Hereward The Wake - Life and Legend

Life and Legend

Hereward's birth is conventionally dated as 1035/6 because the Gesta Herewardi indicates that he was first exiled in 1054 in his 18th year. However, since the account in the Gesta of the early part of his exile (in Scotland, Cornwall and Ireland) contains fantastic elements which suggest it is largely fictitious, it is hard to know if we can trust this. Peter Rex, in his 2005 biography of Hereward, points out that the campaigns he is reported to have fought in the neighbourhood of Flanders seem to have begun around 1063, and suggests that Hereward in fact went to Flanders - meaning that, if he was 18 at the time of his exile, he was born in 1044/5. But this would be based on the assumption that the early part of the story is largely fictitious.

Partly because of the sketchiness of evidence for his existence, his life has become a magnet for speculators and amateur scholars. The earliest references to his parentage, in the Gesta, make him the son of Edith, a descendent of Oslac of York, and Leofric of Bourne, nephew of Ralph the Staller. Alternatively, it has also been argued that Leofric, Earl of Mercia and his wife Lady Godiva were Hereward's real parents. There is no evidence for this, and Abbot Brand of Peterborough, stated to have been Hereward's uncle, does not appear to have been related to either Leofric or Godiva. It is improbable that if Hereward were a member of this prominent family, his parentage would not be a matter of record. Some modern research suggests him to have been Anglo-Danish with a Danish father, Asketil: since Brand is also a Danish name it makes sense that the Abbot may have been Asketil's brother. Hereward's apparent ability to call on Danish support may also support this theory.

His place of birth is supposed to be in or near Bourne in Lincolnshire. Domesday Book shows that a man named Hereward held lands in the parishes of Witham on the Hill and Barholm with Stow in the south-western corner of Lincolnshire as a tenant of Peterborough Abbey; prior to his exile, Hereward had also held lands as a tenant of Croyland Abbey at Crowland, eight miles east of Market Deeping in the neighbouring fenland. In those times it used to be a boggy and marshy area. Since the holdings of abbeys could be widely dispersed across parishes, the precise location of his personal holdings are uncertain, but were certainly somewhere in south Lincolnshire.

According to the Gesta Herewardi, Hereward was exiled at the age of eighteen for disobedience to his father and disruptive behaviour, and he was declared an outlaw by Edward the Confessor. It has been suggested that, at the time of the Norman invasion of England, he was in exile in Europe, working as a successful mercenary for the Count of Flanders, Baldwin V, and that he then returned to England.

In 1069 or 1070 the Danish king Sweyn Estrithson sent a small army to try to establish a camp on the Isle of Ely. They were joined by many, including Hereward. His first act was to storm and sack Peterborough Abbey in 1070, in company with local men and Swein's Danes: his justification is said to have been that he wished to save the Abbey's treasures and relics from the Normans.

In 1071, Hereward and many others made a desperate stand on the Isle of Ely against the Conqueror's rule. Both the Gesta Herewardi and the Liber Eliensis claim that the Normans made a frontal assault, aided by a huge, mile-long, timber causeway, but that this sank under the weight of armour and horses. It is said that the Normans, probably led by one of William's knights named Belasius (Belsar), then bribed the monks of the island to reveal a safe route across the marshes, resulting in Ely's capture. Hereward is said to have escaped with some of his followers into the wild fenland and to have continued his resistance.

There is extant evidence for an ancient earthwork south of Aldreth at the junction of the old fen causeway and Iram Drove. This circular feature, known as Belsar's Hill, is a potential site for a fort, built by William, from which to attack Ely and Hereward. There were perhaps as few as four causeways onto the Isle itself, with this being the southerly route from London and the likely route of William's army. In Kingsley's 1865 Hereward the Wake, the name of the knight who bribed the monks to gain access to the isle is given as Belasius, and the feature is noted in Lysons' Magna Britannia (1808 vol2, pt1, Cambridgeshire).

There are conflicting accounts about Hereward's life after the fall of Ely. The twelfth-century Gesta Herewardi (of unknown authorship; first published by Thomas Wright in 1839 and translated by W. Sweeting for the 1895 edition), says Hereward was eventually pardoned by William and lived the rest of his life in relative peace. Geoffrey Gaimar, in his Estoire des Engleis, says instead that Hereward lived for some time as an outlaw in the Fens, but that as he was on the verge of making peace with William, he was set upon and killed by a group of Norman knights. It is possible that Hereward received no such pardon and went into exile never to be heard from again; this was in fact the fate of many prominent Englishmen after the Conquest.