Arthur
and his Knights are, as we have discovered, surrounded by myth and folklore,
but they are far from the only ones in British history that have, thanks to the
passage of time, become something of a legend. There is another, equally
fascinating character that I think will also spark your interest. You may, or
may not, have heard of him, but his story is certainly worth taking the time to
hear. His name is Hereward and he led the most extraordinary life. However, I
am not the one to tell you about him. I have invited historian David AC Maile
on to the blog today, to tell you about "England's 1st identifiable defender
of civil rights."
The many
guises of folklore legend Hereward the Wake have blurred the fact that he is a
historical figure – even the appellation ‘the Wake’ (the alert/ the ever
watchful over his folk) is said to be a much later invention – yet we can
identify his existence from entries in the Anglo
Saxon Chronicle and Domesday Book,
the two most reliable sources of the age.
Hereward’s
claim to fame came as a rebel leader when, armed with a multitude of dissidents,
peasants and refugees, he made his stand at Ely against the might of William
the Conqueror. The English Crown may have fallen at the Battle of Hastings in
1066 but five years later the impenetrable Isle of Ely in the East Anglian
Fenlands was refusing to yield to the ‘Norman Yoke’.
Before the drainage of the
Fens began in the 17th Century Ely was an island and the surrounding
fenland gave it a natural defensive network of flowing rivers, great meres, swamp
and bogs and vast swathes of reed beds and Willow trees. Not the kind of
terrain that William’s armour-clad knights on horseback could comfortably
traverse.
The Gesta Herwardi, written in the early 12th
Century, describes Hereward as a handsome, muscular, troublesome youth, who was
exiled from England at the age of 18 and was from that time on known as ‘The
Outlaw’.
Recent
studies have shed light on his career as a mercenary soldier in Flanders from
where it is said he returned around the late summer of 1067 to claim his inheritance
after learning of his father’s death.
Over the
ensuing three years insurrection broke out across the country - Dover, Exeter,
Hereford, Warwick, Durham, York, and Chester and many others were, for the most
part, savagely and mercilessly beaten-down and quashed - with thousands upon thousands
slaughtered or left to perish in the devastation and ethnic-cleansing that came
to be known as the ‘Harrying of the North’.
In 1070 the
prelate Lanfranc of Bec came to England and William appointed him Archbishop of
Canterbury. Lanfranc immediately set about revamping the English Church. Many Monasteries
and Abbey’s experienced English clergy being replaced by French. William had
imposed a new governing elite with new laws, a new language and a new Church. Very
few English retained their title and land, most were in servitude.
Hereward, it
appears, took exception to this. He was one of many dispossessed landholders and
had close ties with Crowland and Peterborough Abbeys.
'And all the folk of the Fenlands came to them thinking they would win all the land.' - Anglo-Saxon Chonicle
On June 2nd
1070, in response to the news that a Norman Abbot named Turold was about to
take over, Hereward ‘and his band’ ransacked Peterborough with a Danish
‘Viking’ host led by Earl Osborne and Bishop Christian of Aarhus. They stole
gold and silver of great value from a monastery known as the ‘Golden Borough’
because it rivalled Glastonbury and Ely in wealth. They then made their way to
the Isle of Ely apparently on the invitation of Abbot Thurstan who feared the
same fate for Ely.
‘they did all manner of
evil things’ - The Peterborough Chronicle of Hugh
Candidus.
All the participating
rebels were subsequently excommunicated by the Church. To the fanatically pious
English Churchmen of the time – where everything that happened, happened by
God’s will – Hereward’s raid on Peterborough Abbey was likely viewed as the
work of the devil-incarnate.
The Danes
however soon left with much of the loot, some say bought off by William. Hereward
was then joined by a number of prominent English nobles. The Earls of the great
northern provinces of Mercia and Northumberland, Edwin and Morcar - who had
escaped house arrest under William and ‘fled through woods and fields’- reinforced
by the northern land magnate Siward Barn, with the powerful Bishop Athelwine of
Durham and ‘many hundreds of men with them’ who fared into Ely by ship.
Overall a protracted
guerrilla war was fought lasting about a year or so. Hereward is reported to
have disguised himself as a fisherman and as a potter in order to spy on
William and his army and led countless assaults and forays into the Norman
camps that surrounded the Isle. He and his men frequently raided deep into
Norfolk no doubt employing shock and awe tactics on Norman and collaborator
alike. Burwell was scorched in the process and battles are said to have ensued
at Reach, Stuntney and Aldreth. It is supposed that the highly esteemed Norman
Sheriff William Malet lost his life fighting against Hereward at Ely. This was
a fearsome force of men at large in defiance of the ‘oppressions and
humiliations suffered by the English’, as later described by Orderic Vitalis.
Whether in
desperation or belief, William even employed the services of a witch to cast a
spell upon the defendants of Ely, but Hereward and his men burned down the
raised platform she stood upon and she fell and broke her neck. William then built
a long causeway to try and gain access to the Isle but Hereward and his men
fired the combustible peat fen destroying the wooden causeway and routing the
heavily armoured Norman knights. Reports
of Norman skeletons in their chain-mail being dug out of the surrounding fen
were recorded over a hundred years later.
‘he bravely led them
out’ - Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
Ely eventually
capitulated sometime in the summer of 1071. The Gesta Herwardi states
that Abbot Thurstan, who had lost much of Ely’s land to William as punishment,
sought to come to terms. William’s army were led through a secret pathway by
some monks and the game was up. Hereward and many of his followers are reported
to have fled - and it is at this point that history becomes blurred and legend comes
more sharply into focus.
‘Last of the English!’
800 years
after the Battle of Hastings in 1866 the novelist Charles Kingsley published
the romantic epic, ‘Hereward the Wake’
– subtitled ‘Last of the English!’ The book about a patriotic
hero was unleashed on a Victorian public weaned on the historical novels of Sir
Walter Scott and it immediately became staple diet for children of all ages. The
popularity of this book, which has never been out of print, is the major reason
why we remember Hereward today.
Arguments
ensue about Hereward’s parentage, descent and his social standing. He has been
represented as a champion and a patriot and in children’s books has even met
the likes of Dr Who and Catweazle! Recent years have seen a ‘new wave’ of
Herewardista’s rise up in the literary world. The works of Paul Kingsnorth,
James Wilde, Stewart Binns, James Aitcheson and others has rekindled an
interest in Hereward just as it began to fade from the lore of the local folk
across the Fenlands - whilst historical research from Professor Elizabeth van
Houts from Cambridge University and others has uncovered much evidence to
substantiate the writings of 12th Century monks, which were once
considered unreliable.
If you are
new to Hereward there are a whole host of novels to explore. The benchmark will
forever be Charles Kingsley’s Hereward
the Wake - but in recent years a new wave of ‘Herewardista’s’ have emerged,
proving to be the vanguard of the attack to re-launch Hereward into popular
culture!
Author
Stewart Binns draws parallels between Hereward and William Wallace when talking
about his book Conquest in an
interview on Youtube.
The storyline is told by a certain
Godwin of Ely on his deathbed in the heart of the capital of the Byzantine
Empire, Constantinople. Godwin relates to his listeners how Hereward fights at
the Battle of Hastings and gets crushed by a horse at the very moment King Harold
comes under attack, leaving Hereward’s followers with a dilemma of who to help
first. Hereward’s plight fostering Harold’s death foreshadows the calamity of
the English resistance that was to follow. The vivid images regaled by Stewart
throughout bear testimony to his work as a television documentary producer.
James
Aitcheson’s Knights of the Hawk is
told from the point of view of Tancred, a Norman Knight, who becomes
instrumental in the victory over the English at Ely in the Autumn of 1071.
Where Binns has Hereward travelling far and wide Aitcheson’s Hereward becomes a
target in the marsh. ‘Destroy him and many of the others will lose belief’,
exclaims Tancred to his fellow knights as the hunt for Hereward’s head begins.
Aitcheson’s angle as the English as ‘the other’ makes for a refreshing read and
his knowledge on Anglo-Norman England is clearly evident.
If there is
one person who should take the larger slice of the credit for significantly
bringing Hereward out of shadowy obscurity and into the glimmering light of the
public eye during the course of this decade it has to be the charismatic ‘man
of Mercia’, James Wilde. In true Hereward style as a man of many guises James
Wilde is the pen name of author, BBC screenwriter and journalist Mark
Chadbourne. Perhaps the key to James’ success with Hereward has been in the
planning of a whole series, as well as a number of off-shoots. This has given
the Hereward story the time and space to evolve and develop more fully in the
reader’s imagination. Accompanied by the most defining image of Hereward since
Henry Courtney Selous illustrated Kingsley’s epic in 1870, Wilde releases his
sixth instalment of the saga The Bloody
Crown in July. 
As works of
art go, Paul Kingsnorth’s The Wake takes
some beating, as proven by being the winner of the Gordon Burn Prize in 2014 and The
Bookseller Industry ‘Book of the
Year’ award. It has been heralded far and wide as ‘a literary triumph’ for
Kingsnorth writes his offering in what he calls ‘a shadow tongue’, a language
‘intended to convey the feeling’ of Old English through borrowed vocabulary and
syntax. As a paradox to the merits of the novel ‘fuccan’ ‘scit’ were my two
favourite words invented by Kingsnorth,
although his use of the disputed appellation ‘the Wake’ met with my
admiration the most. Based in the Fens you can feel the damp rising through
your bones as you read this masterpiece.
I am in the
process of setting up a community project, the ‘WakeHereward’ Project, in order
to raise the profile of the ‘forgotten hero’ of the Fenlands. Please visit my
Twitter page for further information @WakeHereward
Reference
The images of Hereward are by Henry Courtney Selous (1870).
