KING AUTHUK's HKMAINS. 141 



President took part. The Rev. F. Warrc uiaintained 

 that there were the strongest reasons to belleve the tradi- 

 tion to be founded on fact. Mr. Freeman sifted the 

 historical evidenee, and argued strongly against the proba- 

 bility. Mr. Parker, on the other band, observed that the 

 custom of burying in a coffin formed of a hollow oak-tree 

 agreed with that of the time at whlch King Arthur is said 

 to have been burled here, and mentioned the skeleton 

 found in a similar coffin near Scarborough, and now pre- 

 served in the Museum there, the bones of which are dyed 

 black by the action of the gall of the oak in the moist clay 

 in which it was buried, and hence is popularly called the 

 Black Prince. He also observed that the thin leaden plate 

 of a cruciform shape, wlth the rüde inscription upon it, 

 agrees exactly with many similar leaden plates found by 

 the Abbe Cochet in early graves in the neighbourhood of 

 Dieppe, in Normandy, several of which have been engraved 

 in the " Archaeologia." These graves are assigned by that 

 learned antiquary to the Merovingian period, and this point 

 has not been doubted by any of those Avho have examined 

 the question. 



