A carving on the prior’s doorway, Ely Cathedral.
A carving of an unknown man on the prior’s doorway, Ely Cathedral. Charles Dickens did not have much time for England’s Anglo-Saxon kings, except for Alfred (r. 871-899), King of Wessex. He was even more scathing of the Normans, and painted William of Normandy as little less than a dictator. That was not quite fair to the Conqueror himself, but some of his lieutenants, from his half-brother and regent Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, to his barons and many of the French clergymen appointed to take over England’s gentle abbeys, earned bitter resentment for their cruelty, ambition and blinkered arrogance. Not all of them were like that: see One Vast Heap of Booty.
Part 1 of 2
THE outlaws had, at this time [1071], what they called a Camp of Refuge, in the midst of the fens of Cambridgeshire. Protected by those marshy grounds which were difficult of approach, they lay among the reeds and rushes, and were hidden by the mists that rose up from the watery earth.
Now, there also was, at that time, over the sea in Flanders, an Englishman named Hereward, whose father had died in his absence, and whose property had been given to a Norman.* When he heard of this wrong that had been done him (from such of the exiled English as chanced to wander into that country), he longed for revenge; and joining the outlaws in their camp of refuge, became their commander. He was so good a soldier, that the Normans supposed him to be aided by enchantment.
* The earliest biography of him, from the early twelfth century, makes him eighteen in 1054. He is commonly presumed to have died fighting in 1072. The Domesday Book (1086) recorded that a certain Hereward had held land in southwest Lincolnshire as a tenant of Peterborough Abbey before the Conquest of 1066. Hereward’s nickname ‘the Wake’ is first recorded in the fourteenth century. Charles Kingsley’s last novel was entitled Hereward the Wake (1866).
Précis
By 1071, William the Conqueror had brought most of England to heel, but one Lincolnshire man, Hereward, was determined to fight on. He had seen his lands seized and given to one of William’s favourites, and in revenge Hereward joined a band of rebels in Ely, showing such skill as a warrior that he soon became their captain. (57 / 60 words)
Part Two
Ely Cathedral.
A view of Ely Cathedral from across the surrounding fens. The former Abbey is still sometimes referred to as ‘the ship of the fans’ thanks to its high position, apparently sailing on the flat countryside around it. The name that was even more evocative before the fenland was drained. After some initial experiments in the fifteenth century, that daunting task was taken in hand by Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden on the orders of King Charles I (1625-1649), though it required the steam pumps of the nineteenth century to complete it satisfactorily. In Hereward’s day, the Isle of Ely, surrounded by almost impassable marshland, was a perfect place for a hideout — unless frightened monks showed the king their secret ways.
WILLIAM, even after he had made a road three miles in length across the Cambridgeshire marshes, on purpose to attack this supposed enchanter, thought it necessary to engage an old lady, who pretended* to be a sorceress, to come and do a little enchantment in the royal cause. For this purpose she was pushed on before the troops in a wooden tower; but Hereward very soon disposed of this unfortunate sorceress, by burning her, tower and all.
The monks of the convent of Ely near at hand, however, who were fond of good living, and who found it very uncomfortable to have the country blockaded and their supplies of meat and drink cut off, showed the King a secret way of surprising the camp.* So Hereward was soon defeated, whether he afterwards died quietly, or whether he was killed after killing sixteen of the men who attacked him (as some old rhymes relate that he did), I cannot say. His defeat put an end to the Camp of Refuge; and, very soon afterwards, the King, victorious both in Scotland and in England, quelled the last rebellious English noble.
* Perhaps meant in the now rare sense of ‘claimed’, i.e. without any sense of deliberate deception.
* It was only some of the monks who betrayed Hereward; hitherto, the monks there and at Peterborough had actively helped them, only too aware that the new Norman abbots appointed by William behaved abominably to the English under their authority. At Malmesbury, Charlotte Yonge tells us, abbot Guerin de Lire “disinterred and threw away the bones of his Saxon predecessors, and took all the treasure in the coffers of the convent, in order that he might display his riches in the eyes of those who had seen him poor”. See also Forgotten Melodies.
Précis
William laid a makeshift road over Ely’s marshy fens and marched against Hereward, even recruiting a witch to counter Hereward’s supposedly sorcerous powers. Hereward slew William’s witch, and fought on dangerously; but treacherous monks at Ely Abbey showed the king how to come upon Hereward’s men unawares. With Hereward’s defeat, all meaningful resistance to the Conqueror ended. (57 / 60 words)
