Leaving Exeter early, we planned to reach Bath in the evening—­only eighty-one miles over an almost perfect road—­not a very long run so far as actual distance is concerned, but entirely too long considering the places of unusual interest that lie along the way.  We passed through the little town of Wellington, noted chiefly for giving his title to the Iron Duke, and it commemorates its great namesake by a lofty column reared on one of the adjacent hills.

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 been in its palmy days.  And there are few places in the Kingdom where one is so impressed with the spirit of the ancient order of things as when surrounded by the crumbling walls of Glastonbury Abbey.

[Illustration:  St. JOSEPH’S chapel, Glastonbury abbey.]