HEREWARD STILL FIGHTS.
At the return of spring, Duke William being at Warwick Castle,[254] on
the pleasant river Avon, gave forth his mandate for the collecting of a
great army to proceed against the Lord of Brunn. Much had it vexed and
grieved his proud soul that Hereward should have escaped from the Camp
of Refuge in the Isle of Ely, and have made his name terrible in other
parts: for, during the winter, Peterborough and Stamford—aye, Grantham
and Newark—had heard the war-cry of the Lord of Brunn, and the Normans
there had been plundered by his band; and further still, where
Nottingham looks down upon Trent, Hereward had carried his successful
foray. “By the splendour,” quoth Duke William, as he thought upon those
things, “I would give back all the Saxon lives that were taken near Ely
for the life of this one man, who hath more power of mischief in him
than all the Saxons put together. Or I would give to him the broadest
earldom in all England if he would but submit and be my liege-man! I
need such a soldier, for the men that followed me from Normandie are
become all rich in this fat land, and risk not themselves in battle as
they used to do when their fortunes were to make by sword and lance.
This shall be thought of again, albeit my half-brother Odo and all my
Normans have vowed the death of that terrible Lord of Brunn, and think
that every hide of land left to a Saxon is so much robbed from them.”
During the spring months another mighty host was collected from out of
the several shires of Huntingdon, Cam-Bridge, Leicester, Nottingham,
Derby, Warwick, and others; and viscomtes and comtes, and knights of
great fame and long experience in war, were placed in command, and were
ordered to encompass the Lord of Brunn, and make an end of him or of
his resistance. No stores were spared; nothing was spared that was
thought likely to forward the one great object. Scarcely had William
made a greater array of strength when he first landed at Pevensey, to
march against King Harold at Hastings.
But Hereward, that cunning captain and excellent soldier, _inclytus
miles_, was not idle during this season: he went hither and thither
throughout the country on the Wash and the whole fen country, calling
upon the fenners to be steady and true to him and their native land;
and to get their bows and arrows ready, and to sharpen such swords and
axes, or bill-hooks and spear-heads, as they might have; and to be ever
in a state of readiness to fight, if fighting could stead them, or to
retreat with their cattle into the inaccessible places and the
labyrinths among the waters and the meres. And the wandering menestrels
and gleemen, who had been driven hitherward from all other parts of
England, with Elfric, who was as good a gleemen as any of the number,
went from one township in the fens to another, singing the Saxon songs
which did honour to the Lord of Brunn, and told how often he had
prevailed in fight over the Norman invaders. And at the sound of these
songs the fenners gave up their peaceful occupations and prepared for
war; while many hundreds went at once to join the standard of the Lord
of Brunn. The men of Hoiland mounted themselves on their tall stilts,
and came wading across marsh and mere unto the manor-house of Spalding;
others came thither in their light skerries; others came on foot, with
their fen-poles in their hands, leaping such waters and drains as could
be leaped, and swimming across the rest like the water-fowls of the
fens. Loud blew the Saxon horn everywhere: the monks of Ely could hear
it in their cells by night, and their guests the Norman warriors, who
ventured not to come forth beyond Hadenham or Turbutsey, could hear it
in the hall or refectory by day. The country seemed all alive and
stirring, and full of strange sights: but the strangest sight of all
was that of the men from the shores of the Wash marching in troops on
their high stilts, carrying their bows and quivers and swords and pikes
at their backs, and looking, at a distance, with their long wooden
shanks and their bodies propped in the air, like troops of giant cranes
or herons. And ever as they went, and whether they went upon stilts or
upon their own feet, or in flitting skerries, or in heavier and slower
boats, these brave fenners sung in chorus the good songs which they had
learned from the gleemen. In this wise the Lord of Brunn had a great
force collected and in arms by the time of summer, when the waters had
abated and the green fields were showing themselves, and the Normans
were beginning to march, in the fantastic hope of encircling Hereward
as hunters gird in a beast of prey. There were no traitors here, as at
Ely, to show the short and safe ways across the fens; and Ivo
Taille-Bois, the only Norman chief that could be said to know a little
of the wild and difficult country, was a close prisoner in the house at
Spalding, where he tried to beguile the tedium of his captivity by
playing almost constantly at dice with the two Norman knights who had
been captured with him in the marsh. Add to all this that the Normans,
who had not before tried what it was to make war in the fens, had a
contempt of their enemy, and a measureless confidence in their own
skill and prowess, and it will be understood that their discomfiture
was unavoidable. They came down from the upland country in separate
bodies, and towards points far apart; and before they could place
themselves, or contract their intended circle and give the hand to one
another, Hereward attacked them separately, and beat them one by one.
Nor did the Normans fare much better when they gave up their plan of
circle and united their forces in one head. The Lord of Brunn, who had
counted upon being driven from Spalding into the wilderness, found not
only that he could maintain himself there, but that he could also hold
his own good house at Brunn; for, when the Norman host marched upon
that manor, they fell into an ambuscade he had laid for them, and
suffered both loss and shame, and then fled from an enemy they had
hardly seen; for the fenners had willow-trees for their shields, or
they had bent their bows in the midst of the tall growing rushes. Thus
passed the summer months; and Duke William[255] was still on the
northern borders, fighting against Malcolm Caenmore; and as that Scots
war became more and more obstinate, the Duke was compelled to call to
his aid nearly the whole of his splendid chivalry, and almost every
Norman foot-soldier that he could prudently withdraw from England. With
such mighty forces Duke William marched from the left bank of the Tweed
to end of the Frith of Forth, and all through the Lothians; and
thereupon the Scots king, albeit he would not deliver up the Saxon
nobles who had taken refuge at his court, came and agreed with Duke
William, and delivered hostages, and promised to be his man. But by
this time another year was spent, and the fens were again
impracticable; and, moreover, the Norman conqueror was compelled to
tarry long at Durham, in order to settle the North country. Before the
quinzaine of this Nativity the goodly stock of Lord Hereward was
increased by the birth of a daughter, and Elfric was a father. The two
children were baptized on the same day; and at the feast, which was
given in the same hall at Spalding wherein Ivo Taille-Bois and the
Ladie Lucia had given their great feast for the christening of their
first-born, the merry sword-bearer said, “Well, we be still here! and
it is now my opinion that I shall be a grandfather before the Normans
shall drive us out of the fens!” The carefully guarded Norman prisoners
of rank and note were very sad; but Ivo Taille-Bois was the saddest of
them all on this festal day, for his wife and child were far away from
him, living under the protection of the primate Lanfranc at Canterbury,
and, much as he had tried, he could get no news of them; nor could he
see any prospect of regaining his liberty, inasmuch as the Lord of
Brunn declared that he wanted not money, and was determined to keep him
and his men as hostages.
With another year there came fresh preparation for invading the fen
country, and giving the deathblow to Saxon liberty by destroying
Hereward. But again the saints befriended the last of the Saxons, for
great commotions burst out in Normandie, and in the county of Maine the
people rose to a man against the tyrannies and oppressions of Duke
William;[256] and thus the Conqueror was constrained to pass over into
France with all the troops he could collect. Before he went he sent
once more to offer a free _pardon_ to the Lord of Brunn and a few of
his adherents; but Hereward said that, in fighting for the liberties
and old laws of his country, he had not done that which called for
pardon: and as the terms proposed were otherwise inadmissible, the Lord
of Brunn had rejected them all, and had told the proud Duke that he
would yet trust to his sword, and to the brave fenners, and to the
inexpungnable country he had so long occupied. Aided by many thousands
of native English soldiers whom he carried over with him into Normandie
and Maine, and who there fought most valorously for him, Duke William
conquered the men of Maine and reduced them to his obedience. But this
occupied him many months; and when he returned into England, it was to
put down another insurrection and a wide-spread conspiracy, which were
headed not by the Saxon nobles, but by Roger Fitz-Osborne, Raoul de
Gael, and other nobles of Norman or French birth, who were not
satisfied with the vast estates and high titles they had obtained in
England, but wanted more, and had long been saying that William the
Bastard was a tyrant in odium with all men, and that his death would
gladden their hearts. Battles were fought and sieges were made before
the Duke had triumphed over this confederacy; and while he was thus
fighting and laying sieges, the Lord of Brunn reigned as a king in the
fen country, and kept all the countries thereunto adjacent in a state
of constant alarm. The herds and flocks of Hereward and his associates
increased and multiplied the while; the drained and enclosed grounds
gave their bountiful crops; the rivers and meres seemed more than ever
to abound with fish and wild-fowl; and whatsoever else was wanted was
supplied by successful forays to the upland countries and to the
sea-coasts: so great was the plenty, that even the poor bondmen often
ate wheaten bread—white loaves which might have been put upon the
table of my Lord Abbat of Ely. The Ladie Alftrude and the wife of the
sword-bearer were again mothers (so gracious were the saints unto
them!); and Elfric’s first-born son was grown big enough to show a
marvellous similitude to his father, _specialiter_ about the laughing
mouth and merry eyes.
Having nothing else upon hand for that present, William sent another
great army to try their fortunes in the fen country; and (grieves me to
say!) many of these soldiers were native English, and some few of them
men from the Isle of Ely, who had experience in fen-warfare. Now was
the manor-house of Brunn retaken, and now was Lord Hereward compelled
to abandon Spalding, and to get him gone into the heart of Lincolnshire
with his family and his people, and all his friends, and his Norman
prisoners; but he drove off his cattle with him, and he found other
herds where he went; and he found, moreover, subjugated townships and
Norman town-governors unprepared to resist him. Some men do say that he
had with him scant three hundred fighting men; but he flitted so
rapidly from place to place, and so multiplied his attacks, that the
Normans ever thought he had many thousands. And when the great Norman
army marched against him in Lindsey in the north, Hereward doubled
them, and marched back to the south into Kesteven; and when they came
to look for him in Kesteven, either he was back in Lindsey, or
continuing his course to the south, he got him into Hoiland and that
flooded country near the Wash, where the Normans never could penetrate,
and where every man that lived and went upon tall stilts was his liege
man. Here, in Hoiland, and in perfect safety, chiefly abided the Ladie
Alftrude, and the women and children, and the Norman prisoners. The
name of the Lord of Brunn was more than ever sounded throughout broad
England, and from the Wash to the Humber it was a name of dread to all
Normans and friends of Normans. Every feat of arms or skilful stratagem
inspired some new song or tale; and the gleemen were never idle, and
were never unhonoured.