Note 59 — PART II HISTORICAL STUDIES

This solution, of course, differs toto cælo from Mr Freeman's narrative. We have seen that he blindly accepted the statements of that 'abandoned flatterer', William of Poitiers (whom Orderic had here 'doubtless followed'59) —against whom he elsewhere warned us—and combined them with a miracle from William of Malmesbury, which he euhemerized in the style that he himself had ridiculed in Thierry.60 And as he could not harmonize the courtly version with the 'short but weighty account' in the Chronicle he cut the knot by dismissing the latter, and pronouncing his own version 'the most likely'.61