“And when Sir Lancelot was come to Almesbury, within the nunnery, Queen Guinevere died but half an hour before.  And the ladies told Sir Lancelot that Queen Guinevere told them all ere she passed, that Sir Lancelot had been priest near a twelvemonth.  And hither he cometh as fast as he may to fetch my corpse, and beside my lord King Arthur he shall bury me.  Wherefore the Queen said, in hearing of them all, I beseech Almighty God that I may never have power to see Sir Lancelot with my worldly eyes.  And this, said all the ladies was ever her prayer these two days till she was dead.  Then Sir Lancelot saw her visage, but he wept not greatly, but sighed.  And so he did all the observance of the service himself, both the Dirige, and on the morn he sang Mass.  And there was ordained an horse-bier, and so with an hundred torches ever burning about the corpse of the Queen, and ever Sir Lancelot with his eight fellows went about the horse-bier singing and reading many an holy orison, and frankincense upon the corpse incensed.  Thus Sir Lancelot and his eight fellows went on foot from Almesbury unto Glastonbury, and when they were come to the chapel and the hermitage, there she had a Dirige with great devotion.  And on the morn the hermit that was sometime Bishop of Canterbury, sang the Mass of Requiem with great devotion; and Sir Lancelot was the first that offered, and then all his eight fellows.  And then she was wrapped in cered cloth of Raines, from the top to the toe in thirty-fold, and after she was put in a web of lead, and then in a coffin of marble.  And when she was put in the earth, Sir Lancelot swooned, and lay long still, while the hermit came out, and awaked him and said, Ye be to blame, for ye displease God with such manner of sorrow-making.  Truly, said Sir Lancelot, I trust I do not displease God, for He knoweth mine intent, for my sorrow was not, nor is not, for any rejoicing of sin, but my sorrow may never end.  For when I remember of her beauty and of her noblesse that was both with her king and with her, so when I saw his corpse and her corpse so lie together, truly mine heart would not serve to sustain my careful body.  Also when I remember me, how by my default, mine orgule, my pride, that they were both laid full low that were peerless that ever was living of Christian people, wit you well, said Sir Lancelot, this remembered of their kindness and mine unkindness, sank so to my heart that I might not sustain myself.”

Not long after the death of Guinevere, Lancelot “began to wax sick, and for evermore, day and night he prayed; but needfully, as nature required, sometimes he slumbered a broken sleep.  And within six weeks he lay in his bed and called the bishop and said, Sir Bishop, I pray you that ye will give me all my rights that belongeth unto a Christian man.”  Then Malory goes on to say that “when he was houseled and eneled, and had all that a Christian man ought to have, he prayed the bishop that his fellows might bear his body unto joyous Garde.”