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John Arthur Goodchild (1851–1914) was a physician; later, he authored several works of poetry and mysticism, most famously The Light of the West.
According to Patrick Benham, Goodchild had a private medical practice in Bordighera, Italy, serving mainly expatriate Britons. From 1873 until the early 1900s, he stayed in Italy during summers and returned to the UK in winters.
Goodchild was an antiquarian influenced by British Israelite ideas and the Golden Dawn esoteric group. He was friends with William Sharp (who wrote as Fiona Macleod), who dedicated his final literary work, The Winged Destiny: Studies in the Spiritual History of the Gael, to Goodchild.
He saw Glastonbury, Iona (Scotland) and Devenish Island (Ireland) as being a triune of holy sites in the British Isles.
In The Light of the West, Goodchild advanced the theory that under the influence of the Roman church, the feminine had become neglected in Christianity, and that it was the destiny of a revitalised Celtic church to restore the feminine to due prominence in Christian life and thought.
Benham claims the cup was then found and became the focus of a Christian group, including Goodchild and Wellesley Tudor Pole, based in Bristol, who believed the vessel to have formerly belonged to Jesus. The object is reported to now be in the possession of the Chalice Well Trust, based in Glastonbury.
The platter is claimed to have been sent to the "Sons of Garibaldi" which may be a reference to the freemasons Rite of Memphis-Misraim, of which Giuseppe Garibaldi was grandmaster for a while.
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