme, first published in1725, but no doubt in circulation like all the common English nursery rhymes long  before they appeared in print.

It is rumoured that the Abbot tried to bribe the King by sending his steward, Jack Horner, with a gift of twelve title deeds to various west country manorial estates. The deeds were said to have been secreted in a pie to thwart thieves. The story of valuable documents being hidden under a pie crust is not so far fetched as it may at first appear. Highwaymen were common in these times and travellers often hid their valuables by sewing them into garment hems and concealing them in cakes and the like. Horner is said to have opened the pie during the journey and extracted the deeds of the Manor of Mells, 15 miles north east of Glastonbury, the 'plum' of the twelve manors which included lead mines in the Mendip Hills, which may be  an allusion to the Latin for lead, 'plumbum' (Pb). The remaining eleven manors were handed over to the crown but to no avail.

Following the destruction of the Abbey, Horner moved into the Manor of Mells. If there is any truth in the tradition at all Horner was probably rewarded with Mells for aiding the conviction of the Abbot of Glastonbury. The Manor of Mells became the property of the Horner family who lived there until the 20th century. While records do indicate that Thomas Horner became the owner of the manor, both his descendants and subsequent owners of Mells Manor have claimed that the legend is untrue.


Bibliography:
Francis Aidan Gasquet, D.D. Abbot President Of The English Benedictines - The Last Abbot of Glastonbury, George Bell & Sons, 1908.
Richard Watson Dixon, History of the Church of England Volume II, Clarendon Press, 1902.
Geoffrey Ashe - King Arthur’s Avalon, 1957, fiftieth anniversary edition Sutton, 2007.
James Carley,  Glastonbury Abbey, The Holy House at the head of the Moors Adventurous, 1988, revised edition Gothic Image, 1996.

* * *

Arthur's Hunting Path

“On winter nights, when the moon is high, wait by the track by Camelot. Though nothing catches your eye except shade and moon shadows, you may hear them ride by: Arthur and his men, hoofbeats clattering, with their horns and their hounds on their way to hunt. At night, I hear you ask? Aye at night, for Arthur is not only the king under the hill, but in this land he leads a different kind of hunt – a wild, wild hunt. He calls to his red-eyed hounds as the moonlight silvers the sky, for tonight, my lads, the hunters ride.” [1]

Legends of Camelot
Perhaps the best known site of the claimants for Arthur's legendary court at Camelot is the ancient hillfort of Cadbury Castle, south of the village of South Cadbury, just off the A303 from Chapel Cross, barely a couple of miles east of Sparkford, Somerset. The word "castle" suggestive of a medieval fortress and battlements of Arthurian romance, but this was never a fortification of stone walls and turrets. The hillfort at South Cadbury, with its massive Iron Age earth bank and defensive ditch system, re-fortified in post-Roman times, was without doubt the base of a powerful Dark Age warlord, a dux bellorum; if Arthur existed in an historical sense then this is, without doubt, the most likely contender for his garrison.

The strong Arthurian associations at Cadbury Castle have caused much consternation amongst scholars who have argued that these links only appeared after John Leland's account in 1542, and of course conveniently present the argument that he probably invented much of the Cadbury folklore:

"Right at the South end of South Cadbury Church stands Camelot. This was once a noted town or castle, set on a real peak of a hill, and with marvellously strong natural defences..... Roman coins of gold, silver and copper have been turned up in large quantities during ploughing there, and also in the fields at the foot of the hill, especially on the East side. Many other antiquities have also been found, including at Camelot, within memory, a silver horseshoe. The only information local people can offer is that they have heard that Arthur frequently came to Camelot." [2]

Of course this a rather circular argument; we can neither prove or dis-prove that Leland made up his story of Cadbury Castle being Camelot. It is certainly possible that the Arthurian association of the site existed in local folklore long before Leland's time. We know from other sites, as attested in Historia Brittonum, that Arthur certainly existed in the landscape before Geoffrey of Monmouth. But we must accept that Leland is the first to record the connection with the South Cadbury hillfort.

Following Leland, the antiquarian and historian William Camden (1551-1623) also called the hillfort 'Camalat' identifying the site with the Camelot of Chretien de Troyes. Camden claimed that locally it was called 'Arthur's Palace':

“....and taketh into him a rill neere which is Camalet, a steepe hill and hard to get up: on the top whereof are to bee seene expresse tokens of a decayed Castle with triple rampires of earth cast up, enclosing within it many acres of ground, and there appeare about the hill five or six ditches, so steepe that a man shall sooner slide downe than goe downe. The Inhabitants name it King Arthurs Palace.....As for Cadburie, a little towne next unto it, we may ghesse verie probably to have been that Cathbregion where King Arthur (as Ninnius writeth) defeated the English-Saxons in a memorable battell. ” [3]

Folk tales from the late 19th century said that the hill was hollow, Arthur and his knights lie sleeping inside waiting for when the country needs their help. A local person saw the gates as a boy, but they cannot be located today. A local poem calls them golden gates claiming that if you look through them on St John's Eve you can see the king in his court. A group of Victorian archaeologists visiting the hillfort were about to commence their dig when they were asked by a local man if they had come ‘to take the king away’.

The hollow hill is reminiscent of fairy lore and inevitably we find a tale of how they carried corn up from the arable side below the camp. When bells were placed in the church they went away and left gold behind. As in much fairy lore, they appear to have left the hill with the coming of iron.

Passing through South Cadbury village you come to the foot of a path leading up the hill a short distance beyond the church. This path climbs gently to a gate in a wall, and then more steeply through woods, until it emerges in the enclosure at the top. Found in the lowest rampart is a well on the left of the path as you go up into the hillfort, this is known as Arthur's Well. Sounds from this Well can be heard at Queen Anne's Wishing Well, another 200 yards further on within the ramparts. During the dark, silent hours on Midsummer or Midwinter's Night, King Arthur and his knights are said to ride throughout this land, and water their thirsty horses either here or at another well by the village church of Sutton Montis. Whether seen or not, their silver-shod hoof beats can always be heard.

Glastonbury Tor from Wearyall Hill

Below the hill there are the slightest traces of an ancient trackway running in the direction of Glastonbury. This track is known as Arthur's Lane, Arthur's Hunting Path or Causeway, said to be a lost bridle path leaving Cadbury by its west gate heading in a north westerly direction toward the Tor at Glastonbury, 11 miles distant. It is thought that this was an ancient neolithic trackway across the Somerset marshes linking Cadbury with Glastonbury.

“......between South Cadbury Castle and Glastonbury Tor to the N.E. lay a bridle path called "Arthur's Lane, which is believed to have originally been founded as a Neolithic causeway into the Glastonbury marshes.” [4]

On winter nights, the spectres of Arthur and his knights can be heard galloping past on their horses with their baying hounds running in their wake. At every full moon Arthur and his men rode round the hill to water their silver-shod horses at a nearby well:

“Folks do say that on the night of the full moon King Arthur and his men ride round the hill, and their horses are shod with silver, and a silver shoe has been found in the track where they do ride, and when they have ridden round the hill, they stop to water their horses at the Wishing Well”. [5]

Inevitably Arthur's troop riding along this lane became associated with the Wild Hunt of north European folklore. The leader of the Wild Hunt could be interchangeable between historical figures but was usually legendary such as Gwynn ap Nudd, Woden or Arthur, adopting the role of psychopomp in gathering the souls of the dead. Gwynn ap Nudd, King of the Welsh Fairy race, the Tylwyth Teg, has strong associations with Glastonbury, indeed his abode is said to be within the Tor itself, and he accompanies Arthur on the Hunt for the supernatural boar, the Twrch Trwyth as recorded in the tale of Culhwch and Olwen. Son of Nudd, the ancient British sea and river deity, known as Nodens, God of healing, who's domain abounds the nearby Severn estuary, as attested by the 4th Century Romano-British temple at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, England. The Wild Hunt is accompanied by white, red-eared Hellhounds, known in Welsh mythology as the Cwn Annwn, and in Somerset as Gabble or Gabriel Ratchets. [6] If one was unlucky enough to witness the Wild Hunt it was thought to be an omen of ill fortune or even the death of the observer. The Hunt would kidnap any mortals in its path and take them with it to the abode of the dead.

The Starres which Agree with their Reproductions on the Ground [7]
In the 1920's Katherine Maltwood, a scholar of fine art, was commissioned to illustrate the anonymous High History of the Holy Grail, or the Perlesvaus, originally written in Old French, sometime in the early half of the 13th Century, as a continuation of Chretien DeTroyes' unfinished story of the Grail, "Le Conte du Graal, or Perceval". Some of the geographical references in this text correspond so well to the Somerset countryside that certain commentators have argued that Perlesvaus or at least its prototype must have been composed at Glastonbury; indeed a fragment of the Perlesvaus manuscript has been found at Wells Cathedral.

As Maltwood researched her material, she discovered that the adventures of the knights of the Round Table corresponded to place-names in the Vale of Avalon. Using a 1" ordnance survey map and aerial photographs taken from a height of 30,000 feet, she began to trace these on a map and figures began to reveal themselves, delineated by streams, tracks and boundaries, and before long she had discovered the twelve signs of the zodiac in their correct order. On placing a star map over the circle of zodiacal figures on the map Maltwood found the stars and their respective constellations corresponded. She called her discovery the Temple of the Stars.

A thirteenth figure, the great dog of Langport, sitting to the southwest and outside of the main circle of the zodiac, and perhaps the most convincing of all the figures, is seen as guardian to the entrance of Avalon. The nose of this great landscape canine is the mound at Burrowbridge, along the A361 road, known as Burrow Mump, or Alfred's Fort, which has all the appearance of being constructed by the hand of man out of red clay, not found locally, an island amidst the Somerset marshes at Altheney. The mump has all the appearance of being a facsimile of Glastonbury Tor, complete with ruined church to St Michael.

Maltwood wrote up her findings in Glastonbury's Temple Of The Stars and noted the observation that “Alfred's fort at Athelney and Camelot Castle at South Cadbury are both 11 miles from the Isle of Avalon”. [8] The Isle of Avalon is of course Glastonbury Tor, however, after making the observation Maltwood made no more of the connection which laid dormant until the great visionary John Michell rediscovered the St Michael Line in the late 1960's.

Burrow Mump

Michell noted that Burrow Mump was 11 miles from Glastonbury Tor, both orientated at 27 degrees north of east, to the Beltane sunrise on 1st May. Extending this alignment a further 11 miles at the same orientation he came to another St Michael site at Stoke St Michael. Then extending this line in both directions it was found to form an alignment through Avebury circle to St Margaret's on the east coast near Lowestoft and westwards from St Michael's mount and the extreme south-west point of England below Land's End. It marks the longest continuous stretch of land in southern England. The St Michael Line is marked by a host of shrines to St Michael and runs through many prehistoric sites attesting its ancientness. [9]

Michell observed that the distance between Glastonbury Tor and the summit of Cadbury Castle, is 10.909 miles or 4 Geomancer's Miles (GM). At 2.7272 English miles in length, the Geomancer's Mile is a pretty much forgotten measure rarely mentioned these days but Michell states it was once a unit of measure of prehistoric Britain. He adds that “this interval, or its multiples, was placed wherever possible between the sacred centres.” Michell notes that John Neal, a student of ancient metrology, when surveying village churches of the Taunton area, found that of the 300 or so, over 100 are situated at 1 Geomancer's mile distant from at least one other. It is no secret that many older churches were built upon the sites of prehistoric temples; the use of the Geomancer's Mile in a third of the network of Taunton village churches would appear to confirm this.

Michell states that: “Cadbury is, of course, Camelot, the site of King Arthur's Palace, once, according to legend, linked with the Tor by a tree lined causeway. Curiously enough, the distance between Glastonbury Tor and the hill of St Michael's, Burrowbridge also approximates to 4 GM.” [10] Like Maltwood before him, Michell made little more of the reciprocal distance between these ancient sites.

Studying this correlation of ancient sites in Somerset, Glastonbury based Nicholas Mann has determined that the alignment of Arthur's Hunting Path from the summit of Glastonbury Tor to Queen Anne’s Well, Cadbury is orientated toward critical points in the moon's cycle. Excavations by Leslie Alcock between 1966 and 1973 provided evidence that activity at this site started in the Neolithic to who the moon was very important with many of their earliest megalithic sites orientated to phases of the lunar cycle. [11]

Mann sates that the northernmost setting point of the moon, the Northern Major Standstill, and the southernmost rising point of the moon, the Southern Major Standstill, align with this ancient trackway. The Neolithic and the later inhabitants of Cadbury Castle would not have missed so dramatic an event as the moon setting over Glastonbury Tor, occurring only every nineteen years. At the same time, and for several months, from Glastonbury Tor they would have witnessed the moon rising from Cadbury, although the hillfort is below the horizon when viewed from the Isle of Avalon. [12]

Lunar Major Standstill
The term "lunar standstill" was apparently coined by the archaeologist Alexander Thom, in his 1971 book Megalithic Lunar Observatories. A lunar standstill being equivalent to a solar solstice when these two celestial bodies, having reached the end of their respective cyclic journeys, appear to 'standstill'. At a major lunar standstill, which takes place every 18.6 years, the range of the declination [13] of the Moon reaches a maximum. As a result, at northerly latitudes, the Moon appears to move from its highest point in the sky to lowest on the horizon in just two weeks. This time appears to have held special significance for the Neolithic people of Britain and Ireland, indeed the megalithic monument at Callanish on the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland, would appear to have been constructed specifically to witness the extremes of the lunar cycle, where the moon is seen to just skim the top of the tall stones for a few hours either side of midnight. During major lunar standstills at latitudes as far north as Callanish, the moon barely sets, an observation noted in Diodorus' famous text concerning the Temple of Apollo on the Isle of the Hyperborean's:

“They say also that the moon, as viewed from this island appears to be but a little distance from the earth and to have upon it prominences, like those of the earth, which are visible to the eye. The account is also given that the god visits the island every nineteen years, the period in which the return of the stars to the same place in the heavens is accomplished; and for this reason the nineteen-year period is called by the Greeks the 'year of Meton'.” - Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 2. 47. 1 - 6

Hamdon Hillfort

Noticing this lunar alignment from the summit of Cadbury to Glastonbury Tor was 11 miles, Mann found another parallel alignment 11 miles equidistant from the ruined church of St Michael on Burrow Mump to the northern tip of Hamdon Hill's neolithic fort, near Montacute. At Montacute we find another hill with all the appearance of being sculpted by the hand of man, similar to Glastonbury Tor and Burrow Mump, complete with church dedicated to St Michael. And Hamdon Hill to Cadbury Castle, is yet again 11 miles. Coincidence?

Linking Barrow Mump to the Tor, again 11 miles distant, is the St Michael Line, as stated above. Mann found that when joining the sites of Glastonbury Tor, Cadbury Castle, Hamdon Hill and Barrow Mump it formed a parallelogram, or diamond, with equidistant sides of 11 miles each, or as John Michell stated, the ancient unit of measure of 4 Geomancer's Miles each.

The parallel north west – south easterly alignments from the Tor to Cadbury Castle (Arthur's Hunting Path) and Burrow Mump to Hamdon Hill are aligned to the Major Lunar Standstills. Forming the closing sides of the diamond in the Somerset landscape, are the north east – south westerly alignments from the Tor to Burrow Mump and Cadbury Castle to Hamdon Hill are orientated on the Beltane sunrise. Mann notes that only at this latitude will these alignments form a diamond or rhombus. [14]

Mann suggests that a remnant of the Diamond's lore may have passed down in the legends of King Arthur galloping along “Arthur’s Hunting Path” or “Arthur’s Causeway” from Cadbury Castle to Glastonbury on stormy winter nights; survival of ancient moon lore of the Major Lunar Standstills when Arthur was said to ride was probably the moon set at its most northerly point in its 18.61 year cycle. The landscape diamond shows he would have continued on his way across the Bristol Channel and beyond to the Black Mountains in Wales. [15]

Further archaeological excavations by the South Cadbury Environs Project’s (SCEP) during 1992-2007, extending Leslie Alcock’s Cadbury Castle excavations sponsored by the Camelot Research Committee, uncovered some significant finds in our pursuit of Arthur at Milsoms Corner at Cadbury.

Prehistoric Burials found at Cadbury Castle
At the western flank of the hillfort of Cadbury Castle is Milsom’s Corner, a multi-period site on the slope below the south west gate. The main area occupied a slight rise, which over time, effectively became a westerly facing terrace, which has since been heavily damaged by deep ploughing. The land falls away gently to the west and north overlooking the Somerset Levels. Activity on this site commenced in the early Neolithic, attested by a linear arrangement of pits orientated towards the top of the hill. These early- and late-neolithic pits may have possessed ritual significance to Cadbury Hill’s summit, and a row of pits along the spine of the Milsom’s Corner spur has been interpreted as marking a special the way to and from the hill through mostly uncleared woodland. To the west of Cadbury, ditches arced around a small knoll and the base of the Milsom’s Corner spur to form a funnel leading into a narrow corridor for 200m before ascending through the ramparts to the south-west gate.

This was succeeded by an Early Bronze Age human burial, cut through later in the Middle Bronze Age. A cattle jaw bone found in the upper middle fills of the Milsom’s Corner spur enclosure ditch returned a date of 1380-1210 cal BC. Later in the Bronze Age, a bronze shield, already old at the time, appears to have been ceremonially deposited in the corner of the silted settlement enclosure ditch. [16]

A flexed burial in a slatted, 'boat-like' coffin, may have been covered by a barrow on a narrow spur at Milsom’s Corner which formed a natural threshold on the western approach to Cadbury hill. The 'boat-like' coffin was aligned on Glastonbury Tor, 11 miles to the north west, aligned with Arthur's Hunting Path. [17]

Neolithic boat-like coffins aligned on the Tor to ferry the dead across the water to the Isles Of Avalon, sharing the same orientation as an ancient trackway said to be travelled by Arthur at the time of the Major Northern moonset at Glastonbury; this all sounds remarkably familiar.

Is this the origin of the tale of Arthur's journey by death-barge to Avalon following the Strife of Camlann, guided by Barinthus the ferryman who knew the stars, suggestive that the event was a symbolic journey for spirits of the dead from a cemetery at Milsom’s Corner, Cadbury Castle, across the flooded Somerset levels in the direction of the northern moonset to the Otherworldly portal upon the Tor.


Copyright © 2013 Edward Watson
http://clasmerdin.blogspot.co.uk/

*

Notes
1. Quoted from D. Stobie, Exploring Arthur's Britain, Collins & Brown, 1999, in Nicholas Mann, The Star Temple of Avalon, The Temple Publications, 2007
2. John Leland, Itineray, 1542.
3. William Camden, Britannia, 1607. [http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/cambrit/]
4. Helen Hill, The Realms of Arthur, 1970.
5. E K Chanbers, Arthur of Britain, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1927
6. The name Gabble or Gabriel Ratchets, an old word for a type of hound, was first recorded around 1665 and referred to a strange yelping sound heard in the sky at night, supposedly a death omen. Jennifer Westwood, Albion. A Guide to Legendary Britain. Grafton Books, 1985.
7. Dr John Dee, Astrologer to Elizabeth I, 1583. Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the Mystic and Alchemist John Dee along with his companion, fellow Alchemist and Psychic Edward Kelly, came to the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, around the year 1583, to see if anything could be salvaged. An ‘alchemical manuscript’ which Kelly claimed to have discovered somewhere previously in the ‘Vale of Avalon’ near Glastonbury was said to refer to ten specific locations in England where buried treasure was hidden. Dee was more interested in the discovery of ‘Merlin’s Secret’, said to be found in the unusual arrangements of the prehistoric earthworks in Vale of Avalon. Dee mapped out these earthworks and determined they represented the signs of the zodiac and other constellations. In the margin of this map he wrote the quoted words “The Starres which Agree with their Reproductions on the Ground......” However, Dee’s apparent 16th century discovery of the Glastonbury Zodiac lies solely in the story of Dee's biographer Richard Deacon who went to the Warburg Institute where Dee’s papers were stored. On examining them, Deacon claimed to have found this map with Dee’s zodiac quotation in the margin. Deacon copied it down but the next time he went to see these documents, Dee's map of the zodiac could not be found. Yuri Leitch, John Dee and the pre-Maltwood Enigma.
8. Katherine Maltwood, A Guide to Glastonbury's Temple Of The Stars, James Clarke & Co., 1964, first published 1929.
9. John Michell, The View Over Atlantis, Garnstone Press, Revised Edition 1972, p.66.
10. Ibid., p.155
11. Nicholas Mann, Glastonbury Tor, Triskele, 1986.
12. The Metonic Cyle of 18.61 years is a period of 235 lunar months, at the end of which the phases of the moon repeat in exactly the same order and on the same days as the preceding cycle.
13. In astronomy, declination is one of the two coordinates of the equatorial coordinate system, the other being either right ascension or hour angle. Declination in astronomy is comparable to geographic latitude, but projected onto the celestial sphere. Declination is measured in degrees north and south of the celestial equator. Points north of the celestial equator have positive declinations, while those to the south have negative declinations.
14. Nicholas Mann, The Isle of Avalon, Green Magic, 2001, pp. 77-81.
15. Nicholas Mann, Energy Secrets of Glastonbury Tor, Green Magic, 2004, pp. 91-97.
16. South Cadbury Environs Project’s (SCEP) – Appendix 3.
17. Richard Tabor, Cadbury Castle: focusing the landscape.

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