identifies himself in his poem Van den Vos Reinaerde as "Willem die Madoc maecte" (Willem, the author of Madoc, known as "Willem the Minstrel"). Though no copies of "Madoc" survive, Gwyn Williams tells us that "In the seventeenth century a fragment of a reputed copy of the work is said to have been found in Poitiers". It provides no topographical details relating to North America, but mentions a sea that may be the Sargasso Sea and says that Madoc (not related to Owain in the fragment according to Gwyn Williams) discovered an island paradise, where he intended "to launch a new kingdom of love and music". There are also claims that the Welsh poet and genealogist Gutun Owain wrote about Madoc before 1492. Gwyn Williams in Madoc, the Making of a Myth, makes it clear that Madoc is not mentioned in any of Owain's surviving manuscripts. The Madoc legend attained its greatest prominence during the Elizabethan era, when Welsh and English writers used it to bolster British claims in the New World versus those of Spain. The earliest surviving full account of Madoc's voyage, the first to make the claim that Madoc had come to America before Columbus, appears in Humphrey Llwyd's Cronica Walliae (published in 1559), an English adaptation of the Brut y Tywysogion. John Dee used Llwyd's manuscript when he submitted the treatise "Title Royal" to Queen Elizabeth in 1580, which stated that "The Lord Madoc, sonne to Owen Gwynned, Prince of Gwynedd, led a Colonie and inhabited in Terra Florida or thereabouts" in 1170. The story was first published by George Peckham's as A True Report of the late Discoveries of the Newfound Landes (1583), and like Dee it was used to support English claims to the Americas. It was picked up in David Powel's Historie of Cambria (1584), and Richard Hakluyt's The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589). Dee went so far as to assert that Brutus of Troy and King Arthur as well as Madoc had conquered lands in the Americas and therefore their heir Elizabeth I of England had a priority claim there. Thomas Herbert popularised the stories told by Dee and Powel, adding more detail from sources unknown, suggesting that Madoc may have landed in Canada, Florida, or even Mexico, and reporting that Mexican sources stated that they used currachs. The "Welsh Indians" were not claimed until later. Morgan