Hereward the Wake, etc

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HEEEWAED THE WAKE 'LAST OF THE ENGLISH' HEEEWAED THE WAKE 'LAST OF THE ENGLISH' BY CHARLES KINGSLEY XL. ILonion MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW TOEK 1890 'll rights reserzied First Edition (2 vols. Crown 8vo) 1866 New Edition (i vol. Crown 8vo) 1873. Reprinted 1874, 1875, January and December i833, 1884, 1886, 1887 New Edition (1 vol. Crown 8vo) 1889. Reprinted January and August 1890 Eversley Edition (2 vols. Globe 8vo) 1881. Reprinted 1890 Sixpenny Edition (Medium 8vo) 1890 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh. TO THOMAS WRIGHT, Esq., F.S.A., etc. etc. My deae Weight, Thus does Hereward, the hero of your youth, reappear at last in a guise fitted for a modern drawing-room. To you is due whatever new renown he may win for himself in that new field. You first disinterred him, long ago, when scarcely a hand or foot of him was left standing out from beneath the dust of ages.

You taught me, since then, how to furbish his rusty harness, botch his bursten saddle, and send him forth once more, upon the ghost of his gallant mare. Truly he should feel obliged to you ; and though we cannot believe that the last infirmity of noble minds endures beyond the grave, or that any touch of his old vanity still stains the spirit of the mighty Wake ; yet we will please ourselves — why should we not 1 — with the fancy that he is as grateful to you as I am this day. Yours faithfully, C. KINGSLEY. CONTENTS chap. page Prelude — Of the Fens . . . . . . . 1 I. How Here ward was Outlawed, and went North to seek his Fortunes 14 II. How Hereward slew the Bear 40 III. How Hereward succoured a Princess of Cornwall 52 IV. How Hereward took Service with Ranald, King of AVaterford 67 V. How Hereward succoured the Princess of Cornwall a Second Time 77 VI.

How Hereward was wrecked upon the Flanders Shore S2 VII. How Hereward went to the War at Guisnes . 94 VIII. How a Fair Lady exercised the Mechanical Art to win Hereward's Love 99 IX. How Hereward went to the War in Scaldmariland 103 X. How Hereward won the Magic Armour . . . 109 XI. How the Hollanders took Hereward for a Magician 119 XII. How Hereward turned Berserker . . .119 XIII. How Hereward won Mare Swallow . . . 124 XIV. How Hereward rode into Bruges like a Beggarman 130 XV. How Earl Tosti Godwinsson came to St. Omer . 134 XVI. How Hereward was asked to slay an Old Comrade 142 XVII. How Hereward took the News from Stanford Brigg and Hastings 119 XVIII. How Earl Godwin's "Widow came to St. Omer . 157 XIX. How Hereward cleared Bourne of Frenchmen . 169 XX. How Hereward was made a Knight after the Fashion of the English CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE XXI.

Chapter I How Heeewaed Was Outlawed, And Went Noeth To Seek His

FOETTTNES In Kesteven of Lincolnshire, between the forest ancl the fen, lies the good market-town of Bourne, the birthplace, according to all tradition, of two great Englishmen ; of Cecil Lord Burleigh, justly remembered throughout all time, and of Hereward the Wake, not unjustly, perhaps, long forgotten. Two long streets meet opposite the house where Burleigh was born, one from Spalding ancl the eastern fens, the other from the forest, ancl the line of the old Roman road on the north. From thence the Watergang Street leads, by the side of clear running streams, to the old Priory church, and the great labyrinth of grass-grown banks, which was once the castle of the Wakes. Originally, it may be, those earthworks were a Roman camp, guarding the King Street, or Roman road, which splits off from the Ermine Street near Castor, and runs due north through Bourne to Slea ford.

They may have guarded, too, the Car-dyke, or great Catchwater drain, which runs from Peterborough northward into the heart of Lincolnshire, a still-enduring monument of Roman genius. Their site, not on one of the hills behind, but on the dead flat meadow, was determined doubtless by the noble fountain, bourn, or brunne, wliich rises among the earthworks, and gives its name to the whole town. In the flat meadow bubbles up still the great pool of limestone water, crystal clear, suddenly and at once ; and runs away, winter and summer, a stream large enough to turn many a mill, ancl spread perpetual verdure through the fat champaign lands. The fountain was, doubtless, in the middle age, miraculous ancl haunted : perhaps, in heathen times, divine and consecrate. Even till a late date, the millers of Bourne paid water-dues to those of a village some miles away ; on the strength of the un doubted fact, that a duck put into Bourne Pool would pass underground into the millhead of the said village.

Doubtless it was a holy well, such as were common in the eastern counties, as they are still in Ireland ; a well where rags, flowers, ami other gew-gaws might have been seen hanging, offerings to tho HOW HEREWARD WAS OUTLAWED CHAP. I 15 spirit of the well, whether one of those ' nickers,' ' develen,' or ' luther-gostes,' which St. Botulf met when he founded Boston near by, or one of those 'fair ladies,' 'elves,' or water-nymphs, who, exorcised from the North, still linger in the fountains of modern Greece. Exorcised, certainly, the fairy of Bourne was at an early date ; for before the Conquest the Peterborough monks had founded a cell outside the castle ditch, and, calling in the aid of the chief of the Apostles against those spirits of darkness who peopled, innumerable, earth, air, water, ancl fen, had rechristened it as ' Peterspool,' which name it bears unto this day.

Military skill has, evidently, utilised the waters of the Peters pool from the earliest times. They filled, at some remote period, the dykes at a great earthwork to the north, which has been overlooked by antiquaries, because it did not (seemingly) form part of the enceinte of the mediæval castle of the Wakes. It still fills the dykes of that castle, whereof nothing remains now save banks of turf, ancl one great artificial barrow, on which stood the keep, even in Leland's time, it would seem, somewhat dilapidate. 'There appear,' he says, 'grete ditches, and the dungeon hill of an ancient castle agayn the west end of the Priory. ... It longgid to the Lord Wake ; and much service of the Wake fee is done to this Castelle, and every f eodary knoweth his station and place of service.' Of the stonework nothing now remains.

The square dun geon, ' a fayre and prettie building, with iv. square towers . . . hall, chambers, all manner of houses and offices for the lord and his train,' 1 ancl so forth, is utterly gone. The gate-house, thirty feet high, with its circular Saxon (probably Norman) arch, has been pulled down by the Lords of Burleigh, to build a farm house ; the fair park is divided into fair meadows ; ancl a large part of the town of Bourne is, probably, built of the materials of the Wakes' castle, and the Priory, which arose under its pro tection. Those Priory lands passed into the hands of Trollopes ancl Pochins, as did the lands of the castle into those of the Cecils ; and of that fee of the Wakes, all, as far as I know, is lost, fors I'honneur, which shone out of late in that hero of ' Arrah,' who proved, by his valour, pertinacity, and shifts ulness, not unworthy of his great ancestor Hereward.

Verily the good old blood of England is not yet worn out. A pleasant place, and a rich, is Bourne now ; ancl a pleasant place and rich must it have been in the old Anglo -Danish times, when the hall of Leofric, the great Earl of Mercia, stood where the Wakes' feudal castle stood in after years. To the south and west stretched, as now, the illimitable flat of fen, with the spires of Crowland gleaming bright between high trees upon the southern horizon ; and to the north, from the very 1 Peak's account of the towns in Kesteven. AVAKE CHAP. 16 edge of the town fields, rose the great Bruneswald, the forest of oak, and ash, ancl elm, wliich still covers many miles of Lincoln shire, as Bourne Wood, Grimsthorpe Park, and parks ancl wood lands without number. To the south-west it joined the great forest of Rockingham, in Northamptonshire.

To the west, it all but marched with Charnwood Forest in Leicestershire, and to the north - west, with the ' great Sherwood, which covered Nottinghamshire, and reached over the borders of Yorkshire. Mighty fowling and fishing was there in the fen below, and mighty hunting on the weald above, where still haunt, in Grimsthorpe Park, the primeval red-deer, descendants of those who fell by Hereward's bow, ere yet the first Lovell had built his castle on the steep, or the Cistercian monks of Fountains had found out the deep -embowered vale of God, and settled themselves in the glen beneath the castle walls. It is of those earlier days that this story tells ; of the latter half of the eleventh century, ancl the eve of the Norman Con quest, when Leofric the Earl had the dominion in forest and manorial rights, in wood, and town, and fen ; and beside him, upon the rich strip of champaign, other free Danish holders, whose names may be still found in Domesday-book, held small estates ; and owed, probably, some military service to the great earl at the hall within the Roman earthwork.

The house of Bourne, as far as it can be reconstructed by imagination, was altogether unlike one of the tall ancl gloomy Norman castles which, in the course of the next few genera tions, must have taken its place. It was much more like a house in a Chinese painting : an irregular group of low buildings, almost all of one storey, stone below and timber above, with high-peaked roofs — at least in the more Danish country — afford ing a separate room, or rather house, for each different need of the family. Such a one may be seen in the illuminations of the century. In the centre of the building is the hall, with a door or doors opening out into the court ; ancl sitting thereat at the the top of a flight of steps, the lord and lacly, dealing clothes to the naked and bread to the hungry. Behind the hall is a round tower, seemingly the strong place of the whole house.

It must have stood at Bourne upon the dungeon hill. On one side of the hall is a chapel ; by it a large room or bower for the ladies; on the other side a kitchen ; ancl stuck on to bower, kitchen, and every other principal building, lean-to after lean-to, the uses of which it is impossible now to discover. The house had grown with the wants of the family— as many good old English houses have done to this day. Round it would be scattered barns and stables, in which grooms and herdsmen slept side by side with their own horses and cattle ; beyond, the yard, garth, or garden-fence, high earth-banks with palisades on top, while the waters of the Peterspool wandered around outside all. Such was most probably the 'villa,' 'ton,' or 'town,' of Earl Leofric, I HOW HEREWARD WAS OUTLAWED 17 the Lord of Bourne ; such too, probably, the hall at Laughton en-le-Morthem in Yorkshire, which belonged to his grandson Edwin, and therefore, probably, to him.

Leofric's other resi dence, the castle of Warwick, was already, it may be, a building of a more solid and Norman type, such as had been built already, here and there, for Edward the Confessor's French courtiers, by the hands of ' Welisce men,' i.e. French-speaking foreigners.1 Known, I presume, to all is Lady Godiva, mistress of Bourne, the most beautiful as well as the most saintly woman of her day ; who, all her life, kept at her own expense thirteen poor folk wherever she went ; who, throughout Lent, watched in the church at triple matins, namely, one for the Trinity, one for the Cross, and one for St. Mary ; who every day read the psalter through, ancl so persevered in good and holy works to her life's end, the devoted friend of St. Mary, ever a virgin ; who en riched monasteries without number — Leominster, Wenlock, Chester, St. Mary's Stow by Lincoln, Worcester, Evesham ; and who, above all, founded the great monastery in that town of Coventry which has made her name immortal for another and a far nobler deed ; and enriched it so much, that no monastery in England possessed such abundance of gold, silver, jewels, and precious stones, besides that most i^recious jewel of all, the arm of St. Augustine, which not Lady Godiva, but her friend Arch bishop Ethelnoth, presented to Coventry ; having bought it at Pavia for a hundred talents of silver, and a talent of gold.2 Less known, save to students, is her husband Leofric, whose bones lie by those of Godiva in that same minster of Coventry ; how ' his counsel was as if one had opened the divine oracles ; ' very ' wise,' says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ' for God ancl for the world, which was a blessing to all this nation ; ' the greatest man, as I have said, in Edward the Confessor's court, save his still greater rival, Earl Gochvin.

Less known, again, are the children of that illustrious pair ; Algar, or Alfgar, Earl of Mercia after his father, who died after a short and stormy life, leaving two sons, Edwin and Morcar, the fair and hapless young earls, always spoken of together, as if they had been twins ; a daughter, Aldytha, or Elfgiva, married first (according to some) to Griffin, King of North Wales, and certainly afterwards to Harold, King of England ; ancl another, Lucia (as the Normans at least called her), whose fate was, if possible, more sad than that of her brothers. Their second son was Hereward, whose history this tale sets forth ; their third and youngest, a boy whose name is unknown. They had probably another daughter besides ; married, it 1 One such had certainly been built in Herefordshire. Lappenberg attributes it, with great probability, to Raoul, or Ralph the Staller, nephew of Edward the Confessor, and a near relation of Leofric. 2 William of Malmesbury.

C H. T. w. may be, to some son of Leofric's staunch friend old Siward Digre ; and the mother, may be, of the two young Siwards, the ' white ' and the ' red,' who figure in chronicle and legend as the nephews of Hereward. But this last pedigree is little more than a conjecture. . Be these things as they may, Godiva was the greatest lady in England, save two : Edith, Harold's sister, the nominal wife of Edward the Confessor ; and Githa, or Gyda, as her own Danes called her, Harold's mother, niece of Canute the Great. Great was Godiva, and might have been proud enough, had she been inclined to that pleasant sin. But always (for there is a skele ton, they say, in every house) she carried that about her which might well keep her humble ; namely, shame at the misconduct of Hereward, her son. Now on a day — about the year 1054 — while Earl Siward was helping to bring Birnam wood to Dunsinane, to avenge his murdered brother-in-law, Lady Godiva sat, not at her hall-door, dealing food and clothing to her thirteen poor folk, but in her bower, with her youngest son, a two-years' boy, at her knee.

She was listening with a face of shame ancl horror to the com plaint of Herluin, steward of Peterborough, who had fallen in that afternoon with Hereward ancl his crew of housecarles. To keep a following of stout housecarles, or men-at-arms, was the pride as well as the duty of an Anglo-Danish lord, as it was, till lately, of a Scoto-Danish highland laird. Ancl Hereward, in imitation of his father ancl his elder brother, must needs have his following from the time he was but fifteen years old. All the unruly youths of the neighbourhood, sons of free ' holders,' who owed some sort of military service to Earl Leofric ; Geri, Hereward's cousin ; Winter, whom he called his brother-inarms ; the Wulfrics, the Wulfarcls, the Azers, and many another wild blade, had banded themselves round a young nobleman more unruly than themselves.

Their names were already a terror to all decent folk, at wakes and fairs, alehouses and village sports. They atoned, be it remembered, for their early sins, by making those names in after years a terror to the invaders of their native land : but as yet their prowess was limited to drunken brawls and faction-fights ; to upsetting old women at their work, levying blackmail from quiet, chapmen on the highroad, or bringing back in triumph, sword in hand and club on shoulder, their leader Hereward from some duel which his insolence had provoked. But this time, if the story of the stew aid was to be believed, Hereward and his housecarles had taken an ugly stride forward toward the pit. They had met him riding along, intent upon his psalter, home towards his abbey from "its cell at Bourne— ' Whereon your son, most gracious lady, bade me stand, saying that his men were thirsty ; ancl he had no money to buy ale withal, ancl none so likely to help him thereto as a fat priest — I HOW HEREWARD WAS OUTLAWED 19 for so he scandalously termed me, who, as your ladyship knows, am leaner than the minster bell-ropes, with fasting Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the year, beside the vigils of the saints, ancl the former and latter Lents. _' But when he saw who I was, as if inspired by a malignant spirit, he shouted out my name, and bade his companions throw me to the ground.' ' Throw you to the ground ? ' shuddered the Lady Godiva. 'In much mire, madam.

After which he took my palfrey, saying that heaven's gate was too lowly for men on horseback to get in thereat ; and then my marten's fur gloves and cape which your gracious self bestowed on me, alleging that the rules of my order allowed only one garment, and no furs save catskins and suchlike. And lastly — I tremble while I relate, thinking not of the loss of my poor money, but the loss of an immortal soul — took from me a purse with sixteen silver pennies, which I had collected from our tenants for the use of the monastery, and said blasphemously that I and mine had cheated your lady ship, and therefore him your son, out of many a fat manor ere now ; and it was but fair that he should tithe the rents thereof, as he should never get the lands out of our claws again ; with more of the like, which I blush to repeat — ancl so left me to trudge hither in the mire.' ' Wretched boy ! ' said the Lady Godiva, and hid her face in her hands ; 'and more wretched I, to have brought such a son into the world ! ' The monk had hardly finished his doleful story, when there was a pattering of heavy feet, a noise of men shouting ancl laughing outside, and a voice above all calling for the monk by name, which made that good man crouch behind the curtain of Lady Godiva's bed.

The next moment the door of the bower was thrown violently open, and in swaggered a noble lad eighteen years old. His face was of extraordinary beauty, save that the lower jaw was too long ancl heavy, ancl that his eyes wore a strange and almost sinister expression, from the fact that the one of them was gray, and the other blue. He was short, but of immense breadth of chest and strength of limb ; while his delicate hands and feet and long locks of golden hair marked him of most noble, and even, as he really was, of ancient royal race. He was dressed in a gaudy costume, resembling on the whole that of a Highland chieftain. His wrists and throat were tattooed in blue patterns;1 and he carried sword and 1 Some antiquaries have denied, on the ground of insufficient evidence, that the English tattooed themselves.

Others have referred to some such custom the secret marks by which heroes are so often recognised in old romances, as well as those by which Edith the Swan-neck is said to have recognised Harold's body on the field of Hastings. Hereward is, likewise, recognised by ' signis satis exquisitis in corpore designantia yulnera tenu issimorum cicatrieum. ' I am not answerable for the Latin ; but as I dagger, a gold ring round his neck,1 and gold rings on his wrists. He was a lad to have gladdened the eyes of any mother : but there was no gladness in the Lady Godiva's eyes as she received him, nor had there been for many a year. She looked on him with sternness, with all but horror : and he, his face flushed with wine, which he had tossed off as he passed through the hall to steady his nerves for the coming storm, looked at her with smiling defiance, the result of long estrangement between mother and son. ' Well, my lady,' said he, ere she could speak, ' I heard that this good fellow was here ; and came home as fast as I could, to see that he told you as few lies as possible.' ' He has told me,' said she, ' that you have robbed the Church of God.' 'Robbed him, it may be, an old hoody crow, against whom I have a grudge of ten years' standing.' ' Wretched, wretched boy !

What wickedness next ? Know you not, that he who robs the Church, robs God Himself?' ' If a man sin against another,' put in the monk from behind the curtain, 'the judge shall judge him : but if a man sin against the Lord, who shall intreat for him ? ' ' Who indeed ? ' cried Lady Godiva. ' Think, think, hapless boy, what it is to go about the world henceforth with the wrath of Him who made it abiding on you — cut oft' from the protection of all angels, open to the assaults of all devils ? How will your life be safe a moment from lightning, from flood, from slipping knife, from stumbling horse, from some hidden ancl hideous death ? If the fen-fiends lure you away to drown you in the river, or the wood-fiends leap on you in the thicket to wring your neck, of what use to you then the suffrages of the saints, or the sign of the holy cross ?

What help, what hope, for you — for me — but that you must perish foully, and, it may be, never find a grave ? ' Lady Godiva — as the constant associate of clerks ancl monks — spoke after an artificial and Latinised fashion, at which Hereward was not wont to laugh and jest : but as he believed, no less than his pious mother, in innumerable devils and ghosts, and other uncanny creatures, who would surely do him a mischief if they could, he began to feel somewhat frightened ; but he answered none the less stoutly : — understand it, it refers not to war-wounds but to very delicate marks. Moreover, William of Malmesbury, sub anno 1066, seems sufficiently ex plicit when he says that the English ' adorned then skins with punctured designs.' May not our sailors' fashion of tattooing their arms and chests with strange devices be a remnant of this very fashion, kept up, if not ori<nii ated, by the desire that the corpse should be recognised after death ? 1 Earl Waltheof appears to Ingulf in a dream, a few years after, with a gold tore round his neck.

I HOW HEREWARD AVAS OUTLAWED 21 'As for devils, and suchlike, I never saw one yet, by flood or field, night or day. And if one comes, I must just' copy old Baldwin Bras-de-Fer of Flanders, and see whether the devil or I can hit hardest. As for the money — I have no grudge against St. Peter ; and I will warrant myself to rob some one else of sixteen pennies ere long, and pay the saint back every farthing.' ' The saint takes not the fruits of robbery. He would hurl them far away, by might divine, were they laid upon his altar,' quoth the steward. 'I wonder he has not hurled thee away long ago, then, with thy gifts about thine ears ; for thou hast brought many a bag of grist to his mill, ere now, that was as foully earned as aught of mine. I tell thee, man, if thou art wise, thou wilt hold thy tongue, and let me and St. Peter settle this quarrel between us.

I have a long score against thee, as thou knowest, which a gentle battery in the greenwood has but half paid off; and I warn thee not to make it longer by thy tongue, lest I shorten the said tongue for thee with cold steel.' ' What does he mean 1 ' asked Godiva, shuddering. ' This ! ' quoth Hereward, fiercely enough ; ' that this monk forgets that I have been a monk myself, or should have been one by now, if you, my pious mother, had had your will of me, as you may if you like of that baby there at your knee. He forgets why I left Peterborough Abbey, when Winter and I turned all the priest's books upside down in the choir, and they would have flogged us — me, the earl's son — me, the Viking's son — me, the champion, as I will be yet, and make all lands ring with the fame of my deeds, as they rang with the fame of my forefathers, before they became the slaves of monks ; ancl how, when Winter ancl I got hold of the kitchen spits, and up to the top of the peat-stack by Bolklyke-gate, and held them all at bay there, a whole abbeys ul of cowards there against two seven-years' children, — it was that weasel there bade set the peat-stack alight under us, and so bring us down ; and would have done it, too, had it not been for my uncle Brand, the only man that I care for in this "wide world.

Do you think I have not owed you a grudge ever since that day, monk ? And do you think I will not pay it ? Do you think I would not have burned Peter borough minster over your head before now, had it not been for uncle Brand's sake? See that I do not do it yet. See that when there is another prior in Borough you clo not find Here ward the Berserker smoking you out some dark night, as he would smoke a wasp's nest. And I will, by ' 'Hereward, Hereward !' cried his mother, 'godless, God-for gotten boy, what words are these ? Silence, before you burden your soul with an oath which the devils in hell will accept and force you to keep,' and she sprang up, and seizing his arm, laid her hand upon his mouth. Hereward looked at her majestic face, once lovely, now stern and careworn; and trembled for a moment.

Had there been any tenderness in it, his history might have been a very differ ent one : but, alas ! there was none. Not that she was in her self untender : but that her great piety (call it not superstition, for it was then the only form known or possible to pure and devout souls) was so outraged by this insult to that clergy whose willing slave she had become, that the only method of reclaim ing the sinner had been long forgotten in genuine horror at his sin. 'Is it not enough,' she went on sternly, 'that you should have become the bully and the ruffian of all the fens?— that Hereward the leaper, Hereward the wrestler, Hereward the thrower of the hammer— sports after all only fit for the sons of slaves, should be also Hereward the drunkard, Hereward the common fighter, Hereward the breaker of houses, Hereward the leader of mobs of boon companions who bring back to us, in shame and sorrow, the days when our heathen forefathers ravaged this land with fire and sword ?

Is it not enough for me that my son should be a common stabber V ' Whoever called me stabber to you, lies. If I have killed men, or had them killed, I have done it in fair fight.' But she went on unheeding — ' Is it not enough that after having squandered on your fellows all the money that you could wring from my bounty or win at your base sports, you should have robbed your own father, collected his rents behind his back, taken money and goods from his tenants by threats and blows : but that, after outraging them, you must add to all this a worse sin likewise, outraging God, ancl driving me — me who have borne with you, me who have concealed all for your sake — to tell your father that of wliich the very telling will turn my hair to gray ?' 'So you will tell my father?' said Hereward coolly. 'And if I should not, this monk himself is bound to clo so, or his superior, your uncle Brand.' ' My uncle Brand will not, and your monk dare not.' 'Then I must.