Exiled Hereward

Hereward Wake , known in its time under the name of Hereward the Outlaw or Exiled Hereward the , was one of the chiefs of English resistance to the Conquête Norman of England at the 11th century but he was regarded as an outlaw as from 1055, when king Edouard declared it exiled. It is an English, of ascent angle more than saxonne and partially Danish origin, mainly on the maternal side. According to the history, its base of resistance is the island of Ely, in the area of the Fens, marshes which at the time bordered the counties of Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Norfolk. It is told that the nickname Wake would have been given to him by the people of many years after his death and would mean attentive the (in English: watchful ); however this explanation resembles a rationalization of the 19th century. Though the sources over this remote time are very difficult, it seems that its grounds came to him from a series of heritages in the Wake family on four generations. Wake thus could associate it with their own name. However, some think that the name comes to him from the family Wake, the Norman owners who seized his ground after his death, in order to create a family tie and, thus, to legitimate their claim on these grounds. Into old English, " Hereward" would mean “responsible soldiers literally”.

Life and legend

The birth of Hereward is dated, by convention, of 1035/1036 because of the Gesta Herewardi indicating that it was exiled for the first time in 1054 at the 18 years age. However, like the report of the Gesta of the first part of its exile " with the delà" Northumberland, in Scotland, Cornouailles and Ireland) touches at one period of the badly known history, we must consider that with reserves. Peter Rex, in the biography that it devoted to Hereward in 2005, precise that the campaigns in which it seems to have taken part, in Flanders and Zealand, must be started around 1063 and suggests that Hereward, in fact, would have gone directly in Flanders - what supposes that, if he were 18 years old at one time of his exile, he would have been born in 1044/1045. But Hereward was in Ireland when he learned the news from dead from his father in September 1057.

Partly because of the lack of certainty on its existence, its life became of a great attractivity for all the speculators and enquiring amateurs. The first references to its parentèle make the son of " of them; Leofric de Bourne" and of its Edith wife. Like any " Leofric de Boure" is not known, but that the manor of Bourne belonged to the county of Mercie at the time of the conquest, it was marked that Leofric, count de Mercie and his wife Lady Godiva would be truths parents of Hereward. It is not obvious - and abbot Brand of Peterborough, which one affirms that he would have been the uncle d' Hereward, does not seem to have been related to Leofric nor with Godiva. Several modern researchers suggest that it would have been Anglo-Danish, wire of Danish Asketil: since Brand is also a Danish name, it is possible that the abbot was the brother of Asketil. Whatever its chalk-lining, its combat belonged to the strategic regional fight between the Danes and the Normands for the control of the east of the England.

One supposes that the place of its birth is close to Bourne, in the Lincolnshire. It is told that he was a tenant of the abbey of Peterborough, of which he would have cultivated grounds in the parishes of Witham-one-tea-Hill and Barholme with Stow, in the south-east of Lincolnshire, and of the abbey of Croyland, with Crowland, eight miles in the east of Market Deeping, in the close marshes. In this time, it was a marshy area. The possessions of the abbeys being probably dispersed in several parishes, the precise localization of its personal possessions is dubious, but they are located certainly some share in the south of Lincolnshire.

It was supposed that Hereward had already rebelled against Edouard the Confessor before 1066, seeing England already aligning itself on the Norman ones, and that he had been declared outlaw on this occasion. It was advanced that at the time of the invasion of England by the Norman ones, it was to be in exile in Europe, working successfully as mercenary for the Count de Flandre, Baudouin V, and that he would then have returned to England to support the Anglo-Danish cause.

It is told that in 1070, the Danish king Sven Estridsen sent a small army to try to establish a camp on the island of Ely. This troop were joined per many inhabitants, of which Hereward. Its first act was the attack against the Abbaye of Peterborough and its bag in 1070, in company of buildings and Dane of Sven. It is affirmed that this bag would be due to its will to save the treasures and the relics of the abbey of the Norman ones.

In 1071, and many others support a seat despaired to him on the island of Ely against the army of the Conqueror. Several say that the Norman ones try a frontal attack, by building a long roadway out of wooden, but that this one would not have held under the weight of the armours and the horses. One tells that the Norman ones, probably carried out by one of the knights of Guillaume named Belasius (Belsar) were guided by the monks of the island on a sure route crossing the marshes, which enables them to seize Ely. It is said that Hereward escaped with several from his/her companions in the wild marshes and continued its resistance.

At the 15th century, the chronicle Gesta Herewardi , written by Ingulf de Croyland, tells that Hereward was forgiven by Guillaume.

Hereward in the popular culture

Several of the Légende S bearing on Hereward were later built-in the legends circulating about Robin of Wood.
the novel of Charles Kingsley appeared in 1865 is a highly romantic account of the exploits of Hereward and fact of him of wire of Leofric, count de Mercie.
Jack Trevor Story wrote a dramatized long life of Hereward for one of the directories for the boys of Tom Boardman.
a series TV of 16 episodes entitled Hereward the Wake was carried out in 1965, starting from the novel of Kingsley.
Cold Heart, Cruel Hand: With Novell off Hereward the Wake (2004) is a novel of Laurence J. Brown.
An Endless Exiles (2004), of Mary Lancaster, is a Historical novel based on the life of Hereward.
the rock group Pink Floyd refers to Hereward in the tube " Let There Be More Light" (1968), in which a psychedelic vision of Mildenhall reveals " the alive heart of Hereward Wake". It also appears in lyric tube of 1968 Darkness of Van der Graaf Generator. It is, the same, the subject of the tube " Rebel off the Marshlands" , composed by the rock group Forefather, in their album Ours is the Kingdom in 2005.
Hereward Wake gave its name to the radio station of Peterborough: Hereward FM.
There exists a long pedestrian path in the marshes of the county of Cambridge of Peterborough to Ely, called the " Hereward" sees;.
" Hereward" is the currency of the men of the n°2 group of RAF. They are based with Marham, with Norfolk and their peak comprises a Wake node.

See too

Robin of Wood

Sources

Peter Rex, Hereward: The Last Englishman , Tempus Books, 2005
Peter Rex, The English Resistance: The Underground War Against the Normans
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

Fiction

Mary Lancaster, An Endless Exiles , 2004
Henry Treece, Man With has Sword , 1962
Charles Kingsley, Hereward the Wake , 1865

External bonds

Text '' of Gestis Herwardi Incliti Militis '' - Latin and English.
an academic article of 1994 - Documentary English
of the BBC on Hereward - English

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