Hereward the Wake

A towering figure in the resistance to the Norman invasion and occupation of Anglo-Saxon England, according to legend he roamed the Fens, covering North Cambridgeshire, Southern Lincolnshire and West Norfolk, meting out cruel vengeance on any stray Norman who had the misfortune to fall into his power.

An artist's depiction of Hereward the Wake in battle against the hated Normans

Hereward is an Old English name, composed of the elements here, "army" and ward "guard" (cognate with the Old High German name Heriwart).  The epithet "the Wake" is recorded in the late 14th century and may mean "the watchful", or derive from the Anglo-Norman Wake family who later claimed descent from him.

Some modern research suggests him to have been Anglo-Danish with a Danish father, Asketil.  Since Brand is also a Danish name, and his uncle was said to be Abbot Brand of Peterborough, 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.

The Domesday Book shows that a man named Hereward held lands in the parishes of Witham on the Hill and Barholm with Stow in the southwestern 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, 8 miles (13 km) east of Market Deeping in the neighboring fenland. In those times it was a boggy and marshy area.

According to the Gesta Herewardi, Hereward was exiled at the age of eighteen for disobedience to his father and disruptive behaviour, which caused problems among the local community. He was declared an outlaw by Edward the Confessor. The Gesta tells various stories of his supposed adventures as a young man while in exile in Cornwall, Ireland and Flanders. These include a fight with an enormous bear, and the rescue of a Cornish princess from an unwanted marriage. Many historians consider these tales to be largely fictions, yet who can gainsay that any red blooded man would turn down the opportunity to fight an "enormous bear," or save a Cornish princess? 

 Having arrived in Flanders he joined an expedition against "Scaldemariland" (probably islands in Scheldt estuary). Historian Elizabeth van Houts considers this aspect of the story to be consistent with evidence concerning expeditions led by Robert the Frisian on behalf of his father Baldwin V, Count of Flanders in the early 1060s.  

At the time of the Norman conquest of England, he was still in exile in Europe, working as a successful mercenary for Baldwin V. According to the Gesta he took part in tournaments in Cambrai.   At some point in his exile Hereward is said to have married Turfrida, a Gallo-Germanic woman from a wealthy family in Saint-Omer.   She is said in the Gesta to have fallen in love with him before she met him, having heard of his heroic exploits.  In order to legally marry him, Turfida had the Cornish princess drawn and quartered (Ok, maybe I made that last part up).

The Gesta Herwardi says Hereward returned to England a few days after the death of Count Baldwin V of Flanders, who died on 1 September 1067.  The Gesta says that he discovered that his family's lands had been taken over by the Normans and his brother killed with his head then placed on a spike at the gate to his house. Hereward took revenge on the Normans who killed his brother while they were ridiculing the English at a drunken feast. He allegedly killed fifteen of them with the assistance of one helper.

The Norman nobleman Frederick de Warenne (note the last name, which is the Norman/French spelling, but which today is now the quintessentially English name of Warren), swore to kill Hereward, but Hereward outwitted him and killed him instead. Since Hereward's killing of Frederick is also attested in the independent Hyde Chronicle, this event is regarded as "almost certainly" true.  Later, during the 1071 rebellion against the Normans led by The Wake, Frederick's brother William de Warenne showed a special desire to hunt down Hereward, who had killed his brother-in-law Frederick the year before.   Hereward is supposed to have unhorsed him with an arrow shot.

                             Hereward rallies his men

In 1069 or 1070 the Danish king Sweyn Estrithson sent a small army to try to establish a camp on the Isle of Ely. Hereward appears to have joined them. Hereward stormed and sacked Peterborough Abbey in company with local men and Sweyn's Danes. Sacking abbeys was just so much fun back in the day.

Hereward's justification is said to have been that he wished to save the Abbey's treasures and relics from the rapacious Normans led by the new Norman abbot, who had unjustly ousted his uncle Brand from that position. And to keep them for himself, to fund his war against the Normans, of course.  Plus all that glittery gold was extremely pleasing to Turfrida, naturally, which made her happy she'd married The Wake.

Hereward was then joined by a small army led by Morcar, the Saxon former Earl of Northumbria who had been ousted by William. William sent an army to deal with the rebels. In 1071, Hereward and Morcar were forced to retreat to their stronghold and 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 armor and horses. The Normans then tried to intimidate the English with a witch, who cursed them from a wooden tower, but Hereward managed to set a fire that toppled the tower with the witch in it.  

Burn her!! A fitting end for a witch.

Morcar was taken and imprisoned by the foul Normans, but Hereward is said to have escaped with some of his followers into the wild fenland and to have continued his resistance. Note to self: always have a wild fenland to escape into when you are fighting Normans.  This escape is noted in all the earliest surviving sources.

                    Norman/English fighting in the Fens.

The author of the Gesta, writing no more than fifty years after William's assault on Ely, tells us on the one hand that he remembers seeing fishermen dredging Norman skeletons, still in their rusty armour, out of the fen.

The story of his later life is clouded, but he may have been pardoned by Guillaume le Conquérant, although give William's temperament, this seems unlikely.

Hereward's legend yet lives on among the English, lo these many hundreds of years later.

Behold the HMS Hereward.

HMS Hereward, named after Hereward the Wake, was an H-class destroyer built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1930s. She was assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet before and the ship spent four months during the Spanish Civil War in mid-1937 in Spanish waters, enforcing the arms blockade imposed by Britain and France on both sides of the conflict. When the Second World War began in September 1939, the ship was in the Mediterranean, but was shortly transferred to the South Atlantic Command to hunt for German commerce raiders and blockade runners, capturing one of the latter in November. Hereward was transferred to the Home Fleet in May 1940 and rescued Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands after the Germans had invaded.

The ship was transferred back to the Mediterranean Fleet later that month, and escorted convoys to Malta as well as escorting the larger ships of the fleet. She sank an Italian submarine in December before sinking the Italian torpedo boat Vega the following month. Hereward participated in the Battle of Cape Matapan in March 1941 and helped to evacuate Allied troops from Greece in April. In May the ship sank several small ships of a German convoy attempting to land troops on Crete. Later that month, she was bombed and sunk by German dive bombers as she was evacuating Allied troops from Crete.