of Whitby by the Danes, and says that bones of Aidan and Hilda were removed to Glastonbury: in the third edition he adds at this point 'Ceolfrid' and 'many others', together with the words: 'as I have said in the book which I have lately put forth on the Antiquity of the church of Glastonbury'. Again, on p. 60 of the first edition he says that Ceolfrid's bones together with Hilda's were taken to Glastonbury at the time of the Danish invasion: here there is no change in the third edition. In speaking of St Indract on p. 36 of G. R.3, he says in passing: 'with whom the care of a later age laid the blessed Hilda'. In the first book of his Life of St Dunstan he had promised to tell how these northern saints came to Glastonbury, if he were permitted to complete his book on the Antiquity of the church of Glastonbury.[1]
We may perhaps conclude that he abandoned the view that K. Edmund brought them in favour of a translation at the time of the Danish invasion; but, since Abbot Tica's name is not mentioned in G. R.3, we cannot be confident that is not a later interpolation.
We now come to a solid block of the De Antiquitate which has no attestation at all in the third edition of the Gesta Regum, and is certainly not from the pen of William of Malmesbury. It extends over thirteen pages of Hearne's edition (pp. 30-42), and it will be unnecessary to give an analysis of it here. It will suffice to say that the first section, which is headed 'Of Divers Relics stored at Glastonbury', repeats much that has been said before and adds many new names after the manner of a catalogue; makes reference to the translation of St Dunstan, of which it promises to give a full account; and ends by saying that 'amongst us' (apud nos) there is not a complete knowledge of the many saints who are buried here. The remainder of this great interpolation is mainly taken up with an elaborate narrative of the finding of St Dunstan's body when Canterbury was laid desolate by the Danes, their removal to Glastonbury where they lay hidden for more than a century and a half, and finally their happy discovery after the great fire of 1184. This is followed by short sections on three wonder-working Crosses[2] and an image of the Virgin which miraculously escaped the fire. Finally, we have a section 'On the Altar of St David, which is commonly called the Sapphire': if we could have any doubt as to the date of this, it would be removed by the last sentence which speaks of Henry, bishop of Winchester, 'of pious memory'.
