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number of his Irish disciples, and to have established 
a rule of discipline for the community which he 
found here, over which he presided till his decease, 
for about thirty years after ; which rule having been 
improved and completed by his successor, St. Benig- 
nus or Benedict, continued to be observed by the 
monks of Glastonbury, till St. Augustin exchanged 
it for the Augustin formulary A. D. 605. 
Paulinus, bishop of Rochester, and St. David, 
bishop of Menevia, are mentioned, as having been 
great benefactors to the abbey: and the fact of its 
having been chosen as the burial place of king 
Arthur, is alone sufficient to shew, that in the middle 
of the sixth century, it had attained to a very high 
degree of importance and reputed sanctity. The his- 
tory of this christian prince and gallant warrior, is in- 
volved in mystery, and has been so overlaid by the 
romantic fables fashionable in the 13th and 14th 
centuries, that his very existence has been doubted. 
He has been supposed by some, to have been merely 
a personification of the desperate contest, which 
raged through nearly the whole of the 5th and 
6th centuries, between the christian inhabitants 
of Britain and the pagan invaders, known in history 
by the generic name of Saxons; or else to have 
been a mere mythical hero, whose mighty actions 
are no more worthy of a place in history, than the 
expedition of Jason, or the labours of Hercules. 
But if the antiquaries of former days were justly 
accused of “admiring the inscription, doating on 
