A second, distinctively British, legend attached itself to Joseph, centred on Glastonbury in Somerset. The abbey there was one of the great houses of medieval England, and its monks came to claim Joseph of Arimathea as their founder. The chronicler William of Malmesbury mentioned an ancient British origin for the church about 1125, but the passages naming Joseph are later interpolations added by Glastonbury hands to bolster the abbey's antiquity and prestige, a well-documented instance of a monastic community improving its own past.
The fullest form of the legend holds that Joseph came to Britain with the Grail (or, in another version, two cruets of the blood and sweat of Christ), and that when he thrust his staff into the ground at Wearyall Hill it took root and blossomed as the Glastonbury Thorn, a hawthorn said to flower at Christmas. A tree of that unusual winter-flowering variety did grow at Glastonbury and was long shown to pilgrims.
Historians regard the whole Glastonbury connection as legend in service of the abbey's standing, unattested before the twelfth century and entangled with the contemporary cult of King Arthur, whose supposed grave the same monks announced. The atlas keeps the canonical burier of Jesus clearly separated from these later and interested traditions.