HEREWARD IS MADE KNIGHT.
Before the marriage festival was well ended, the festival of the
Epiphany arrived. The Lord of Brunn could not go to Ely; but he was now
in constant correspondence with the good Lord Abbat and the prelates
and lay nobles there; and in sending off his last Norman prisoners, he
had sent to tell the abbat that he must hold him excused, and that he
would eat the paschal lamb with him, hoping before the Easter festival
to have gained many more advantages over the Normans. The returning
messenger brought Hereward much good advice and some money from Ely.
Among the many pieces of good counsel which the Abbat Thurstan gave was
this, that the young Lord of Brunn should lose no time in getting
himself made a lawful soldier or knight, according to the forms and
religious rites of that Saxon military confraternity which had been
authorised by the ancient laws of the country, and which had existed
long before the Normans came into England with their new-fashioned
rules and unholy rites. The great lay lords at Ely and in the Camp of
Refuge had all been initiated, and their swords had been blessed by
Saxon priests; and as all these knights and lords had agreed in
appointing Hereward to the supreme command, it behoved him to be
inaugurated in the Saxon knighthood; otherwise there would be a mark of
inferiority upon him, and people might proclaim that he was not a
lawful soldier. Now the young Lord of Brunn had thought well of these
things before, and had been reminded of them by the taunting Normans.
Any Lord Abbat or other prelate could perform the rites. The Abbat of
Crowland had now returned to his house, and would rejoice to confer the
honour upon Hereward; but Hereward’s own uncle, and by his father’s
side, was Lord Abbat of Peterborough;[157] and not only was it more
suitable that the rites should be performed by him and in his church,
but also was it urgent that the young Lord of Brunn should march
speedily upon Peterborough in order to rescue his kinsman and the Saxon
monks that yet lived under his rule from the oppression and tyranny of
the Normans. This uncle of Hereward and Lord Abbat of Peterborough,
whose secular name was Brand, had been sundry times plundered and
maltreated, and now expected every day to be dispossessed. Brand had
not long been Lord Abbat, and he had put on the Peterborough mitre, of
silver gilded, at a time of the greatest trouble. His predecessor the
Abbat Leofric[158] had gone forth with the English army of King Harold;
and, after Hastings, he had sickened, and returning unto Peterborough,
he had died on the night of Allhallow mass: God honour his soul! In his
day was all bliss and all good at Peterborough. He was beloved of all.
But afterwards, as we shall see, came all wretchedness and all evil on
the minster: God have mercy on it! All that he could do had been done
by good Leofric’s successor. Abbat Brand had given a large sum of money
to Duke William, in the view of keeping the house and convent free from
molestation. Always a rich and always a bountiful man had been the
uncle of Lord Hereward; and while yet a cloister monk and one of the
obedientiarii, he had given to the monastery many lands, as in Muscham,
Schotter, Scalthorp, Yolthorp, Messingham, Riseby, Normanby, Althorp,
and many other parts. Judge ye, therefore, whether the brothers of
Peterborough were not largely indebted to Abbat Brand,[159] and whether
Abbat Brand was not the proper man to confer Saxon knighthood on his
nephew. After the disastrous journey of Ivo Taille-Bois and his brother
to Ey, the news of which was rumoured all over the country, Brand had
dispatched an intelligencer to his bold nephew, and had sent other
messengers to his neighbours, and to all the good Saxon people that
dwelt between Peterborough and Stamford. He had beseeched Hereward to
march to his rescue, and to the rescue of his house; and Hereward, like
a duteous nephew and loving kinsman, had sent to promise that he would
be with him with good two hundred armed men on the octave of the
Epiphany.
But, before going for Peterborough, the young Lord of Brunn had much to
do in the way of collecting men and arms, strengthening the house at Ey
and the house at Brunn, and the abbey of Crowland, and the succursal
cell at Spalding; and much time he spent with Girolamo of Salerno in
devising war stratagems, and in planning the means by which the whole
fen country might be rendered still more defensible than it was, as by
the cutting of new ditches, the making of sluices and flood-gates,
movable bridges, and the like. The men-at-arms, left by Ivo Taille-Bois
to guard the manor-house near to Spalding, becoming sorely alarmed, and
despairing of finding their way across the fens, sent a Saxon messenger
to the returned Prior of Spalding, with an offer to surrender the house
to the soldiers of Lord Hereward, if the good prior would only secure
them in their lives by extending over them the shield of the church.
The conditions were immediately agreed to: a garrison of armed Saxons
took possession of the moated and battlemented house, and the Normans
were sent as war prisoners to Ely. Hereward gave orders that all due
respect should be paid to the house, and to all other the goods and
chattels of the Ladie Lucia; for albeit that ladie was forcibly the
wife of Ivo, she was cousin to Alftrude and relative to King Harold,
and her heart was believed to be wholly Saxon. As Brunn was a house of
greater strength, and farther removed from that skirt or boundary of
the fen country upon which the Normans were expected to collect their
strength, Hereward removed his bride to Brunn, and there he left her in
the midst of friends and defenders; for his followers were now so
numerous that he could keep his promise with his uncle Brand without
leaving his bride exposed to danger, and without weakening one of the
sundry posts he had occupied, as well along other rivers as upon the
banks of the Welland.
By the octave of the Epiphany, being the thirteenth day of the
Wolf-month, or kalends of January, and the day of Saint Kentigern, a
Saxon abbat and confessor, the Lord of Brunn was at the Abbey of
Peterborough with more than two hundred well-armed Saxons! and on that
very night—a night of the happiest omen—was begun his initiation in
the old abbey church. First, Hereward confessed himself to the prior,
and received absolution. After this he watched all night in the church,
fasting and praying. At times a cloister monk prayed in company with
him; but for the most part he was left alone in the ghostly silence of
the place, where light was there none save the cressets that burned
dimly before the effigies of his patron saint. But while he knelt
there, Elfric his faithful sword-bearer stood guard outside the door of
the church, whiling away the time as best he could, by calling to mind
all the legends and godly stories connected with the Peterborough Abbey
and its first founders, and _specialiter_ that marvellously pretty
miracle which Saint Chad performed in the presence of his recent
convert King Wolfere. Which miracle was this, according to the faithful
relation of Walter of Whittlesey, a monk of the house: One day, after
praying a long while with King Wolfere in his oratory, the weather
being warm, Saint Chad put off his vestment and hung it upon a sunbeam,
and the sunbeam supported it so that it fell not to the ground; which
King Wolfere seeing, put off his gloves and belt, and essayed to hang
them also upon the sunbeam, but they presently fell to the ground,
whereat King Wolfere was the more confirmed in the faith.[160] In the
morning, at the hour of mass Hereward placed his sword upon the high
altar; and when mass had been said, and he had confessed himself and
been absolved again, the Lord Abbat took the now hallowed sword and put
it about Hereward’s neck with a benediction, and communicating the holy
mysteries, finished the simple and altogether religious ceremonial: and
from thenceforward Hereward remained a lawful soldier and Saxon knight.
In the good Saxon times men were never so vain and sinful as to believe
that a knight could make knight, or that any lay lord, or even any
sovereign prince or king, could give admittance into the confraternity
of knights by giving the accolade with strokes of the flat of the sword
upon the shoulders and with the tying on of spurs and hauberks, and the
girding on the sword, and such like vanities. These things were brought
in among us by the Normans; and being brought in, our knights lost
their religious character, and ceasing to be the defenders of the
church, and the protectors of all that wanted protection, they became
unhallowed oppressors, depredators, barefaced robbers, and the scourges
of their kind. And it was so at the very first that these Normans did
affect to contemn and abhor our old Saxon custom of consecration of a
soldier, calling our Saxon knights in derision priest-made knights and
shaveling soldiers, and by other names that it were sinful to repeat.
The good Abbat Brand had now nothing more to fear for his shrines and
chalices. Every Norman that was in Peterborough, or in the vicinage of
that town, fled to Stamford; and the Lord of Brunn, with the help of
the Salernitan, strengthened the abbey, and made good works to defend
the approaches to it, even as he had done at Crowland and elsewhere.
Happy was Abbat Brand, and hopeful was he of the deliverance of all
England; but he lived not long after this happy day, and when he was
gone cowardice and treachery invaded his house, and monks who had lost
their English natures made bargains and compacts with the Normans, and
brought about many calamities and shames, as will be seen hereafter. If
Brand had lived, or if Hereward could have remained at Peterborough
these things would not have happened, and disgrace would not have been
brought down upon a convent which for four hundred and more years had
been renowned as the seat of devotion, hospitality, and patriotism. But
the Lord of Brunn could not stay long on the banks of the Nene, his
presence being demanded in many other places. Between the octave of the
Epiphany and the quinzane of Pasche, Hereward recovered or liberated
twenty good townships near the north-western skirts of the great
fen-country, fought and defeated Norman troops in ten battles, and took
from them five new castles which they had built. A good score of Norman
knights were made captive to his sword; but he had not the chance to
encounter either Ivo Taille-Bois or his brother.
As the paschal festival approached, Hereward received various urgent
messages from the Abbat of Ely. These messages did not all relate to
the coming festivity, and the promise of the Lord of Brunn to be the
Lord Abbat’s guest: while Hereward had been beating the Normans, and
gaining strength on the side of Peterborough and Stamford, the Normans
had been making themselves very strong at Cam-bridge, and were now
threatening to make another grand attack upon the Camp of Refuge from
that side. Abbat Thurstan therefore required immediate assistance, and
hoped that Hereward would bring with him all the armed men he could.
Moreover, jealousies and heartburnings had again broken out among the
Saxon chiefs, who had all pledged themselves to acknowledge the supreme
authority of the Lord of Brunn. If Hereward would only come, these
dissensions would cease. Other weighty matters must be discussed; and
the discussion would be naught if Hereward were not present. Thus
strongly urged, Hereward left his young wife in his house at Brunn, and
taking with him nearly three hundred armed men, he began his march down
the Welland in the hope of raising more men in that fenniest of the
fen-countries, which lies close on the Wash, and with the intention of
crossing the Wash, and ascending the Ouse in ships and boats. It
grieved him to leave the Ladie Alftrude, and much did it grieve Elfric
his sword-bearer to quit maid Mildred; but Hereward thought that his
wife would be safe in his strong house at Brunn, and Elfric was made
happy by the assurance that as soon as they came back again he should
be allowed to marry Mildred. The Ladie Alftrude had shed a few tears,
and her handmaiden had made sundry louder lamentations; but the lady
was full of heart and courage and hope, nor did the maid lament out of
any fear.
When the Lord of Brunn moored his little fleet of barks, and raised his
standard on the shores of the Wash, many more good fen-men came
trooping to him, as he had expected. Many came from Hoiland.[161] And
how did they come? They came marching through the mires and waters upon
high stilts, looking all legs, or, at a distance, like herons of some
giant breed. Voyagers have related that in that sandy country which
lies along the Biscayan gulf, and between Bordeaux and Spain, men and
women and children all walk upon high stalking poles or stilts, as the
only means of getting across their soft, deep sands; and here, in the
most marshy part of the fens, men, women, and children were trained to
use the same long wooden legs, not to get over dry loose sand, but to
get over water and quagmire, and broad and deep ditches. These stilted
men of Hoiland, who were all minded to go help in the Camp of Refuge,
threw their stilts[162] into Lord Hereward’s bark; which was as if men
of another country should throw away their legs, for without these
stilts, we ween, there was no walking or wayfaring in Hoiland: but the
thing was done to show that they were devoted to the good cause and put
an entire trust in the victorious Lord of Brunn, and that they would go
with him, legs, arms, and hearts, wherever he might choose to lead them.
At Lynn, on the other side of the Wash, still more Saxons joined Lord
Hereward’s army, some of them coming in boats, and some marching by
land. Ha! had there been but five Herewards in England, England would
have been saved!
It was on the eve of the most solemn, yet most joyous festival of
Pasche, or on the 24th day of the month Aprilis, in the year of grace
one thousand and seventy-one, that the Lord of Brunn, arrived with his
host at the great house of Ely, to the inconceivable joy of every true
Saxon heart that was there. Pass we the welcome and the feast, and come
we to the councils and deliberations in the Aula Magna of the house. On
the third day after the paschal Sunday all the Saxon lords and chiefs,
prelates and cloister-monks, met early in the morning, or immediately
after prime, and ceased not their deliberations until the dinner hour.
On one great point there was no difference of opinion—the victorious
Lord of Brunn was to hold supreme command over all the troops and
bands, of whatsoever description, collected in the Camp of Refuge, and
have the entire management of the war wherever it should be carried. On
other heads of debate opinions were very various, but the greatest
divergency of all was upon the question whether the Danes should or
should not be invited again to the assistance of the Saxons. When all
had spoken on the one side or the other, and with much vehemence of
speech, the Lord of Brunn, who had been forced to correct his taciturn
habits, and to speak on many occasions at greater length than he had
ever fancied he should speak, rose and said—
“Prelates and chiefs, ancients and younger men, if one so young as
myself may deliver opinions in this assemblage, I would say let us
take heed ere we tamper any more with Danemarck. The woes of the
Anglo-Saxons first began when the Danes crossed the seas in their
nailed ships and came among them first to rob and plunder, and next to
seek a settlement in this fat and fertile land of England. Our rubric
is filled with Saxon martyrs butchered by the Danes. This noble house
of religion where we now consult was plundered and burned by the
Danes; and the Danes slew all the ancient brotherhood of the house,
and did the foulest things upon the tombs of the four Saxon virgins
and saints—Saint Etheldreda, Saint Sexburga, Saint Ermenilda, Saint
Withburga. I am lately from the Abbey of Peterborough, where I read
upon the monumental stones the names of the good Saxon abbats and
monks of that house that were murthered by the Danes. The same thing
happened at Crowland, and at fifty more religious houses. The Danes
have been the great makers of Saxon martyrdoms. The worst famed of our
Saxon kings are those who submitted to them or failed in conquering
them; the name of King Alfred is honoured chiefly for that he defeated
the Danes in an hundred battles, and checked their rapacity and
blood-thirstiness.”
“Oh, Hereward of Brunn!” said the bishop of Lindisfarne, “this is all
true; but all this happened when the Danes were unconverted Pagans.”
“But good my Lord Bishop of Lindisfarne,” quoth the Lord of Brunn, “let
us note well the conduct of the Danes since they have been Christian
men, and we shall find as Saxons that we have not much to praise them
for. Had it not been for the unmeet alliance between Lord Tostig and
the strangers, and the invasion of Northumbria and York, and the need
King Harold lay under of breaking that unholy league, and fighting
Tostig in the great battle by Stamford Bridge, King Harold would never
have been worsted at the battle of Hastings, for his armed forces would
have been entire, and fresh for the fight, instead of being thinned as
they were by that first bloody combat, and worn out by that long march
from York unto Hastings.”
“It was an army of Norwegians that fought King Harold by Stamford
Bridge,” said the Prior of Ely.
“I fought in that battle,” quoth Hereward, “and know that it was a
mixed army of Danes and Norwegians, even like most of the armies that,
for two hundred years and more, devastated this land and the kingdom of
Scotland. But let that pass. Those armies came as open enemies: let us
see the conduct of an army that came as friends. Only last year the
good Saxon people from the Tyne to the York Ouse were deserted in the
hour of success and victory by an army of Danes, commanded by the
brothers of the King of Danemarck, who had been invited into the
country by the suffering Saxons, and who had sworn upon the relics of
saints not to leave this land until it was clear of the Normans. The
two royal Danes took the gold of the son of Robert the Devil and the
harlot of Falaise, and thereupon took their departure in their ships,
and left the Saxons, with their plan all betrayed, to be slaughtered in
heaps, and the whole north country to be turned into a solitude and
desert, a Golgotha, or place of skulls.”
“This is too true,” said the Bishop of Durham; “and terrible is all
this truth!”
“But,” said the Bishop of Lindisfarne, “the King of Danemarck’s
brothers are not the King of Danemarck himself. We hear that the king
is incensed at what those brothers did, and that he hath banished them
from his presence and from the land of Danemarck, and that he hath
sworn by the rood[163] that he will send four hundred keels across the
ocean, and take himself the command of the army.”
“Yet even if he come,” quoth the Lord of Brunn, “he may prove as
faithless and as greedy for gold as his brothers; or he may set up his
pretended right to the throne of King Harold, our absent but not lost
lord, and in that case we shall find that the Saxon people will fall
from our side; for if they are to be cursed with a new and foreign
master, they will not overmuch care whether his name be William of
Normandie or Svend of Danemarck.”
“Assuredly not quite so,” said the Prior of Ely, who opposed Hereward
the more because the Lord Abbat Thurstan was disposed to agree with
him; “assuredly not quite so, my Lord of Brunn, for there hath been
large admixture of Danish blood in our Anglo-Saxon race,[164] and Danes
and English sprang, _ab origine_, from nearly one and the same great
hive of nations in the north.”
“And so also do these North men, or Normans,” said Hereward, “only they
have more affinity to Danes and Norwegians than to us; and while the
Danish pirates were ravaging the coasts of England, Rollo, the North
man, ravaged the coasts of France, and gained a settlement and
sovereignty, and gave the name of Normandie to the country which has
now sent forth these new conquerors and devastators upon England. Trace
back our blood to the source, and I, and the Lord Abbat Thurstan as
well as I, and many other true Englishmen, natives of the English
Danelagh, may be called half Danes; but a man can have only one
country, and only one people that he can call countrymen, and these
admixtures of blood in parts and parcels of England will not be
considered by the English people at large; and let it be Danes, or let
it be Normans, it will be the same to them.”
“But,” said the Abbat of Cockermouth, “the Danes be now very poor, and
their king will not be able to raise an army sufficiently strong to aim
at any great thing by himself.”
“And therefore is it,” quoth the Lord of Brunn, “that come king or come
king’s brothers, they will get what they can from us poor Saxons as the
price of their assistance, then get all the gold they can get from the
Normans as the price of their neutrality, then betray all such of our
secrets as they possess, and then embark and sail away for their own
country, leaving us in a far worse plight than before. I say, let us
not send for them, or ask their aid at all! If a people cannot defend
themselves by their own swords, they will never be defended at all. If
England cannot be saved without calling in one foreign people to act
against another, she will never be saved. If this king of Danemarck
comes this year he will act as his kinsmen did last year, and we shall
rue the day of his coming. Wherefore, I say, let us pray for the speedy
return of King Harold, and let us keep what little store of gold and
silver we possess to nurture and pay our own native soldiers, and to
purchase in the Netherlands such munition and warlike gear as we may
yet need; but let us not waste it by sending into Danemarck.”
“Were our enemies less numerous and powerful,” said one of the chiefs,
“we still might hope to stand our ground, in this wet and difficult
corner of England, alone and unaided!”
“We shall be the better able to stand our ground against any foe if we
be on our guard against false friends, and keep our money and our own
counsels,” said Abbat Thurstan. “Lord Hereward hath reason for all he
saith; take my word for it he is right.”
But there were many there that would not take my Lord Abbat’s word, and
that would not be persuaded by the arguments of the Lord of Brunn; and
in an inauspicious hour it was determined to send an embassage from the
lords and prelates in the Camp of Refuge to the king and lords and free
rovers of Danemarck, to implore their aid and assistance, and to
present them with a sum of money, as the earnest of a large future
reward. The strong money-box at the shrines of Ely church, wherein the
pilgrims deposited their offerings, was now in reality broken open and
emptied; at which some of the unworthy members of the house who had
most opposed Hereward and their Lord Abbat went about whispering and
muttering, in the corners of the cloisters, and even among the townfolk
of Ely, that sacrilege had been committed. Yet was the total sum thus
procured so very disproportionate to the well-known appetites of the
Danes for money, that a collection was made in the Camp of Refuge, and
even Jews were secretly invited from Norwich and St. Edmundbury in
order to see whether they could be tempted to advance some money upon
bonds: and here were raised fresh whisperings and murmurings about
impiety, together with severe censures on Abbat Thurstan for want of
uniformity or consistency of conduct, seeing that he had formerly been
the sworn foe to all the Israelites whom the Normans had brought over
in their train; and that, nevertheless, the convent were now sending
for the Jews to open accounts and dealings with them. It suited not
these back-biters to remember that they themselves, in determining that
the aid of the Danes should be required, had agreed that money should
and must be sent to them; and that when Abbat Thurstan said there was
but very little money in the house, they themselves had recommended
sending for the Israelites who made a trade of usury. All points
connected with the unhappy business had been decided, after the public
discussions in the hall, by the members of the house in close chapter,
wherein the Lord Abbat had only given his vote as one. But these
unfaithful monks and untrue Englishmen hoped to make people believe
that their opinions had been overruled, and that Thurstan was
answerable for everything.
It was also noticed—although not by the abbat and the monks that were
faithful unto him, and that were never allowed to hear any of the
whisperings and murmurings—that several of those who had most eagerly
voted for calling in the assistance of the Danes shrugged their
shoulders whenever men mentioned the expected invasion of the fen
country and the new attack on the Camp of Refuge, and spoke of the
Norman as a power too formidable to be resisted by the English, or by
any allies that the English could now procure.