THE NORMANS IN THE CAMP.
The Camp of Refuge, wherein the Saxons had so long withstood the
violent threats of the Normans, was not in itself a very noticeable
place. But for the army and the last hopes of England collected
therein, the wayfarer might have passed it without any especial
observation, there being several such places in the Fen country, partly
surrounded by embankments of earth, and wholly girded in, and doubly or
trebly girded by rivers, ditches, pools, and meres. The embankments had
been first made, in very remote ages, by those who first attempted to
drain parts of the fen country; but tradition said that these peaceful
works had been made to serve the purposes of defensive war, in those
days when the Iceni stood against their Roman invaders, when the
Britons stood against the first Saxons, and when the Saxons opposed the
marauding Danes. The embankments which were made to keep out the water,
and confine the rivers to their beds, were proper to keep out an enemy,
even if he could reach them; and the fenners, who kept solely to the
business of grazing, fishing, and fowling, knew best how to defend and
how to stock such places. In the upland countries men took shelter on
the high hills; but here, when an enemy approached, men threw
themselves within these flats and enclosures in the midst of the
waters, taking with them their herds and flocks, and their hooks and
nets for fishing, and their snares for fowling. At the first sound of
this Norman invasion, and before any Saxon lord or knight fled for
refuge into the Isle of Ely, the people of the country drove their
fattening beeves into the enclosed but wide space which afterwards came
to be called the Camp, but which for a long season bore rather the
appearance of a grazing-field than that of a place of arms; and even
when the Saxon lords and knights came and gathered together their armed
followers on that green grassy spot, the space was so wide that the
cattle were left to remain where they were, and the many cowherds and
shepherds were mixed with the Saxon soldiery, each by times doing the
duty of the other; and now, when well-nigh everything else was consumed
and gone, there remained within the broad limits of the Camp great
droves of the finest and fattest cattle.
There was no moon, and the night was of the darkest, when Elfric
approached the Camp, flying along the ground like a lapwing. As watches
were set, and as the men were vigilant as became the soldiers of the
Lord of Brunn, he was challenged sundry times before he reached his
lord’s tent. Hereward was asleep, but at the voice and tidings of his
sword-bearer he was presently up and armed, and ready to go the round
of the Camp.
“Elfric,” said Hereward, “if the traitorous monks of Ely shall have
called in their own people, who formed our outer guard, and have given
the Normans the clue to the watery labyrinth which has been our
strength and safety so long, we may still hold out against more than
one assault behind the embankments of this Camp, provided only our
people do not get panic-stricken by the suddenness of the attack, and
in the darkness of this night. Would that it were morning! But come
what may, there is one comfort: we shall have our harness on our backs
before the fight begins!”
And having so said, the Lord of Brunn, followed by his sword-bearer,
went from post to post to bid the men be on the alert, and from tent to
tent, or from hut to hut, to rouse the sleeping chiefs to tell them
that the monks of Ely were traitors to the good cause, and that the
Normans were coming; and when this was done, Hereward, with an
unperturbed spirit, and with all that knowledge of war which he had
acquired beyond sea, and from the knowing Salernitan, and from all that
quickness which nature had given him, laid down his plan for defending
the interior of the Camp, and appointed every chief to the post he
should hold, speaking cheerfully to them all, and telling them that
five years had passed since the battle of Hastings, and that England
was not conquered yet; and that if the Normans should be foiled in this
attack, their loss would be terrible, their retreat across the fens
almost impracticable.
By the time all this was said and done it was more than two hours after
the midnight hour, and it had scarcely been done ere the war-cry of the
Normans was heard close under the south-western face of the Camp. By
using the name of the Abbat Thurstan, the false prior had made the
people of the abbey abandon the fords in that direction; and by the
same false prior’s procurement, a traitorous fenner had guided the
Normans through the labyrinth. But there was more fatal mischief yet to
proceed from the same dark cauldron and source of evil. Some other
traitor, serving among the retainers of the abbey that had been left
quartered in the Camp, because they could not be withdrawn without Lord
Hereward’s order set up the cry that the Saxons were all betrayed, and
that the Normans had gotten into the Camp; and thereupon the poor
bewildered wights, who knew but too well that the Norman war-cry could
be heard where it was heard only through treachery, fell into disorder
and dismay, and abandoning the post which they had been appointed to
hold, and disregarding the voice of their commander, they fled across
the Camp, shouting, “Treason! treason! Fly, Saxons, fly!”
The Normans began to enter the Camp in overpowering numbers; and
although the first glimmerings of day began to be seen from the east,
it was still so dark that it was hard to distinguish between friend and
foe. But Hereward soon found himself at the spot where the danger was
greatest; and the foe, who had not yet recovered from the dread of his
name, halted at the shouts of “Hereward for England!” and were soon
driven out of the Camp, with a great slaughter. Whilst this was doing
on the south-western side, another host of Normans, under the same
traitorous guidance, got round towards the north face of the Camp, and
after some hard fighting, got over the embankment, and into the Camp.
Leaving a brave old Saxon earl and his people to keep the ground he had
recovered, Hereward rushed with Elfric and his own choice band to the
northern side; and although the distance was considerable, his
battle-axe was ringing among the Normans there before they had found
time to form themselves in good fighting order. But Odo, the fighting
bishop, was among these Normans; and thus knights and men-at-arms
fought most valiantly, and held the ground they had gained for a long
time. Nevertheless, just as the rising sun was shining on the tower of
Ely Abbey, Odo and his host, or such of his host as survived, retreated
the way they had come; but while they were in the act of retreating,
Duke William led in person an assault on another part of the Camp; and
on the south-west side, the brave old Saxon earl being slain, his men
gave way, and the Normans again rushed in on that side. Also, and at
nearly the same instant of time, Norman spears were discerned coming
round upon the Camp from other quarters. As he paused to deliberate
whither he should first direct his steps, and as he shook the blood
from the blade and shaft of his battle-axe—a ponderous weapon which no
other man then in England could wield—the Lord of Brunn, still looking
serenely, bespoke his sword-bearer, “May God defend the house of Ely
and the Lord Abbat; but the knavish monks have done the work of
treachery very completely! They must have made known unto the Normans
all the perilous passages of the fens. We are beset all about! But we
must even drive the Normans back again. Numerous are they, yet their
knights love not to fight on foot, and they can have brought few horses
or none across the swamps. But Elfric, my man, thou art bleeding! Art
much hurt?”
Now, although Elfric had got an ugly cut upon his brow, he smiled, and
said, “’Tis nothing, good my Lord: ’tis only a scratch from the sharp
end of Bishop Odo’s pastoral crook. If he had not been so timeously
succoured, I would have cleft his shaven crown in spite of his steel
cap, or have made him a prisoner!”
When this was said, and when the keen eye of Hereward had made survey
of the whole field, he and his sword-bearer, and all his matchless
band, who had been trained to war in a hundred fights and surprises,
rushed towards the spot where floated the proud banner of Duke William.
They were soon upon that prime of the Norman army; and then was seen
how the Lord of Brunn and his Saxons true bore them in the brunt of
war. Thunder the battle-axes; gride the heavy swords! Broad shields are
shivered, and the Norman left arms that bore them are lopped off like
hazel twigs; helms are broken, and corslets reft in twain; and still
this true Saxon band shouted, “Holy rood! holy rood! Out! out! Get ye
out, Normans! Hereward for England! Saxons, remember Hastings!” Stout
young Raoul of Caen, the page that carried the arms and the shield
(_arma ac scuta_) of the Duke, was slain by Hereward’s sword-bearer;
and where Raoul met his untimely death, other Normans perished or bled.
Duke William shouted, “Notre Dame! Notre Dame! Dieu aide! Dieu aide!”
but was forced to give ground, and the Duke retreated beyond the
earth-raised mound or great embankment which girded the Camp on that
side.
“The patrimony of Saint Etheldreda is not easy to conquer! We have
beaten off the two brothers!” Thus spoke Elfric.
“So far is well,” quoth Hereward! “but what is this I see and hear?
What are those cravens doing in the centre of the Camp? By the Lord of
Hosts, some of them be throwing down their weapons, and crying for
quarter! Wipe the blood from out thine eyes, Elfric; keep close to my
side, and come on, brave men all!”
And away from the earth-raised mound, over which he had driven the
Norman Duke, went the Lord of Brunn with his warrior band; and then was
the fight renewed in the midst of the Camp, where some of the
disheartened Saxons were using all the French they knew in crying,
“Misericorde! misericorde! Grace! grace!”
“Fools!” shouted the Lord of Brunn, “these Normans will show ye no
mercy! There is no grace for ye but in your own swords!” And then the
Saxons took heart again, and rallying round Hereward, they soon charged
the foe, and fought them hand to hand. In their turn the Normans began
to yield, and to cry for quarter; but this band in the centre was
supported by another and another; and soon Duke William, and that
ungodly bishop, his brother, came back into the interior of the Camp,
with many knights and men-at-arms that had not yet tasted the sharpness
of the Saxon steel, and that were all fresh for the combat. Louder and
louder waxed the war-cry on either side, and terrible and strange
became the scene within the wide Camp; for the cattle, scared by the
loud noise, and by the clash and the glittering of arms, were running
wildly about the Camp in the midst of the combatants; and the fierce
bulls of the fens, lashing themselves into furor, and turning up the
soil with their horns, came careering down, and breaking through the
serried lines of the invaders; and many a Norman was made to feel that
his mail jacket was but a poor defence against the sharp horns of the
bull that pastured on the patrimony of Saint Etheldreda. Also rose
there to heaven a dreadful rugitus, or roaring, mixed with the loud
bewailing and the shrieks of timid herdsmen, and of women and children;
and the wives and children of the Saxons ran about the Camp, seeking
for a place of safety, and finding none. The Saxon warriors were now
falling fast, but the Normans fell also; and victory was still
doubtful, when loud shouts were heard, and another forest of lances was
seen coming down on the Camp from the south; and upon this, one entire
body of the Saxon host threw down their arms, and surrendered
themselves as prisoners.
Hereward, who was leaning upon his battle-axe, and wiping the sweat
from his brow, said to his sword-bearer, “This is a sad sight!”
“A sad sight and a shameful,” quoth Elfric; “but there are Saxons still
that are not craven; Here our lines be all unbroken.”
“And so will we yet fight on,” quoth Hereward.
But the Lord of Brunn had scarcely said the words when a number of
Saxon lords, old dwellers in the Camp of Refuge, and men that had
fought at Hastings, and in many a battle since, gathered round Lord
Hereward, and threw their swords and battle-axes and dinted shields
upon the ground, and told him that the fight was lost, and that (_de
communi concilio magnatum_), with the common advice and consent of the
magnates, they had all determined to surrender upon quarter, and take
the King’s peace.
Quoth the Lord of Brunn, “Ye will not do the thing ye name! or, an ye
do it, bitterly will ye rue it! Your names be all down in a book of
doom: the Normans will mutilate and butcher ye all! Better that ye die
fighting! The battle is not lost, if ye will but think it is not. I was
with King Harold at the battle by Stamford Bridge, and in a worse
plight than now; and yet on that day we conquered. So, up hearts, my
Saxon lords and thanes! Let us make one charge more for King Harold and
the liberties of England! Nay, we will make a score good charges ere we
die!”
But the Magnates would not be heartened, nor take up the shields and
the arms they had thrown down; and when the reinforced battalia of the
Norman centre formed once more into line, and levelled their spears,
and when the rest of that countless Norman host began to close round
the Saxon army in the midst of the Camp, all the fighting men that
obeyed these Saxon lords threw down their arms, and cried for
quarter—for forgiveness and mercy!
Sad and sick was the heart of the Lord of Brunn; but this lasted but
for a moment, and his eye was bright and his face joyous as he shouted
to Elfric and the rest of his own devoted band, “Let the fools that
court dishonour and mutilation, and an opprobrious grave, stay here and
yield; but let those who would live in freedom or die with honour
follow me! We will cut our way out of this foully betrayed Camp, and
find another Camp of Refuge where there be no monks of Ely for
neighbours!”
And at these good words three hundred stout Saxons and more formed
themselves into a compact column, and the Lord of Brunn, with Elfric by
his side, put himself in the head of the column, and the band shouted
again, “Hereward for England! Saxons, remember Hastings!” Then were
heard the voices of command all along the different Norman lines, and
from the right and from the left, from behind and from before, those
lines began to move and to close, and to form living barriers and
hedgerows of lances on every side: and next, near voices were heard
offering fifty marks of gold to the man that should slay or seize the
traitor Hereward. But the Norman was not yet born that could withstand
the battle-axe of the Lord of Brunn: and so the Norman lines yielded to
his charge, and so he led his three hundred Saxons and more
triumphantly out of the Camp and across the fens—yea, over rivers and
streams and many waters, where Normans could not follow—until they
came into a thick wood of willows, where they found the six good
cloister-monks and the ten good lay-brothers who had fled with Elfric
from Ely Abbey, and the party of true men from Turbutsey, who had
carried with them the corn, meal, and wine, and likewise the body of
Girolamo of Salerno. Loudly was the Lord of Brunn greeted by every man
that was in the wood. The first thing that was done after his coming
was to bury the Salernitan. Near the edge of the wood, and by the side
of a stream, the monks of Ely of the old time had built a small
mass-house for the conveniency of the souls of some of the fenners, who
could not always quit their fishing and fowling and go so far as the
abbey church; and on a green dry hillock, at the back of the
mass-house, there was a small cœmeterium holding the wattled graves of
not a few of the fenners.
“This ground,” said Father Celred, “is consecrated ground; the Normans
will not soon get hither, and we will leave no cross and make no sign
to show the stranger’s grave; and every man here is too true a man ever
to betray the secret to the Normans.”
“And when better days come, we will provide some suitable monument for
the stranger who died in fighting for the Saxon. Girolamo, thou art
happy in that thou hast not lived to see this foul morning! Father
Celred, fathers all, I warrant ye he was a true son of the church, and
died a good Christian. So withhold not to do the rites and give him
Christian burial.”
Thus spake the Lord of Brunn as he gazed upon the awfully placid face
of the Salernitan, whose body lay uncovered upon a rustic bier: and the
good monks all said that they doubted not, and would never doubt, the
word of Lord Hereward. And the Saxon hinds, under the direction of
Elfric, rapidly scooped out a grave on the sunniest side of the green
hillock, on the side which faced the south and was turned toward the
sunny land in which the stranger was born; and when the grave was made,
Hereward took his own good mantle from his shoulders and piously
wrapped it round the dead body to serve it instead of shroud and
coffin, which could not be had; and then Father Celred blessed the
grave, and the lay-brothers laid the body reverentially in it; and then
all the monks that had come from Ely said the service for the dead and
chanted the _De Profundis_. Next the earth was thrown in, and the green
sods, which had been removed carefully and piecemeal, were laid upon
the surface and joined together so as to unite and grow together in a
few days, making the spot look like the rest of the sward: and thus,
without mound or withy-bound hillock, without a stone or a cross, was
left all that could die of Girolamo the Salernitan—far, far, far away
from the land of his birth and of his love. Yet was his lowly grave not
unhonoured.
After these sad offices, Hereward and his party refreshed themselves
with wine and bread, and renewed their march, going in the direction of
the river Welland and the succursal cell at Spalding.[242]
And, meanwhile, how fared it with the Saxon idiots in the Camp who had
cast down their weapons, and trusted to Norman mercy and to Norman
promises?—How fared it? In sooth it fared with them as the Lord of
Brunn had foretold, and as it ever hath fared with men that surrendered
when they ought to have fought on. The conquerors, in summing up the
amount of the harm they did to the Camp of Refuge, counted not the
lives of the churls and serfs—which went for nothing in their
eyes—but they put down that they slew, after the fight was over, of
Saxon nobles and knights and fighting-men of gentle blood, more than a
thousand. But happy those who were slain outright! A thousandfold worse
the fate of those that were let live: their right hands and their right
feet were cut off, their eyes were put out, and they were cast upon the
wide world to starve, or were thrown into loathsome dungeons to rot, or
transported beyond the seas to exhibit their misery to the scornful
eyes of the people of Normandie and Anjou, to remain living monuments
of Duke William’s vengeance, and to be a terror to such as presumed to
dispute his authority. In this way some of the noblest of the land were
sent into Normandie. Egelwin, the good Bishop of Durham, being found in
the Camp, was sent a close prisoner to Abingdon, where he died shortly
after of a broken heart. Never yet heard we of a fight more noble than
that of the Camp of Refuge, while the Lord of Brunn was there and the
Saxons in heart to fight; and never yet was there a sadder scene than
that which followed upon his departure thence! Except cattle and sheep,
and armour and arms, and human bodies to hack and destroy, the Normans
found scarcely anything in the Camp, wherein they had expected to make
great booty.
And how fared it with the guilty prior and the traitorous monks of Ely?
Did they profit by their great treason? Were peace and joy their lot
when the blood of their countrymen had been poured out like water? Did
they and their house thrive after all that torture and horror in the
Camp? Not so! not so! Those who deal in treachery reap treachery for
their reward; and all men hate and scorn even the traitors who have
most served them. Before the butchery in the Camp was well over, a
great band of Normans ran to the abbey and took forcible possession of
it, and beat and reviled the monks because they did not bring forth the
money and the bread and wine which they had not to give; and these rude
soldiers lodged themselves in the house, and turned all the monks into
the barns and outhouses—all but a few, who remonstrated and resisted,
and who where therefore thrown into that noxious prison underground
into which they had cast Elfric the night before. And on the morrow of
the fight in the Camp, the Norman Duke[243] himself went up to the
abbey with all his great chiefs, saying that he would pay his devotions
at the shrine of St. Etheldreda, albeit she was but a Saxon saint. And
William did go into the church, and kneel at the shrine of the saint.
Yea, he did more than this, for he laid his offering upon the shrine.
But what was the princely offering of this great prince who ruled on
both sides of the sea?—It was just one single mark of gold,[244] and
that a mark which had been in the hands of the Jews and clipped! And
when he had made this splendid donation, he called the monks together
in the hall, and told them that they must pay unto him a thousand marks
of gold as the price of his pardon for the long rebellion they had been
in. And when the chapfallen chamberlain said, and said truly, that
there was no money in the house, a sneering Norman knight told him that
there were Jews at Norwich, and that the monks must get money by
pledging their lands and by giving bonds to the Israelites. The good
Abbat Thurstan, being still sick in his bed, escaped the sight of much
of this woe: but when the prior knelt at the foot of Duke William, and
said that he trusted he would be merciful to the ruined house, and
continue him as the head of it, and sanction his election by the
brotherhood as lord abbat, the Duke swore his great oath, “By the
splendour of God’s face,” that he was not so minded; and that Abbat
Thurstan should be abbat still, inasmuch as he was a man of noble birth
and of a noble heart. Sundry great Saxon lords, who had long since made
their peace with the Norman, had spoken well for the high-born
Thurstan; but that which decided the mind of Duke William was the
reflection that, if so true and stout a man as Thurstan promised him
his allegiance, he would prove true to his promise at whatsoever
crisis; while no faith or trust could be put in the promises and vows
of such a man as the prior. And thus Thurstan[245] was told on his
sick-bed that his rule was restored, and that he should be allowed to
appoint and have a new set of officials, instead of the prior, the
chamberlain, the sacrist and sub-sacrist the cellarer, and all the rest
that had been rebellious and traitorous unto him—provided only that he
would promise to be at peace with the Normans. And, after Thurstan had
been most solemnly assured by some of the Saxon thanes who came to the
abbey with the Conqueror, that King Harold, his benefactor, was
assuredly dead, and lay buried in Waltham Abbey, and that good terms
would be granted to his friend my Lord of Brunn if he would but cease
the hopeless contest, Thurstan promised to live in peace and to think
no more of resistance: and before Duke William departed from the house
of Ely the lord abbat saluted him as King of England, and put his hand
into his hand as a token and pledge that he was and would be true and
liege man unto him. It cost his Saxon heart a pang which almost made it
crack; but having thus pledged himself, nothing upon earth, being
earthly, would ever make Thurstan untrue to the Norman.
In leaving the abbey, the Conqueror did not remove with him all the
Normans. On the contrary, he called up still more knights and
men-at-arms, and ordered them all to quarter themselves upon the
monks, and be by them entertained with meat, drink, and pay, as well
as lodging.[246] The Norman knights and soldiers kept possession of
the best parts of the house, respecting only the inner apartments of
the restored abbat: the knights suspended their arms and shields in
the great hall, where the arms of the Saxon thanes had lately hung,
and in the refectory at every meal-time a hungry Norman soldier was
seated by the side of every monk. This was a strange and unseemly
sight to see in the common hall of so noble and once so religious a
house; but it was the will of the Conqueror that it should be so, and
the monks had brought down all these mischiefs upon their own heads.
From the lands and revenues especially appertaining to Thurstan as
lord abbat, the Norman knights were not allowed to take much; but upon
those appertaining to the monks in common, they fell without
restriction and without remorse, seizing a manor here and a manor
there, and getting them converted into heritable property, to their
heirs for ever, by grant and fief-charter from Duke William. And while
so many broad hides were taken from them for good, the monks were
compelled to pledge other lands, and the very revenues of the shrines,
in order to pay the imposed fine of a thousand marks, and in order to
find meat and drink, and whatsoever else was demanded by their
rapacious guests. Sad grew the monks of Ely, and every day thinner.
The knights and men-at-arms ever helped themselves first, and very
often left their unwilling hosts nothing to eat. The proverb about the
glorious feast of the monks of Ely seemed to have become nothing but a
proverb, or the mere legend of a state of happiness which had passed
away never to return. Greater still had been the woes of the monks if
the restored abbat had been prone to spite and vengeance, for the
Normans were willing to put a rod of iron in his hands, and would have
rejoiced to see him use it; but Thurstan had a forgiving heart, and
when he had deprived the worst of the officials of their offices, and
had gotten the prior and the chamberlain removed to other houses far
away from the Isle of Ely, he took pity upon all the rest of the
convent, and did what in him lay to comfort them in their afflictions,
and to supply their wants from his own store. Thus lived the monks,
and thus the abbat, for about the space of three years: at the end of
that time the good old Thurstan died, and was interred in the chancel
among his mitred predecessors.[247] And then still worse befel the
monks; for Duke William, or his brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, brought
over one of their most fighting and turbulent monks from Normandie,
and made him lord abbat of Ely;[248] and this new abbat did not cease
from persecuting the Saxon monks until two-thirds of them were in
their graves, and their places supplied by French monks. These were
the things which befel the convent after their foul rebellion against
Abbat Thurstan, and their fouler betrayal of the Camp of Refuge.