at the prayers of Jofeph, the Lord fent a fhip which had been scientifically built by Solomon, fo that it might laft till the time of Chrift. With them came Mordraius, a king of the Medes, and his general Vacianus, both of whom Joseph had formerly baptized in the city of Shiraz; for the Lord appeared to Mordraius in a vifion, and fhewed him that the perfidious king of North Wales had caft Joseph into a dungeon for preaching Christianity. Mordraius and his general Vacianus marched against him with an army, flew him, and liberated Joseph : upon which they all returned great thanks amongst much joy to God.

After this Jofeph and his fon travelled throughout Britain, where reigned king Arviragus, a barbarian, who with his people forbad them to preach the Christian faith. Yet, after a time, beholding the modesty of their lives, he gave to Joseph and his eleven religious brethren, including his son Joseph, equalling the number of the apostles, a certain island called YNSWITRYN, —that is, Infula Vitrea,-fituated amid woods, thickets and marshes, and thus called on account of a stream which flowed round it through the marshes which was of the colour of glass, - whence the name of the place became Glastonbury, or the city of glass. It was alfo called the Ifle of Avalon, from Aval the British name for an apple, being very prolific of that fruit. And this name of Avalon became very famous, not only on account of the monaftery, but also that it was the burial-place of king Arthur. The settling of Joseph here was celebrated by a monkish poet in the following lines:

Intrat Avalloniam duodena caterva virorum.

Flos Armathiæ Joseph est primus eorum.
Josephes, ex Joseph genitus, patrem comitatur.
His aliifque decem jus Glaftoniæ propriatur.

Here Joseph was directed by the archangel Gabriel in a vision

D

to build a church in honour of the mother of God, the perpetual Virgin Mary; and he pointed out to him the spot. In obedience to the archangel he constructed it in a circular form of plaited twigs, no doubt of willow, which must have been abundant there,-a fort of basket-work church. This was in the thirty-first year after the paffion of our Saviour.

Here the holy brethren continued for years to serve God and the holy Virgin in watchings, fafts, and facred exercises, so that Marius the fon of Arviragus, and Coilus the son of Marius, granted them twelve hides of land around their humble oratory-a hide each. In courfe of time Jofeph and his companions died. The spot was not chofen with much reference to sanitary principles; it must have been very damp and unwholesome their lives probably were not long. Jofeph was buried in a bifurcate line from the meridian angle of the oratory, in prepared hurdles, lying upon a figure of the adorable Virgin, "and having interred with him two veffels of filver filled with the blood and sweat of the prophet Jefus, by virtue of which neither water nor the dew of heaven can ever be wanting to the inhabitants of this most noble ifle. When his farcophagus fhall be opened, which will be in the valley of Jofaphat sometime before the day of judgment, it will be found to have been untouched, and be shown to the whole world."

After the death of Joseph and his eleven companions the place continued long deferted, and from the abode of holy men became once more a lair of wild beafts, till it pleased the holy Virgin to recall her oratory to the memory of the faithful. Yet the race of Joseph of Arimathea was not extinct; on the contrary, it became the royal line, and the famous king Arthur was the tenth in descent from him. According to the book called the Sanctum Graal, this was the genealogy:Helaius, the nephew of Joseph, was the father of Joshua, Joshua

of Aminadab, and fo in fucceffion followed Caftellors, Manuel, Lambord, and a fon not named, who was the father of Ygernam, who was the father of Uther Pendragon, the father of the renowned king Arthur.

A hundred years had paffed over, and paganism still covered the kingdom of Britain, when king Lucius fent to Eleutherius, the thirteenth pope from St. Peter, defiring him to fend Christian preachers. Eleutherius accordingly sent two holy men, Phaganus and Diruvianus, who arrived just one hundred and three years after the coming of Jofeph and his companions. Led by God, they entered the wilderness of Avalon, and discovered the remains of a cross and other signs identifying the place which God had chosen to be the first church of his Son Jefus and of the mother of Jesus in these realms. With much joy they rebuilt the oratory, and twelve brethren continued to live there; their places at their death being filled up by fucceffors, till St. Patrick, the apoftle of Ireland, became the first abbot of Glastonbury and thirty years' indulgence was granted by pope Eleutherius to all Chriftians from other parts of Britain who visited Glastonbury; thus confirming the faith amongst the Britons. Phaganus and Diruvianus had built. a new oratory of stone, which they dedicated to Christ and the apostles Peter and Paul; and, by direction of the Lord, they also erected an oratory to St. Michael on the top of the hill in the island, to the last of which those seeking the grand indulgence had to make their pilgrimage.

Such is the story of the founding of the mother church of England according to John of Glastonbury. Such were the legends by which the earlier Roman Catholics satisfied the simple faith of the people great and small. We are afraid that the narrative will not agree very well with the history of the early British church, which admitted no claims of Rome at

this period, and denied both its affumptions and many of its doctrines. Quite as little is it to be expected that the Irish protestants will concede that the great faint of that island, St. Patrick, after his conversion of the Hibernians, came over to Glastonbury, and lived and died its first abbot, in full communion with the papal church. Such a version we must refer to the monk Jofcelin of Furness Abbey, who wrote the life of St. Patrick in the twelfth century, and first converted him into a Roman faint. That and the next age was a time when the Roman hierarchy in Britain, as in other places, was busy destroying the churches and schools of the primitive church; and then, after fome of them had been five hundred years in their graves, made faints of the very men who had stood the boldest adversaries of all Italian corruptions or affumptions; namely, Patrick, or as originally called Succat; Columbkille, Kevin, Columbanus, Gallus, Claude Clement, Erigena, Albinus, Virgilius, and a host of others. The truth feems to have been, that at an early day primitive Christianity was driven out of England into Ireland, and thence to Iona, and returned thence again to both England and the continent through the apostles of the Irish school of Bangor, and of the venerable Iona. As for Ireland, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, in his life of Malachy, bishop of Down, fays that he and the monks sent over thither by Bernard himself, were "the first true monks Ireland ever faw." And this is fully confirmed by archbishop Usher, who says that Malachy, archbishop of Armagh, and Laurence of Dublin, both in the twelfth century, were the first bishops of Ireland canonized by the pope.

Yet it is amusing with what gravity John of Glastonbury tells us that he was fent by Pope Cæleftinus in 425 to convert the Irish-that having refused to be made pope himself, he landed in Cornwall, and went thence to Glastonbury in 433,

having in the meantime converted the Irish nation with many portents and miracles-that is, in eight years. There he found the twelve brethren, who hailed him abbot. St. Patrick in a charter which he granted, containing an indulgence of one hundred days to all pilgrims thither, is made to tell us that he found in the monaftery, the Acts of the Apostles and the Acts of Phaganus and Diruvianus. Patrick, fays John of Glastonbury, lived to the age of one hundred and eleven, having been abbot thirty-nine years.

There has run a legend that Jofeph of Arimathea on arriving at Glastonbury struck down his walking-stick, an Afiatic thorn, whilst he prayed, and behold, it shot out boughs, leaves, and flowers, and continued to flourish there as the famous Glaftonbury thorn till the deftruction of the monastery by Henry VIII. But it seems that this miracle attended St. Benignus, the adopted son and immediate fucceffor of St. Patrick. Benignus having been for seven years educated in Rome, despising the prospect of pontifical dignity which it appears-he, like St. Patrick also had, and warned by an angel, set out on a pilgrimage. He was led by God to Glaftonbury, where he found his patron St. Patrick, and to whom he told his divine miffion. St. Patrick faid, "Go on, my beloved fon, contented with thy staff. And when thou comest to the spot where the Lord has predeftined thee to fettle, ftrike thy staff into the earth, and it shall shoot forth, grow verdurous, and bloffom." Benignus, therefore, made a long travel through forefts, moors, and marshes, but the stick did not shoot into life till he came again to Glastonbury, where, our hiftorian tells us, it continued to his own day growing a large and spreading tree close to the oratory of the faint.

From the time of St. Patrick and of this miracle the fame of Glaftonbury grew rapidly. Many kings, queens, princes,