By rewriting Eusebius–Jerome's and Sigebert's chronicle, Robert processed the Galfridian, early English and Norman pasts in the light of Henry II's royal accession. At the same time, Eusebius–Jerome's and Sigebert's chronicle articulated a specific politics of time, presenting universal history as the framework for contextualising the ebb and flow of empires. Henry II's coronation in 1154 inaugurated a new political season for Normandy and England. His actions as king led to the emergence of the so-called Angevin empire, a conglomerate of territorial principalities that included England, Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Poitou, Aquitaine, Brittany, Wales and part of Ireland. However, in its current use, ‘Angevin empire’ identifies a historiographical construct rather than a political entity institutionally aware of its imperial character. Nonetheless, historians such as John Gillingham and Martin Aurell agree on the utility of the concept of the Angevin empire to describe the aggregation of principalities acquired by Henry II. More recently, Fanny Madeline has shown the pervasiveness of discourses of empire as hegemony to describe the power of Anglo-Norman and Angevin kings. Because of his privileged relationship with Empress Matilda and Henry II, Robert was a close witness to the realisation of this political design. For this reason, this chapter will look at how Robert recorded contemporary events. From c. 1156 the Chronography turned into a work in progress that Robert updated and revised throughout his life. The erasures, revisions and changes of hand in Avranches, Bibliothèque patrimoniale, MS 159 can illuminate the complicated process of writing after Robert's abbatial appointment at Mont-Saint-Michel.

The avenue of Protest was also open to other interested parties to use as a first step towards obtaining compensation or averting blame from themselves for what they perceived as commercial fraud or breaking of a commercial agreement on the part of the captain. Supercargoes, agents, owners and citizens all recorded their grievances at Malacca. While the Protests in this section consistently spring from economic roots, two of them also concern the important role of supercargoes and commanders (in this case Supercargo De Vos and Captain Allan) as carriers of official letters.

The Protests (ten cases in chronological order)

On 21 April 1791 Jacob van Kal and his company protested (in Dutch) against the losses suffered through the late arrival of cargo that had been contracted by James Scott of Penang to be delivered by Captain Stewart of the Swift. The cargo, at least 1,000 piculs of red arrack, had deteriorated, as it should have been delivered by the end of February that year. At this stage of his life, van Kal (1754–1829) was a prominent member of the Dutch burgher community in Malacca, holding the positions of secretary of police and tax collector. He was brother-in-law to Governor Abraham Couperus with whom he was in business and in 1792 was appointed Resident of Riau.

In Protests of 10 and 11 January 17984 Amirzan Zachariah, a Calcutta merchant ‘now residing at Mallacca’, declared in an English statement that he had loaded on board the ship Armenia nine chests of spices, including cinnamon and nutmeg, but that the captain, John Sands, had not stood by the agreed price, had refused to sign the bill of lading and had sailed away before concluding the business.

Enchanted ships, magical invisibility, mysterious requirements, oaths of faithfulness in love: in this passage from the Middle English Partonope of Blois, the fairy lady touches upon many of the characteristics that made ‘faerie’ a subject of enduring fascination in medieval romance. Fairy lovers and the alluring otherworld are ubiquitous across the romance corpus, and many of the most compelling supernaturally powerful female characters in Middle English are associated with faerie. These texts are situated at the richly overlapping intersection of myth, folklore, and courtly tradition, with motifs and patterns that outlived them, echoed in the narrative structures of folk and fairy tales from the early modern period into contemporary popular literary imagination. Fairy lovers in romance also occupy narrative space through their unusual financial, sexual, legal, and personal authority. This space invokes subversive desire and creates a dialogue across time – like the narratives’ protagonists and original readers, modern audiences too find these texts enjoyable, desirable. The persistent popularity of these texts signals a medieval openness toward, and interest in, stories that play with, invert, and destabilise norms of gender and power.