Hereward the Wake
Hereward the Wake, known in his own times as
Hereward the Outlaw or
Hereward the Exile, was an
11th century leader in England who led resistance to the
Norman Conquest, and was consequently labelled an
outlaw. He was English (probably Anglo-Danish as his name is Danish). According to legend, Hereward's base was the
Isle of Ely and he roamed the surrounding
fenlands of what is now
Lincolnshire, leading popular opposition to
William the Conqueror. It is said that the title
the Wake was popularly assigned to him many years after his death and is believed to mean
the watchful.
Partly because of the sketchiness of evidence for his existence, his life has become a magnet for speculators and amateur scholars. In legend and story he is described as the son of
Leofric, Earl of Mercia, but there is no evidence for this. Some modern research suggests him to have been Anglo-Danish with a Danish father, Asketil. Whatever his lineage, his fight was part of the strategic regional struggle between the Danes and Normans for control of the eastern parts of England.
His place of birth is supposed to be in or near
Bourne in Lincolnshire. It is claimed that he was a tenant of
Peterborough Abbey, from which he held lands in the parishes of
Witham-on-the-Hill and
Barholme with Stow in the south-western corner of
Lincolnshire, and of
Croyland Abbey near
Rippingale in the neighbouring fenland. 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.
It is thought that he had already before
1066 rebelled under
Edward the Confessor, whom he saw as already aligning England with the Normans, and that he was declared an outlaw as a result. 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, and that he then returned to England to assert an Anglo-Danish vision of its future.
It is claimed that in 1069 or 1070 the Danish king
Swein 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.
The next year he and many others made a desperate stand on the Isle of Ely against the Conqueror's rule. Some say 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.
The
15th century chronicle,
Gesta Herewardi, by
Ingulf of Croyland, says Hereward was eventually pardoned by William.
*Some of the
legends about Hereward were incorporated into later legends about
Robin Hood.
*
Charles Kingsley's novel of 1865 is a highly-romanticised account of Hereward's exploits, and makes him the son of
Earl Leofric of
Mercia.
*
Jack Trevor Story wrote a long dramatised life of Hereward for one of Tom Boardman's boys' annuals.
*There was a 16-episode TV series made in 1965, titled
Hereward the Wake.
Cold Heart, Cruel Hand: A novel of Hereward the Wake (2004) is novel by Laurence J Brown.
An Endless Exile (2004), by Mary Lancaster, is a historical novel based on Hereward's life.
*The rock band
Pink Floyd referred to Hereward in the track "Let There Be More Light" (1968); in which a psychedelic vision of
Mildenhall reveals 'The living soul of Hereward the Wake'. He also appears in the lyrics of the 1968 track
Darkness by
Van der Graaf Generator. He is also the subject of the track "Rebel of the Marshlands" by rock band
Forefather, in their 2005 album
Ours is the Kingdom.
Hereward the Wake gives his name to the
Peterborough radio station
Hereward FM.
There is a long-distance footpath through the Cambridgeshire fenland from
Peterborough to
Ely, called
the Hereward Way.
Hereward is believed to be the son of
Earl Leofric of Mercia and his wife
Lady Godiva.
The Wakes of Bourne
There is an English family with the surname of Wake and a baronetcy (hereditary knighthood). The family of Wake held Bourne in the 13th century. The heir apparent to the baronetcy is traditionally called Hereward, and is therefore known as Sir Hereward Wake when he succeeds.
It is possible that the Wake family may have created a spurious connection to Hereward, in order to retain claim to his lands, but there is no reason to think so. Hereward's great-great-granddaughter, Emma, married Hugh Wake. She was heiress to some of what had been Hereward's father's property. Thus it, including Bourne, came into the Wake family, which seems to have wished later to claim him as an ancestor, as indeed he was. Bourne itself, however, passed to
the Crown in the person of
Richard II after
Margaret Wake married
Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent.
The earlier names in the family tree are Anglo-Flemish and Anglo-Norman so they are found in several forms.
*
Robin Hood*
Fulk FitzWarin*
Hereward FMHereward: The Last Englishman, by Peter Rex, Publisher: Tempus Books, ISBN 0752433180 , (2005)
The English Resistance: The Underground War Against the Normans, Peter Rex, ISBN 0752428276 - chapters 8, 9 and 10 contains new data on his family.
*http://www.thepeerage.com/p7376.htm
*http://www.aemyers.net/genealogy/d0019/g0000004.html
*http://mariah.stonemarche.org/famfiles/fam02499.htm
*http://www.worldroots.com/cgi-bin/gasteldb?@I28941@
*http://home.comcast.net/~barbara7905/fam/fam05649.html
*http://www.kcl.ac.uk/lhcma/locreg/WAKE1.html
An Endless Exile, by Mary Lancaster,
2004. Paperback ISBN 1843192721, eBook ISBN 1843191253
Man With a Sword, by
Henry Treece (not strictly factual),
1962. This is written as a fiction
book not as a factual one.
Hereward the Wake, by Charles Kingsley (see below for text from Project Guttenburg).
*Charles Kingsley,
Free ebook of Hereward, the Last of the English at Project Gutenberg (1865).
*
Lincolnshire Web's Hereward page, summarising
an academic article from 1994.
*
BBC documentary on Hereward (streaming audio).
