Introduction
After seizing King Harold’s crown at Hastings in 1066, William of Normandy had to face a series of challengers from among the English and their friends in Ireland and Scotland. William crushed the revolt of Harold’s sons Edmund and Godwin, visited slaughter and burning on Durham, bought off the Danes and the Earls Edwin and Morcar — and left one man to lead the rebels in a last desperate stand.
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. (58 / 60 words)
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.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: about, because, besides, if, or, otherwise, since, whether.
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