In the 18th century, the historian David Hume wrote that Harold had been buried by the high altar in the Norman church and moved to the choir of the later Augustinian abbey. Visitors were shown a stone slab bearing the inscription ""Hic iacet Haroldus infelix"" ("Here lies Harold the unfortunate"), although it had been destroyed when that part of the abbey was demolished at the Dissolution. An earlier 18th-century reference comes from Daniel Defoe's "A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain." In his description of Essex, Defoe mentions Waltham Abbey where “the ruins of the abbey remain; and tho’ antiquity is not my proper business, I cou’d not but observe, that King Harold, slain in the great battle in Sussex against William the Conqueror, lies buried here; his body being begg’d by his mother, the Conqueror allow’d it to be carried hither; but no monument was, as I can find, built for him, only a flat grave-stone, on which was engraven, "Harold Infoelix".”