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 Here we have at the outset a notable discrepancy. The insertion in G. R.3 tells us that the names of the missionaries sent by Pope Eleutherus to K. Lucius are lost in the mists of antiquity. But in the De Antiquitate their names are given as Phagan and Deruvian, on the authority of the Charter of St Patrick and the Gesta Britannorum. Two alternative explanations of this discrepancy are open to us. We may suppose that William of Malmesbury came to mistrust the Charter of St Patrick which had been shown him at Glastonbury, and on second thoughts rejected its evidence altogether. Or we may suppose that the statement that the names of the missionaries were unknown is what he really wrote in the De Antiquitate; and that the Charter of St Patrick with all the information derived from it, was a later invention foisted into the original work.

Now William of Malmesbury does not elsewhere in his historical works refer to the mission sent by Eleutherus at the request of K. Lucius. He found it, of course, in the Chronicle (under A.D. 167),