History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 51

country which is situated nearest to the sea of the Britons, the whole region
having been reduced to disorder, and bearing no produce, owing to the sand cast
into the land by the sea. At last, when they could get no space to inhabit, as the
sea had poured over the maritime land, and the mountains were full of people . . .
so that nation craved of King Henry and besought him to assign a place where
they might dwell. And then they were sent into Rhos, expelling from thence the
proprietary inhabitants, who thus lost their own country and place from that time
'til the present day.
(Giraldus Cambrensis, Itinerary, Book I, Chapter II)
The inhabitants of this province who derived their origin from Flanders were sent
to live in these parts by Henry I, King of the English; they are a people brave and
robust, and ever most hostile to the Welsh with whom they wage war; a people, I
say, most skilled in commerce and woollen manufactures; a people eager to seek
gain by land or sea in spite of difficulty or danger; a hardy race equally ready for
the plough or the sword; a people happy and brave if Wales, as it should be, had
been dear to the heart of its kings, and not so often experienced the vindictive
resentment and ill treatment of its rulers.
Extracted from “A Source-Book of Welsh History”, p.67-68 by Mary Salmon, M.A., Oxford
Univ. Press 1927.

England:
...Before Caesar's conquest of Britain, there were Low Dutch people who had
immigrated into Britain from Flanders, because of floods. The Frisians conducted
most of Britain's import and export trade before the invasions of the Anglo-Saxons
in the fifth and sixth centuries. In the eighth century, England was a centre of
learning. Some missionaries, like Willibrod and Boniface, worked among the
Frislans. Then in the ninth and tenth centuries, the learned people of England Alcuin among them - were driven by the attacks of the Danes to the Continent. In
the latter half of the tenth century, the foreign trade of London laid the foundations
of its future commercial greatness. Because of its relations with the merchants of
the Dutch towns of Tiel and Dordrecht - the greatest commercial centres of that time
- England's prosperity increased.
Following the Norman Conquest, there came many Flemish weavers who had a
large share in the development of England. Dutch immigrants started sheepfarming, which was to contribute so much to England's early greatness. The
Flemish type of industrial organisation inspired the formation of the English guilds of
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the twelfth century Dutch merchants had their
own private wharves in London and were members of the Guildhall. At the time of
the Conquest, many Anglo-Saxon refugees settled in the Low Countries. Time and
again, Dutch soldiers have fought on English soil, where some of their descendants
now are. In 1165, for example, Henry II fought the Welsh with Flemish and Brabant
troops.
http://pacificcoast.net/~deboo/flemi...igrations.html

51