Circa 1135, Geoffrey of Monmouth completed De gestis Britonum (On the Deeds of the Britons), which purported to be a true account of the ancient Britons based on a liber uetustissimus, a “most ancient book.”1 Unlike their descendants, the colonized Welsh, the ancient Britons were a gloriously powerful people who enjoyed sovereignty over Britain from the time of Aeneas until the coming of the Saxons. Geoffrey's historia fantastica (fantastic history) was taken as fact by Welsh and Norman readers alike, becoming one of the single most influential texts of medieval Britain.2 While most discussions of De gestis Britonum focus on the text's portrayal of Britons, Bretons, Romans, Saxons, and Normans, one group in the text has gone almost entirely undiscussed.3 These are the Flemish, alternately called Moriani and Ruteni in the text, an apparently fearsome enemy of the ancient Britons, known to invade Northumbria with great frequency. The role of Flemish invaders in Geoffrey of Monmouth's De gestis Britonum is relatively small, yet it holds tantalizing significance. They are a people marginal to the unfolding of ancient British history, stepping onto the historical stage and disappearing with little comment, ever-present and just out of sight of the text's main events. This liminal status means that their role in Geoffrey's origin myth for the Matter of Britain has been largely overlooked. Scholarship has yet to trace the source of Geoffrey's mysterious Flemings and to explore his motivations in depicting the Flemish as frequent invaders of Northumbria and as a people rooted out of Britain in the Prophetiae Merlini (Prophecies of Merlin), one of the more inscrutable sections of De gestis Britonum.In this study, I suggest that Geoffrey's pseudohistorical account of Flemish invaders should be read against the 1108 Flemish immigration to England and their 1110 relocation to Wales, major events attested in the twelfth-century Latin chronicles of William of Malmesbury, Orderic Vitalis, John of Worcester, and the thirteenth-century Welsh Brut y Tywysogion (Chronicle of Princes). While most early twelfth-century writers record Flemish immigration to England and relocation to Wales in chronicle form, Geoffrey instead embeds a fictionalized Flemish presence in his deep history for Britain, both in the historical narrative proper and in the Prophecies of Merlin. After 1110, Flemish presence in Wales resulted in highly publicized explosions of bloodshed, resulting in accounts that reached the Continent. No doubt aware of the violence between Welsh and Flemish residents of modern-day Pembrokeshire, Geoffrey constructs an ancient animosity between the two peoples, using this recent immigration history and ethnic clashing to lend credence to his account of pre-Saxon Britain. By reading Geoffrey's portrayal of the Flemings of Britain alongside the chroniclers’ versions of events, we see that De gestis Britonum furthers its project of historiographic verisimilitude by referencing the well-known history of violence between the Welsh and the Flemish of Britain. By commodifying recent violence between two ethnic subjects of the Normanized English, Geoffrey revises the history of Flemish refugees and develops his own vatic persona.4The Flemings, first identified as Moriani and later as Ruteni, enter Geoffrey's text as an always-already presence in British history. Book three of De gestis Britonum opens with a succession crisis that plagues Britain after the death of the great Dunuallo Molmutius, creator of the Molmutine Laws. Dunuallo's sons Beli and Brennius agree to divide Britain, with the elder Beli taking most of Britain (according to Trojan practice) and the younger Brennius taking control of Northumbria ab Humbro usque ad Kataseniam (from the Humber to Caithness [35.8–9]). Although Brennius is content with his lot, scheming advisors encourage him to set his sights upon his brother's lands. Unnamed fabricatores mendacii (spinners of lies) foment discord between the brothers by persuading Brennius that he deserves a greater share of Britain (35.12). These fabricatores remind Brennius that he shares in the same noble heritage as his brother, and they note that “Adde quod in pluribus debellationibus expertus es, qui tociens Cheulfo duci Morianorum in prouinciam nostram applicanti resistere potuisti ipsumque ex regno tuo fugare” (Moreover, you have proved yourself in many battles, since you have so often been able to repulse Cheulfus, duke of the Flemings, when he landed in our region, and drive him from your kingdom [35.15–18]). This argument is successful, leading Brennius to marry a Norwegian princess and lead a Scandinavian-British navy against his brother. More importantly, this is the first appearance of Flemings in Geoffrey's text. These Flemings are would-be conquerors, harrying Northumbria with enough frequency to become a significant and well-known enemy of the British defenders.The source of Geoffrey's characterization of the Moriani—typically translated as “Flemings”—is unclear, not appearing in his typical source materials. The terminology here supports Geoffrey's development of a pseudohistorical setting, building his military history upon a classical ethnonym. However, there seems to be no historical truth to the story of pre-Norman Flemish invasions of Northumbria. Either Geoffrey had access to historical documents no longer extant, or he fabricated this history. Given Geoffrey's ready ability to invent historical narrative at will, it is likely that Geoffrey invented Brennius's military history as a valiant defender of Northumbria against Flemish naval forces.Additionally, there seems to be no historical duke Cheulfus of Flanders. Tatlock offers one hypothetical source: a documented Chiulphus, a praecipuus miles (distinguished soldier) who appears in the Flemish annals as an accomplice to the 943 murder of William, duke of Normandy and count of Flanders.5 It seems plausible that Geoffrey may have muddled his source material, transforming a tenth-century soldier into an ancient invading duke. Geoffrey's motivation for choosing the duke of the Flemings to become a key enemy of Northumbria, however, remains unknown.Later in book three, the Moriani appear again as a set of faceless aggressors who are defeated by British forces. However, in their second appearance in the text, these Flemings become objects of pathos, as the accomplishment of repelling Flemings goes wrong in the years after Brennius's actions. In fact, one ancient king of Britain is so excessively cruel to captured warriors that he receives a punishment of near-Biblical proportions. The British king Morvidus is a generous king and valiant warrior but is despised for his nimiae crudelitati (excessive cruelty [47.269]). When an unnamed king of the Moriani invades Northumbria, Morvidus does not merely fend off the threat. Geoffrey describes the disturbing events as follows: Temporibus ipsius applicuit quidam rex Morianorum cum magna manu in Northamhimbriam et patriam uastare incepit. Cui Moruidus, collecta totius potestatis suae iuuentute, obuiam perrexit et cum illo proeliatus est. Plus ipse solus in proeliando proficiebat quam maxima pars exercitus cui principabatur. Et ut uictoria potitus est, non euasit ullus uiuus quin ipsum interficeret. Iubebat enim unum post alium ante se adduci ut quemque perimendo crudelitatem suam saciaret; et cum fatigatus paulisper cessasset, praecipiebat ipsos uiuos excoriari et exoriatos comburi. (48.273–280)(During his reign the king of the Moriani landed in Northumbria with a great force and began to lay waste to the country. Morvidus, having collected the full power of his men, marched to fight him. In the ensuing battle he achieved more by himself than almost the entire army which he commanded. After securing his victory, no one escaped alive from his destruction. He ordered the men to be brought to him one after another so that he could satisfy his cruelty by dispatching every one; and when he paused for a while exhausted, he ordered that they be flayed and burned alive.)Although he is an admirable king, Morvidus's proclivity for violence perverts his legacy. Geoffrey deploys the Flemings as an expendable force that he can sacrifice for the sake of narrative. The text is not sympathetic to the Flemings, but it does imply that no defeated soldier is deserving of the tortuous deaths to which Morvidus subjects them. Their frequent invasions warrant drastic measures against them, but Morvidus's queer preoccupation with exhausting his body in the execution of each individual prisoner's body is beyond the pale.Morvidus's perverse love of violence and excessive cruelty earns him a dramatic end, one Geoffrey introduces by saying, “Inter haec et alia saeuiciae suae gesta contigit ei infortunium quoddam quod nequitiam suam deleuit” (In the midst of these and similar acts of brutality he suffered a misfortune which put an end to his wickedness [Geoffrey 48.280–82]). A belua (monster) had appeared on the west coast of Britain and deuorabat (was devouring) local residents (48.283). Morvidus attempts to defeat the creature in hand-to-hand combat. However, the king's tela (javelins) are useless against the mysterious creature (48.285). According to the text, “accelerauit monstrum illud et apertis faucibus ipsum uelut pisciculum deuorauit” (the monster rushed up and swallowed him in its open jaws like a little fish [48.285–286]). Due to his unchecked, violent nature, the king's dramatic death as a human prey for a sea creature appears to be a justifiably satisfying one. It is not his execution of Flemish soldiers per se that warrants his spectacular death, but his extreme wickedness in the method of doing so.Moriani are thus established as a local force that is hostile to the ancient Britons, marginal to the central narrative but nevertheless a consistent threat. It is important to note that Geoffrey's term for Flemings in peacetime seems to be “Ruteni,” while “Moriani” is reserved for the two violent scenarios described above. It is unclear whether Geoffrey intended to make a distinction between two groups or whether he simply varied in the Roman sources from which he drew inspiration. Geoffrey avoids almost entirely the early twelfth-century Latin terms for Flanders (Flandria) and Flemings (Flandrenses), using Flandria just a single time (as we shall see) near the end of the Flemings’ presence in the text.The third and final mention of “Moriani” appears in book four during Caesar's conquest of Britain. After he is driven back onto the Continent, Caesar lands on Morianorum litus (a beach of the Moriani), where he had built a tower in Odnea.6 Caesar built the tower because he distrusted Gallorum fidem (the loyalty of the Gauls [60.129]). According to Caesar's own memoir, the ancient Ruteni of Gaul had been conquered by Quintus Fabius Maximus.7 This ethnonym appears throughout Roman ethnography and historiography, with Lucan later writing of a coastal Gallic people he calls the “yellow-haired Ruteni.”8Geoffrey's terminology has been the source of some confusion and debate for centuries, as Raphael Holinshed's 1577 history attests.9 According to J.S.P. Tatlock's landmark study of Geoffrey's source materials, the term Moriani would have been a commonly used word for people of Artois or Flanders, the Continental regions closest to Britain.10 Tatlock also claims that Geoffrey uses “Ruteni” as a synonym for “Moriani,” treating the two terms as fully interchangeable. Translators have varied in their treatment of this hypothesis. For example, Reeve and Wright's 2007 edition translates both “Moriani” and “Ruteni” as “Flemings,” supporting Tatlock's assertion that the two terms are synonyms. Faletra's 2008 translation suggests an alternative view, naming “Moray” as the homeland of the invaders repelled by Brennius and executed by Morvidus.11 (When the Moriani appear in the third instance, near Caesar's Continental tower at Odnea, Faletra maintains the name “Moriani.”) This translation may imply that the invaders are not Flemish at all, but hail from the northeast Moray region of modern-day Scotland. This suggestion is intriguing and could explain why the Moriani can afford to invade Northumbria with such frequency; the two areas share geographical proximity. However, there are several potential obstacles to this theory. First, Geoffrey uses the term applicare (“to land”) in describing the invaders repulsed by Brennius and Morvidus, so it is clear that the invaders arrive by ship, not over land. This raises the possibility that invaders came from either the Continent or over coastal sea routes from Moray. Second, Geoffrey's third use of “Moriani” places this people solidly on the Continent. Faletra preserves only this instance of “Moriani,” which would imply that Geoffrey used the same term for Scottish raiders and for the Gallic people of Odnea. It is quite possible that Geoffrey carelessly applied this ethnonym to multiple peoples. However, Geoffrey is elsewhere careful to invent a wide array of imagined names with loose etymological connections and seems to have relished the opportunity to do so.Indeed, in his account of Julius Caesar's attempts to subdue Britain, Geoffrey seems to identify the coast of Flanders as both litus Rutenorum and Morianorum litus (“a beach of the Ruteni” and “a beach of the Moriani” respectively). In book four, the litus Rutenorum becomes the fated spot from which Julius Caesar looks out upon Britain for the first time (54.2). Shortly afterward, he is forced back onto the Morianorum litus, where he had earlier built a tower at Odnea to repel any attacks from treacherous Gauls. It is unclear why Geoffrey varies from Moriani to Ruteni, but he certainly does so. Indeed, after the three mentions of “Moriani” discussed above, Geoffrey switches entirely to “Ruteni.”At some point after the infamous career of Morvidus, the Moriani apparently cease to invade Britain. When Arthur hosts a grand coronation feast at Caerleon, Holdinus, dux Rutenorum (Holdinus, duke of the Ruteni) appears in the list of dignitaries visiting ex transmarinis (from across the sea).12 This seems to mark the point in British history when Flemings cease to be a predictable enemy of the Britons. Indeed, the Ruteni are one of the many peoples that pledge warriors to Arthur in his campaign against Rome, and Holdinus dux Rutenorum makes a second appearance as one of Arthur's chief lieutenants in wartime (162.526; 168.260). Holdinus is killed in the subsequent violence but given a worthy burial in his homeland: “Holdinus quoque dux Rutenorum, Flandrias delatus, in Terwana ciuitate sua sepultus est” (Holdinus, duke of the Flemings, was taken to Flanders to receive burial at his city of Thérouanne [172.379; 176.474]). It is only at this momentous occasion concluding Holdinus's career that Geoffrey calls Flanders by its contemporary name, explicitly linking the ancient Ruteni with twelfth-century Flandria. This also marks the final exit of Flemings from Geoffrey's historical stage, as they are not mentioned again in the text.The Flemings of the more historical episodes of De gestis Brittonum are thus highly fictionalized and portrayed as invaders-turned-subjects of Britain. The Flemings of the Prophetiae Merlini (Prophecies of Merlin) are, ironically, more deeply rooted in the actual history of Flemish presence in Britain. The Prophecies were circulated as a stand-alone text in 1130 and must have generated some amount of interest, given their mysterious, eschatological nature.13 In the Prologue to De gestis Brittonum, Geoffrey informs the reader that undique contemporanei mei (all my contemporaries), especially Alexander of Lincoln, pressed him to publish the prophecies as quickly as possible (109.2). The Prophecies evoke Christian Biblical eschatology as well as Welsh bardic conventions, if the book's resemblance to the Hengerdd (Old Poetry) preserved in the fourteenth-century National Library of Wales MS Peniarth 2, the “Book of Taliesin,” can be taken as evidence of pre-Galfridian practices. Geoffrey's most immediate source for the vatic Merlin figure is the pseudo-Nennian story of the corrupt British King Vortigern, who conscripts the young Ambrosius (also called Emrys the Overlord) to explain why his tower at Mount Snowdon continues to sink to the earth.14 After Ambrosius divines the presence of two warring dragons below the construction site, the dragons fly into the air in a terrible battle, and Vortigern demands to know the meaning of these events. In Geoffrey's extended version of this scene, Ambrosius Merlin bursts into tears (a mark of being touched with supernatural knowledge) and prophesies.15His prophecies feature wondrous events and apocalyptic battles for sovereignty over Britain. The section that concerns the Flemings contemporary with Geoffrey's own life is as follows. According to Ambrosius Merlin, three springs of magical, poisonous water will bubble up and afflict Winchester. Then, Ad haec ex urbe canuti nemoris eliminabitur puella ut medelae curam adhibeat. Quae ut omnes artes inierit, solo anhelitu suo fontes nociuos siccabit. Exin, ut sese salubri liquore refecerit, gestabit in dextera sua nemus Colidonis, in sinistra uero murorum Lundoniae propugnacula. Quacumque incedet passus sulphureos faciet, qui dupplici flamma fumabunt. Fumus ille excitabit Rutenos et cibum submarinis conficiet. Lacrimis miserandis manabit ipsa et clamore horrido replebit insulam. (116.155–161)(In response, a girl will be sent forth from the city of the hoary forest to bring curing medicine. After she has tried all her arts, she will dry up the deadly springs with her breath alone. Then, after refreshing herself with healing water, she will bear in her right hand the forest of Celidon and in her left the battlements of London's walls. Wherever she goes, she will leave tracks of sulphur, which will burn with a double flame. Their smoke will rouse the Ruteni and provide food for the creatures of the deep. She will be drenched with pitiful tears and fill the island with a terrible cry.)As with all the Prophecies, literal and figurative meanings can be read in a variety of ways, a clever move by which Geoffrey ensured the popularity and longevity of the work. The collocation of Ruteni with the idea of humans providing food for sea creatures links this passage to the tale of Morvidus, which occurs prior to Ambrosius Merlin's predictions of the future. The link does not create a clear meaning, suggesting that Geoffrey pulled both episodes, somewhat messily, from a loose mental or written sketch featuring Flemings and submarinis (submarine creatures). The verb excitare is difficult to interpret here, as is its apt translation “rouse.” It is possible that the Ruteni are being roused to fight or roused to flee. Overall, it seems that the Ruteni will be roused to flee from their smoke-filled homes, even driven into the sea to become prey.16While the events of this passage are deliberately obscure, the identities of the main players are quite clear. Ambrosius Merlin's Ruteni are definitively aligned with the recent Flemish transplants to Wales, meaning that he foresees their imminent expulsion from their new homes. It also seems clear that Geoffrey specifically planned that this would be a common interpretation among his readers. He would also have anticipated that his readers would associate the apparently horrific Welsh-Flemish violence with the apocalyptic imagery of this passage.Such a reading is necessitated by the passage's geographical setting. Geoffrey establishes these Ruteni clearly within the physical and social topographies of Britain, meaning that these Ruteni should be read as residing in Britain itself, not on the litus Rutenorum in Gaul. Prior to the naming of the Ruteni, Geoffrey grounds the prophecy in Winchester in the south of England. He then features the forest of Celidon in modern-day Scotland, Yr Hen Ogledd or the Old North of pre-Saxon Britain, and London in southeast England. The passage about the apocalyptic puella (girl) goes on to identify additional British sites: Interficiet eam ceruus decem ramorum, quorum quatuor aurea diademata gestabunt, sex uero residui in cornua bubalorum uertentur, quae nefando sonitu tres insulas Britanniae commouebunt. Excitabitur Daneum nemus et in humanam uocem erumpens clamabit “Accede, Kambria, et iunge lateri tuo Cornubiam, et dic Guintoniae, ‘absorbebit te tellus . . . uae periurae genti, quia urbs inclita propter eam ruet.’” (116.162–71)(She will be killed by a stag with ten branches, four of which will wear golden crowns, while the remaining six will become the horns of buffalos and stir up Britain's three islands with their dreadful sound. The forest of Dean will awaken and shout in a human voice: “Come, Wales, stand with Cornwall at your side, and say to Winchester, ‘the earth will swallow you up . . . woe to the treacherous people on whose account a famous city will fall.’”)The Forest of Dean is in Gloucestershire in the Anglo-Welsh border region, and the three islands islands of Britain are apparently minor enough to go unnamed. If Geoffrey had three specific islands in mind here, they may have included the two relatively large islands of Ynys Môn (Anglesey) and the Isle of Man; the third could be any number of small, sacred isles, from Ynys Enlli (Bardsey Island) in the Irish Sea to Lindisfarne off England's northeast coast. Wales is in west Britain and Cornwall in the southwest. The section of the text involving the Ruteni thus begins and ends in Winchester, and nearly covers the full expanse of Britain as it circulates from region to region. Without delving too deeply into the details of Geoffrey's miasmatic Prophecies, we can see that Flemings feature not only as a Continental people, but as an ethnic group situated within Britain itself. Prior to his development of the Moriani as ancient invaders, Geoffrey included the Ruteni as transplants in an apocalyptic, war-torn Britain.If we read Geoffrey's Flemings alongside twelfth-century historiography, we may uncover some of his inspiration, if not source material, in crafting his British Flemings in the Prophecies and his invading Flemings in book three of De gestis Brittonum. According to most historiographers of the early twelfth century, Flemish immigration to Britain was highly fraught and the cause of extreme violence. I have discussed elsewhere how Matilda of Flanders, wife of William the Conqueror, facilitated Flemish migration to Britain after 1066, and how this migration took on special urgency during an environmental refugee crisis in 1108.17 After major floods turned coastal Flemings from their homes, they apparently relocated to England, where they were welcomed by Henry I. However, after becoming a burdensome foreign presence, Henry I requisitioned the area of Rhos in Pembrokeshire and established a settler colony of Flemings around 1110. This is the general narrative largely agreed upon by medieval and modern historians. As an Oxford-based magister highly interested in Welsh history and concerns, a man who hailed from the Monmouth area, Geoffrey could hardly have been ignorant of the recent violence involving the Flemings of Wales.18The details differ from account to account, however. The Chronicon ex chronicus, John of Worcester's continuation of the chronicle by the Irish monk Marianus Scotus, takes a neutral attitude toward events but provides geographical details unseen in other chronicles. The entry for the year 1111 reads, “Rex Anglorum Heinricus Flandrenses qui Northymbriam incolebant, cum tota supellectili sua, in Waloniam transtulit, et terram, quae Ros nominatur, incolere praecepit” (King Henry of the English transferred the Flemings who dwelled in Northumbria, with all their goods, into Wales, and set aside the land called Rhos for them to dwell within).19 John's brief account is remarkable as the only twelfth-century chronicle (to my knowledge) that claims the Flemish refugees dwelled first in Northumbria before moving to Pembrokeshire. This account, of course, aligns with Geoffrey's seemingly pseudohistorical placement of Flemings in Northumbria. Is it possible that these two accounts informed one another? John's work on the chronicle ended in 1140 with his death, and it is possible that he was inspired by his reading of Geoffrey's discussion of Flemish presence in Northumbria in the 1130 Prophecies or 1135 De gestis Brittonum. However, the reverse seems more likely: the Chronicon ex chronicus was nearly up to date by the year of the publication of Geoffrey's work, and it is difficult to imagine that John would have been so quickly and deeply invested in what his contemporaries recognized as a pseudohistory. But if Geoffrey was looking for ways to historicize the current presence of refugees in Wales, then it seems more possible that he would have been interested in John's account. If he had knowledge of John's chronicle—which seems likely, considering the interlinked nature of early twelfth-century historiographers and their patrons—in it he would have found a source linking Flemings, Northumbria, and their settlement in Wales. It is possible that the two men shared a lost source, and as always with Geoffrey, it is also possible that his inventive imagination culminated in this strange historiographic coincidence.William of Malmesbury, one of Geoffrey's closest contemporaries and competitors, provides the most detailed extant account of Flemish migration to Britain. This is also the account that most clearly informs modern knowledge of these events. His Gesta regum Anglorum (Deeds of the Kings of the English), completed in 1125 and expanded in 1127, provides a highly biased account of the Flemish migration to Wales. Like Geoffrey, William was patronized by one of the most powerful men in Britain: Robert, Earl of Gloucester, the illegitimate son of Henry I. William thus adopts a triumphant tone, admiring the cleverness of Henry I in dealing with two undesirable ethnic groups in the newly Norman Britain. The Gesta regum Anglorum provides the following account: Walenses rex Henricus, semper in rebellionem surgentes, crebris expeditionibus in deditionem premebat, consilioque salubri nixus, ut eorum tumorem extenuaret, Flandrenses omnes Angliae accolas eo traduxit. Plures enim, qui tempore patris pro materna cognatione confluxerant, occultabat Anglia, adeo ut ipsi regno pro multitudine onerosi uiderentur; quapropter cum substantiis et necessitudinibus apud Ros, prouintiam Walliarum, uelut in sentinam congessit, ut et regnum defecaret et hostium brutam temeritatem retunderet. Nec eo setius illuc expeditionem pro temporum oportunitate dirigebat[.]20(King Henry pressured the ever-rebelling Welsh to surrender through frequent campaigns, and through reliance on a salubrious design to diminish their uprisings, he transplanted all the Flemings who had overrun England there [into Wales]. A great number of them, who in the time of [Henry's] father had flocked to England on account of their relationship with [Henry's] mother, were hiding there, in such a multitude that they seemed to be a burden on the kingdom. Therefore, he threw them together with all their belongings and necessities into Rhos, a province of Wales, as though into a cesspool, so that the kingdom might be cleansed and the brutish, reckless foreigners might be beat back. Nevertheless, he directed campaigns there upon opportune occasions.)William's racializing dismissal of Flemish and Welsh shows that refugees were deployed to Wales as settler colonists, fulfilling Henry's aim of occupying Wales with a friendly force that would be both pliable and disposable.21 Geoffrey rejects William's accounts of history as well as his Anglocentric focus, going so far as to forbid him from commenting on the kings of the Britons at all.22 Geoffrey evidently had some level of familiarity with William and his work. Whether he directly drew on William's account of British Flemings is unclear, but William's detailed account shows that it was a relatively significant event in the first decade of the 1100s for Norman, Welsh, and Flemish histories. Geoffrey could not have been unaware of such a significant political moment in Pembrokeshire, even if it happened when he was a young man, having been born in Monmouth circa 1095.Although Geoffrey forbids the too-English William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon from writing about British kings, he does not mention his slightly older contemporary, Orderic Vitalis.23 Orderic was born in England but spent his adult life cloistered in Saint-Evroul in Normandy, where he labored over his Historia Ecclesiastica (Ecclesiastical History) from the 1100s nearly until his death in 1142. It is not clear whether Geoffrey knew the work, though Orderic was apparently one of Geoffrey's early readers, quoting from the Prophetiae Merlini that was apparently contained in a Libellus Merlini (“Little Book of Merlin”) early in 1135 prior to the broad circulation of De gestis Brittonum proper later in 1135.24 Both men take a similarly complex view of Flemish-Welsh interactions. In comparison to his contemporaries, Orderic was less interested in catering to the political loyalties of insular patrons. Orderic's account of the Flemish settlement in Wales is thus less concerned with politics and more with the lived fallout of Henry I's machinations: Tunc Guali Britones a cunctis gentibus quae sub regis Henrici dicione consistunt, uehementer afflicti sunt; et plurimae regiones eorum Flandrensibus datae sunt. A quibus et ipsi in siluis et latebris ubicumque inuenti sunt; Hoc animosiores eorum intuentes ualde indignati sunt; animosque resumentes arma sustulerunt, et multa pro ultione sui damna facientes in regem Henricum feraliter surrexerunt. Castrum Pagani filii Iohannis quod Caus dicitur c