!r^Af.T>rM-'^-.W.lfl,=:l.^v^,-!Vi;..,.?.^:iy,>l^!^^:)k;.j^,^^,; - THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES No GIFT OF =^ California State Librarv Frtim ^S Se agister of all books losiicii aui. .ti..ii.vv , „„„._._y. _ -_, — ^Jmbers of the Legislature, or its officers, shall be V^rarned at the close of the session. If any person injure or fail to return any 4fW»k taken from the Library, he shall forfeit and pay to the Librarian, for-tMpicnefit of the Libraryi three times the value thereof; and before the ContMyier shah isstie his warrant in favor o'" any member or officer of the Legislature, or of this State, for his per dicra, allowance, or salary, he shall be satisfied that such member or officer has returned all books taken out of the Library by him, and has settled all accounts for injuring such books or otherwise. Sec. 15. Books may be taken from the Library by the members of the Legislature and its officers during the sessi(m of the same, and at any time by the Governor and the officers of the Executive Department of this State who are required to keep their offices at the seat of government, the .Justices of the Supreme Court, the Attorney-General and the Trustees of the Library. 55hl I v-1 tntc Lihrury, WT i- 1 f^-T^ZIzl^ '/>r^>si BY THE SAME AUTHOR. TWO YEARS AGO. 1 voL 12mo. SIR WALTER RALEIGH AND HIS TIME, with otheb Mis- CELLAKEES. 1 YOl. 12mO. NEW MISCELLANIES. 1 toI. 12mo. POEMS. 1 vol. 16mo. GLAUCUS ; ob, The Wonders op the Shobb. 1 toI. I6mo. THE HEROES ; ob, Gbeek Faibt Tales fob mt Childbbn. With niastrations bj the Author. 1 vol. 16mo. TICZNOR AWT) FIELDS, Publishers. HEEEWARD, THE LAST OF THE ENGLISH CHARLES KINGSLEY, AUTHOR OF "two YKABS AGO," ETC. BOSTON: TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 1866. A. authob's edition. Ukivbrsity Press : Welch, BiciBLoW, ft 66., Cambriocs. I 9 G ^^ ^ CONT>Er;NTS. Paob PRELUDE 1 (JUPTEg I. How HeBEWAED was outlawed, and went NOETH to 9EEK HIS Fortunes 11 II. How Herewaed slew the Bear 36 in. How Hereward succored a Princess of Cornwall . . 46 IV. How Hereward took Service with Ranald, King of Wa- teeford 62 V. How Hereward succored the Princess of Cornwall a second Time . . 73 VI. How Hereward was wrecked upon the Flanders Shore 80 Vn. How Hereward went to the War at Guisnes ... 92 Vni. How A FAIR Lady exercised the Mechanical Art to win Hereward's Love 97 IX. How Hereward went to the War in Scaldmariland . 102 X. How Hereward won the Magic Armor . . . . 108 XI. How the Hollanders took Hereward for a Magician 119 Xn. How Hereward turned Berserk ...... 120 XIII. How Hereward won Mare Swallow .... 126 XIV. How Hereward rode into Bruges uke a Beggar-Man . 133" XV. How Earl Tosti Godwinsson came to St. Omeh . . 138 XVI. How Hereward was asked to slay an old Comrade . 147 ■ XVn. How Hereward took the News from Stanford Brioo AND Hastings 154 ■^ XVin. How Earl Godwin's Widow came to St. Omeb . . 168 ,j^ XIX. How Hereward cleared Bourne of Frenchmen . . 176 C XX. How Hereward was made a Knight after the Fashion OF THE English 187 XXI. How Ivo Taillebois marched out of Spalding Town . 198 ., XXn. How Hebeward sailed fob England oncb and fob all . 205 832473 IV xxni. XXIV. XXV. XXVI. XXVII. XXVIII. XXIX. XXX. XXXI. XXXII. XXXIII. XXXIV. XXXV. XXXVI. XXXVII. XXXVIII. XXXIX. XL.- XLI. XLII. XLIU. CONTENTS. How Herkwaed gathered an Army .... 211 How Archbishop Aldred died of Sorrow. . . 226 How Hekeward found a wiser Man in England than Himself 230 How Hereward fulfilled his Words to the Prior of the Golden Borough 239 How they held a great Meeting in the Hall of Ely 258 How THEY fought AT Aldreth 263 How Sir Dade brought News from Ely . . . 269 How Hereward played the Potter j and how he CHEATED the KiNG 275 How they fought again at Aldreth .... 287 How King William took Counsel of a Churchmau . 293 How the Monks of Ely did after their Kind . . 305 How Hereward went to the Greenwoop . . . 314 How Abbot Thorold was put to Ransom . . . 823 How Alftruda wrote to Hereward .... 833 How Hereward lost Sword Brain-biter . . . 852 How Hereward came in to the King .... 356 How TORFRIDA confessed THAT SHE HAD BEEN INSPIRED BY THE Devil . . . . . . . . . 362 How Hereward began to get his Soul's Price . 368 How Earl Waltheof was made a Saint . . . 879 How Hereward got the Rest op his Soul's Price . 883 How Deeping Fen was drained ..... 891 HEEEWARD, THE LAST OF THE ENGLISH. PRELUDE. The heroic deeds of Highlanders, both in these islands and elsewhere, have been told in verse and prose, and not more often, nor more loudly, than they deserve. But we must remember, now and then, that there have been heroes likewise in the low- land and in the fen. Why, however, poets have so seldom sung of them ; why no historian, save Mr. Motley in his " Rise of the Dutch Republic," has condescended to tell the tale of their doughty deeds, is a question not difficult to answer. In the first place, they have been fewer in number. The low- lands of the world, being the richest spots, have been generally the soonest conquered, the soonest civilized, and therefore the soonest taken out of the sphere of romance and wild adventure, into that of order and law, hard work and common sense, as well as — too often — into the sphere of slavery, cowardice, luxury, and ignoble greed. The lowland populations, for the same reasons, have been generally the first to deteriorate, though not on account of the vices of civilization. The vices of iucivilization are far worse, and far more destructive of human life ; and it is just be- cause they are so, that rude tribes deteriorate physically less than polished nations. In the savage struggle for life, none but the strongest, healthiest, cunningest, have a chance of living, prosper- ing, and propagating their race. In the civilized state, on the contrary, the weakliest and the silliest, protected by law, religion, and humanity, have chance likewise, and transmit to their offspring their own weakliness or silliness. In these islands, for instance, at the time of the Norman Conquest, the average of man was doubt- less superior, both in body and mind, to the average of man now, simply because the weaklings could not have lived at all ; and the rich and delicate beauty, in which the women of the Eastern Counties still surpass all other races in^these isles, was doubtless far more common in proportion to the numbers of the population. 1 A 2 HEREWARD, THE LAST OF THE ENGLISH. Another reason -^ and one which every Scot will understand — why lowland heroes " carent vate sacro," is that the lowlands and those who live in them are wanting in the {)oetic and romantic elements. Tliere is in the lowland none of that background of the unknown, fantastic, magical, terrible, perpetually feeding curi- osity and wonder, which still remains in the Scottish highlands ; which, when it disappears from thence, will remain embalmed for- ever in the pages of Walter Scott. Against that half-magical background his heroes stand out in vivid relief; and justly so. It was not put there by him for stage purposes ; it was there as a fact ; and the men of whom he wrote were conscious of it, were moulded by it, were not ashamed of its influence. Nature among the mountains is too fierce, too strong, for man. He cannot con- quer her, and she avves him. He cannot dig down the cliffs, or chain the storm-blasts ; and his fear of them takes bodily shape : he begins to people the weird places of the earth with weird beings, and sees nixes in the dark linns as he fishes by night, dwarft in the caves where he digs, half-trembling, morsels of cop- per and iron for his weapons, witches and demons on the snow- 'blast which overwhelms his herd and his hut, and in the dark clouds which brood on the untrodden mountain-peak. He lives in fear : and yet, if he be a valiant-hearted man, his fears do him little harm. They may break out, at times, in witch-manias, with all their horrible suspicions, and thus breed cruelty, which is the child of fear: but on the whole they rather produce in man thoughtfulness, reverence, a sense, confused yet precious, of the boundless importance of the unseen world. His superstitions de- velop his imagination; the moving accidents of a wild liie call out in him sympathy and pathos ; and the mountaineer becomes instinctively a poet. The lowlander, on the other hand, has his own strength, his own " virtues, " or manfulnesses, in the good old sense of the word : but they are not for the most part picturesque or even poetical. He finds out, soon enough for his weal and his bane, tliat he is stronger tlian Nature: and right tyrannously and irreverently he lords it over her, clearing, delving, diking, building, without fear or shame. He knows of no natural force greater than himself, save an occasional thunder-storm ; and against that, as he grows more cunning, he insures his crops. Why should he reverence Nature? Let him use her, and eat. One cannot blame him. Man was sent into the world (so says the Scriptui-e) to fill and subdue the earth. But he was sent into the world for other pur poses, which the lowlander is but too apt to forget. With the awe of Nature, the awe of the unseen dies out in him. Meeting HEBEWAED, THE LAST OF THE ENGLISH. 3 "With no visible superior, he is apt to become not merely unpoeti- cal and irreverent, but somewhat of a sensualist and an atheist. The sense of the beautiful dies out in him more and more. He has little or nothing around liim to refine or lift up his soul ; and unless he meet with a religion, and with a civilization, whicli can deliver him, he may sink into that dull brutality which is too common among the lowest classes of the Engli-h lowlands ; and remain for generations gifted with the strength and industry of the ox, and with the courage of the lion, and, alas ! with the intel- lect of the former, and the self-restraint of the latter. But there may be a period in the liistory of a lowland race when they, too, become historic for a while. There was such a period for the men of the Eastern Counties ; for they proved it by their deeds. When the men of Wessex, the once conquering race of Britain, fell at Hastings once and for all, and struck no second blow, then the men of the Danelagh disdained to yield to the Norman in- vader. For seven long years they held their own, not knowing, like true Englishmen, when they were beaten ; and fought on desperate, till there were none left to fight. Their bones lay white on every island in the fens ; their corpses rotted on gallows beneath every Norman keep ; their few survivors crawled into monasteries, with eyes picked out, or hands and feet cut otf ; or took to the wild wood as strong outlaws, like tlieir successors and representatives, Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John, Adam Bell, and Ciym of the Cleugh, and WilHam of Cloudeslee. But they never really bent their necks to the Norman yoke ; they kept alive in their hearts that proud spirit of personal independence, which they brought with them from the moors of Denmark and the dales of Norway ; and they kept alive, too, though in abeyance for a while, those free institutions which were without a doubt the germs of our British liberty. They were a changed folk since first they settled in that Dane- lagh ; — since first in the days of King Beorhtric, " in the year 787, three ships of Northmen came from Hajretha land, and the King's reeve rode to the place, and would have driven them up to the King's town, for he knew not what men they were : but they slew him there and then " ; and after the Saxons and Angles began to find out to their bitter bale what men they were, those fierce Vikings out of the dark northeast. But they had long ceased to burn farms, sack convents, torture monks for .gold, and slay every human being they met, in mere Berserker lust of blood. No Barnakill could now earn his nick- name by entreating his comrades, as they tossed the children on their spear-pomts, to " Na kill the barns." Gradually they had 4 HEREWARD, THE LAST OF THE ENGLISH. settled down on the land, intermarried with the Angles and Saxons, and colonized all Ens;land north and east of Watling Street (a rough line from London to Chester), and the eastern lowlands of Scotland likewise. Gradually they had deserted Thor and Odin for "the White Christ"; had their own priests and bishops, and built their own minsters. The convents which the fathers had destroyed, the sons, or at least the grandsons, rebuilt; and often, casting away sword and axe, they entered them as monks themselves ; and Peterborough, Ely, and above all Crow- land, destroyed by them in Alfred's time with a horrible destruc- tion, had become their holy places, where they decked the altars with gold and jewels, with silks from the far East, and furs from the far North ; and where, as in sacred fortresses, they, and the liberty of England with them, made their last unavailing stand. For a while they had been lords of all England. The Anglo- Saxon race was wearing out. The men of Wessex, prifest-ridden, and enslaved by their own aristocracy, quailed before the free Norsemen, among whom was not a single serf. The God-de- scended line of Cerdic and Alfred was worn out. Vain, incapable, proHigate kings, the tools of such prelates as Odo and Dunstan, were no match for such wild heroes as Thorkill the tall, or Olaf Trygvasson, or Swend Forkbeard. The Danes had gradually colonized, not only their own Danelagh and Northurabria, but great part of Wessex. • Vast sums of Danegelt were yearly sent out of the country to bny off the fresh invasions which were perpetually threatened. Then Ethelred the Unready, Ethelred Evil-counsel, advised himself to fulfil his name, and the curse which Dunstan had pronounced against him at the baptismal font. By his counsel the men of Wessex rose against the unsuspecting Danes ; and on St. Brice's eve, A. D. 1002, murdered them all with tortures, man, woman, and child. It may be that they only did to the children as the fathers had done to them : but the deed was " worse than a crime ; it was a mistake." The Danes of the Danelagh and of Northumbria, their brothers of Denmark and Norway, the Orkneys and the east coast of Ireland, remained unharmed. A mighty host of Vikings poured from thence into England the very next year, under Swend Forkbeard and the great Canute ; and after thirteen fearful campaigns came the great battle of Assingdown in Essex, — where " Canute had the victory; and all the English nation fought against him ; and all the nobility of the English race was there destroyed." That same year saw the mysterious death of Edmund Iron- side, the last man of Cerdic's race worthy of the name. For the next twenty-five years, Danish kings ruled from the Forth to the Land's End. HKREWARD, THE LAST OF THE ENGLISH. 5 A noble figure he was, that great and wise Canute, the friend of the famous Godiva, and Leofric, Godiva's husband, and Si- ward Biorn, the conqueror of Macbeth : trying to expiate by jus- tice and mercy the dark deeds of his bloodstained youth ; trying (and not in vain) to blend the two races over which he ruled ; rebuilding the churches and monasteries which his father liad de- stroyed ; bringing back in state to Canterbury the body of Arch- bishop Elphege, — not unjustly called by the Saxons martyr and saint, — whom Tall Thorkill's men had murdered with beef bones and ox-skulls, because he would not give up to them the money destined for God's poor ; rebuking, as evei'y child has heard, his housecarles' flattery by setting his chair on the brink of the ris- ing tide ; and then laying his golden crown, in token of humility, on the high altar of Winchester, never to wear it more. In ^Winchester lie his bones unto this day, or what of them the civil wars have left : and by him lie the bones of his son Hardicanute, in whom, as in his half-brother Harold Harefoot before him, the Danish power fell to swift decay, by insolence and drink and civil war ; and with the Danish power England fell to pieces like\vi?e, Canute liad divided England into four great earldoms, each ruled, under him, by a jarl, or earl, a Danish, not a Saxon title. At his death in 1036, the earldoms of Northurabria and East Anglia — the more strictly Danish parts — were held by a true Danish hero, Siward Biorn, alias Digre the Stout, conqueror of Macbeth, and son of the fairy bear; proving his descent, men said, by his pointed and hairy ears. Mercia, the great central plateau of England, was held by Earl Leofric, husband of the famous Lady Godiva. Wessex, which Canute had at first kept in his awn hands, had passed into those of the furious Earl Godwin, the then ablest man in England. Possessed of boundless tact and cunning, gifted with an eloquence which seems, from the accounts remain- ing of it, to have been rather that of a Greek than an English- man ; himself of high — perhaps of royal — Sussex blood (for the story of his low birth seems a mere fable of his French enemies), and married first to Canute's sister, and then to his niece, he was fitted, alike by fortunes and by talents, to be the king-maker which he became. Such a system may have worked well as long as the brain of a hero was there to overlook it all. But when that brain was turned to dust, the history of P^ngland became, till the Norman Conquest, little more than the history of the rivalries of the two great houses of Godwin and Leofric. Leofric had the first success in king-making. He, though 6 HEEEWARD, THE LAST OF THE ENGLISH. bearing a Saxon name, was the champion o^ the Danish party, and of Canute's son, or reputed son, Harola Harefoot; and he succeeded, by the help of the " Thanes north of Thames," and the " Hthsmen of London," which city was more than half Danish in those days, in setting his puppet on the throne. But the blood of Canute had exhausted itself. Within seven years Harold Harefoot and Hardicanute, who succeeded him, had died as foully as they lived ; and Godwin's turn had come. He, though married to a Danish princess, and acknowledging his Danish connection by the Norse names which were borne by his three most famous sons, Harold, Sweyn, and Tostig, consli tuted himself the champion of the men of Wessex and the house of Cerdic. He had murdered, or at least caused to be murdered, horribly, Alfred the Etheling, King Ethelred's son and heir- apparent, when it seemed his interest to support the claims of Hardicanute against Harefoot ; he now found little difRculty in persuading his victim's younger brother to come to England, and become at once his king, his son-in-law and his puppet. Edward the Confessor, if we are to believe the monks whom he pampered, was naught but virtue and piety, meekness and magnanimity, — a model ruler of men. Such a model ruler he was, doubtless, as monks would be glad to see on every throne ; because while he rules his subjects, they rule him. No wonder, therefore, that (according to William of Mahnesbury) the happi- ness of his times (famed as he was both for miracles and the spirit of prophecy) " was revealed in a dream to Brithwin, Bishop of Wilton, who made it public " ; who, meditating, in King Ca- nute's time, on " the near extinction of the royal race of the Eng- lish," was " rapt up on high, and saw St. Peter consecrating Edward king. His chaste life also was pointed out, and the exact period of his reign (twenty-four years) determined ; and, when inquiring about his posterity, it was answered, ' The king- dom of the English belongs to God. _ After you. He will provitle a king according to his pleasure.' " But those who will look at the facts will see in the holy Confessor's character little but what is pitiable, and in his reign little but what is tragical. Civil wars, invasions, outlawry of Godwin and his sons by the Danish party ; then of Alfgar, Leofric's son, by the Saxon party ; the outlaws on either side attacking and plundering the English shores by the help of Norsemen, Welshmen, Irish, and Danes, — any mercenaries who could be got together; and then, — "In the same year Bishop Aldred consecrated the minster at Glouces- ter to the glory of God and of St. Peter, and then went to Jeru- salem with such splendor as no man had displayed before him " ; and 60 forth. The sum and substance of what was done iu those HEBEWAED, THE LAST OP TEE ENGLISH. 7 " happy times " may be well described in the words of the Anglo- Saxon chronicler for the year 1058. " This year Alfgar the earl was banished ; but he came in again with violence, through aid of Griffin (the king of North Wales, his brother-in-law). And this year came a fleet from Norway. It is tedious to tell how these matters went." These were the normal phenomena of a reign which seemed, to the eyes of monks, a holy and a happy one ; because the king refused, whether from spite or supersti- tion, to have an heir to the house of Cerdic, and spent his time be- tween prayer, hunting, the seeing of fancied visions, the uttering of fancied prophecies, and the performance of fancied miracles. But there were excuses for him. An Englishman only in name, — a Norman, not only of his mother's descent (she was aunt of William the Conqueror), but by his early education on the Continent, — he loved the Norman better than the Englishman ; Norman knights and clerks filled his court, and often the high dignities of his provinces, and returned as often as expelled ; the Norman-French language became fashionable ; Norman customs and manners the signs of civilization ; and thus all was prepar- ing steadily for the great catastrophe, by which, within a year of Edward's death, the Norman became master of the land. Perhaps it ought to have been so. Perhaps by no other method could England, and, with England, Scotland, and in due time Ireland, have become partakers of that classic civilization and learning, the fount whereof, for good and for evil, was Rome and the Pope of Rome : but the method was at least wicked ; the actors in it tyrannous, brutal, treacherous, hypocritical ; and the conquest of England by William will remain to the end of time a mighty crime, abetted — one may almost say made possible, as too many such crimes have been before and since — by the in- triguing ambition of the Pope of Rome. Against that tyranny the free men of the Danelagh and of Northumbria rose. If Edward, the descendant of Cerdic, had been little to them, William, the descendant of Rollo, was still less. That French-speaking knights should expel them from their homes, French-chanting monks from their convents, be- cause Edward had promised the crown of England to William, his foreign cousin, or because Harold Godwinsson of Wessex had sworn on the relics of all the saints to be William's man, was contrary to their common-sense of right and reason. So they rose and fought: too late, it may be, and without unity or purpose ; and they were worsted by an enemy who had both unity and purpose ; whom superstition, greed, and feudal disci- pline kept together, at least in England, in one compact body of unscrupulous and» terrible confederates. 8 HEREWARD, THE LAST OF THE ENGLISH. But theirs was a land worth fighting for, — a good land and large : from Humber mouth inland to the Trent and merry Slier- wood, across to Chester and the Dee, round by Leicester and the five burghs of the Danes ; eastward again to Huntingdon and Cambridge (then a poor village on the site of an old Roman town) ; and then northward again into the wide fens, the land of the Girvii and the Eormingas, "the children of the peat-bog," where the great central plateau of England slides into the sea, to form, from the rain and river washings of eight shires, lowlands of a fertility inexhaustible, because ever-growing to this day. They have a beauty of their own, those great fens, even now, when they are diked and drained, tilled and fenced, — a beauty as of the sea, of boundless expanse and freedom. Much more had they that beauty eight hundred years ago, when they were still, for the most part, as God had made them, or rather was making them even then. The low rolling uplands were clothed in primeval forest : oak and ash, beech and elm, with here and there, pei'haps, a group of ancient pines, ragged and decayed, and fast dying out in England even then ; tholigh lingering still in the forests of the Scotch highlands. Between the forests were open wolds, dotted with white sheep and golden gorse ; rolling plains of rich though ragged turf, whether cleared by the hand of man or by the wild fires which often swept over the hills. And between the wood and the wold stood many a Danish " town," with its clusters of low sti'aggling buildings round the holder's house, stone or mud below, and wood above ; its high dikes round tiny fields ; its flocks of sheep ranging on the wold ; its herds of swine in the forest ; and below, a more precious possession still, — its herds of mares and colts, which fed with the cattle in the rich grass-fen. For always, from the foot of the wolds, the green flat stretched away, illimitable, to an horizon where, from the roundness of the earth, the distant trees and islands were hulled down like ships at sea. The firm horse-fen lay, bright green, along the foot of the wold ; beyond it, the browner peat, or deep fen ; and among it, dark velvet alder beds, long lines of reed-rond, emerald in spring, and golden under the autumn sun ; shining river-reachp:^ ; broad meres dotted with a million fowl, while the cattle waded along their edges after the rich sedge-grass, or wallowed in ihe mire through the hot summer's day. Here and there, too, upon the fir horizon, rose a tall line of ashen trees, marking some island of firm rich soil. Here and there, too, as at Ramsey and Ci'owland, the huge ashes had disappeared before the axes of the monks, and a minster tower rose over the fen, amid orchards, gardejus, cornfields, pastures, with here and there a tree left HEREWARD, THE LAST OF THE ENGLISH. 9 standing for shade, — "Painted witli flowers in the spring," with " pleasant shores embosomed in still lakes," as the monk-chroni- cler of Ramsey has it, those islands seemed to such as the monk terrestrial paradises. Overhead the arch of heaven spread more ample than else- where, as over the open sea ; and that vastness gave, and still gives, such " effects " of cloudland, of sunrise, and sunset, as can be seen nowhere else within these isles. They might well have been star-worshippers, those Girvii, had their sky been as clear as that of the East: but they were like to have worshipped the clouds rather than the stars, according to the too universal law, that mankind worship the powers which do them harm, rather than the powers which do them good. And therefoi'e the. Danelagh men, who feared not mortal sword or axe, feared witches, ghosts, Pucks, Will-o'-the-Wisps, were- wolves, spirits of the wells and of the trees, and all dark, capricious, and harmful beings whom their fancy conjured up out of the wild, wet, and unwholesome marslies, or the dark wolf-haunted woods. For that fair land, like all things on earth, had its darker aspect. The foul exhalations of autumn called up fever and ague, crippling and enervating, and tempting, almost compelling, to that wild and desperate drinking which was the Scandinavian's special sin. Dark and sad were those short autumn days, when all the dis- tances were shut off, and the air choked with foul brown fog and drenching rains from off the eastern sea; and pleasant the burst- ing forth of the keen northeast wind, with all its whirling snow- storms. For though it sent men hurrying out into the storm, to drive the cattle in from the fen, and lift the sheep out of the snow- wreaths, and now and then never to return, lost in mist and mire, in ice and snow; — yet all knew that after the snow would come the keen frost and the bright sun and cloudless blue sky, and tlie fenman's yearly holiday, when, work being impossible, all gave themselves up to play, and swarmed upon the ice on skates and sledges, and ran races, township against township, or visited old friends full forty miles away ; and met everywhere faces as bright and ruddy as their own, cheered by the keen wine of that dry and bracing frost. Such was the Fenland ; hard, yet cheerful ; rearing a race of hard and cheerful men ; showing their power in old times in valiant fighting, and for many a century since in that valiant industry which has drained and embanked the land of tiie Girvii, till it has become a very " Garden of the Lord." And the Scots- man who may look from the promontory of Peterborough, the "golden borough" of old time; or from the tower of Crowland, while Hereward and Torfrida sleep in the ruined nave beneath ; 1* 10 HEREWARD, THE LAST OF THE ENGLISH. or from the heights of that Isle of Ely which was so long " the camp of refuge " for English freedom ; over the labyrinth of dikes and lodes, the squares of rich corn and verdure, — will confess that the lowland, as well as the highland, can at times breed gallant men.* * The story of Hereward (often sung by minstrels and old-wives in succeed- ing generations) may be found in the " Metrical Chronicle of Geoffrey Gaimar," and in the prose " Life of Hereward " (paraphrased from that written by Leofnc, his house-priest), and in the valuable fragment " Of the family of Hereward." These have all three been edited by Mr. T. Wright. The account of Hereward in Ingulf seems taken, and that carelessh', from the same source as the Latin prose, " De Gestis Herewardi." A few curious details may be found in Peter of Blois's continuation of Lignlf ; and more, concerning the sack of Peterborough, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. I have followed the contemporary authorities as closely as I could, introducing little but what was necessary to reconcile dis- crepancies, or to illustrate the history, manners, and sentiments of the time. — CHAPTER I. HOW HEREWARD WAS OUTLAWED, AND WENT NORTH TO SEEK HIS FORTUNES. Known to all is Lady Godiva, 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, and so persevered in good and holy works to her life's end," — the " devoted friend of St. Mary, ever a virgin," who enriched monasteries without number, — Leominster, Wenlock, Chestei', 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," beside that most precious jewel of all, the arm of St. Augustine, which not Lady Godiva, but her friend, Archbishop Ethelnoth, presented to Cov- entry, "having bought it at Pavia for a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold."* Less known, save to students, is her husband, Leofric the great Earl of Mercia and Chester, 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 and for the world, which was a blessing to all this nation " ; the greatest man, save his still greater rival', Earl Godwin, in Edward the Confessor's court. 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 ; and another, Lucia (as • William of Malmesbary. 12 HEREWARD, THE LAST OF THE ENGLISH. 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 beside ; married, it may be, to some son of Leofric's stanch friend old Siward Biorn, the Viking Earl of Northumberland, and conqueror of Macbeth ; 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 pedigree is little more than a x?onjecture. 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. And even then (for there is a skeleton, they say, in every house) she carried that about her which might well keep her humble ; namely, shame at the mis- conduct of Hereward, her son. Her favorite residence, among the many manors and " villas," or farms which Leofric possessed, was neither the stately hall at Loughton by Bridgenorth, nor the statelier castle of Warwick, but the house of Bourne in South Lincolnshire, between the great woods of the Bruneswald and the great level of the fens. It may have been her own paternal dowry, and have come down to her in right of her Danish ancestors, and that great and " magnificent " Jarl Oslac, from whom she derived her all-but-royal blood. This is certain, that Leofric, her husband, went in East Anglia by the name of Leofric, Lord of Bourne ; that, as Domesday Book testi- fies, his son Alfgar, and his grandson Morcar, held large lands there and thereabout. Alfgar's name, indeed, still lives in the village of Algar-Kirk ; and Lady Godiva, and Algar after her, enriched with great gifts Crowland, the island sanctuary, and Peterborough, where Brand, either her brother or Leofric's, was a monk, and in due time an abbot. The house of Bourne, as far as it can be reconstructed by imagination, was altogether unlike one of the tall and gloomy Norman castles which twenty years later I'eared their evil donjons over England. It was much more like a house in a Chinese painting ; an irregular group of low buildings, almost all of one story, stone below and timber above, with high-peaked roofs, — at least in the more Danish country, — affording 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 door or doors opening out into the HEREWARD, THE LAST OF THE ENGLISH. 13 court ; and sitting thereat, at the top of a flight of steps, the lord and lady, dealing clothes to the naked and bread to the hungry. On one side of the hall is a chapel ; by it a large room or " bower " for the ladies ; behind the hall a round tower, seemingly the strong place of the whole house ; on the other side a kitchen ; and 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 goodold 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 ; and outside all, the " yard," " garth," or garden-fence, high earth-bank with palisades on top, which formed a strong defence in time of war. Such was most probably the " villa," " ton," or " town " of Earl Leofric, the Lord of Bourne, the favorite residence of Godiva, — once most beautiful, and still most holy, according to the holiness of those old times. Now on a day — about the year 1054 — while Earl Si ward 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 and horror to the complaint of Herluin, Steward of Peterborough, who had fallen in that after- noon with Hereward and 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. And Hereward, in imitation of his father and his elder brother, must needs have his following from the time he was. but fifteen years old. All the unruly youths of the neighborhood, sons of free " holders," who owed some sort of military service to Earl Leofric ; Geri his cousin ; Winter, whom he called his brother-in-arms ; the Wul- frics, the Wulfards, 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 black-mail from quiet chapmen on the high road, 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 sub-prior was to be believed, 14 HEREWARD, THE LAST OF THE ENGLISH. Hereward and his housecarles had taken an ugly stride forward toward the pit. They had met him riding along, intent upon his psalter, in a lonely path of the Bruneswald, — " whereon your son, most gracious lady, bade me stand, saying that his men wei'e thirsty and he had no money to buy ale withal, and none so likely to help him thereto as a fat priest, — 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, and 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 such like. 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 swindled your ladyship, and therefore him, your son, out of many a fair 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, — and 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 and laugh- ing 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 walked, or rather reeled, a noble lad eighteen yeara old. His face was of extraordinary beauty, save that the lower jaw was too long and heavy, and that his eyes wore a stiange 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 HEREWAED, THE LAST OF THE ENGLISH. 15 royal race. He was dressed in a gaudy costume, resembling on the whole that of a Highland chieftain. His knees, wrists, and throat were tattoed in bright blue patterns ; and he carried sword and dagger, a gold ring round his neck, 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 tlie coming storm, looked at her with smiling defiance, the result of long estrange- ment 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?" " And he who harms God's people," put in the monk from be- hind the chaii", "harms his Maker." " His Maker ? " said the lad, with concentrated bitterness. *' It would be a gay world, if the Maker thereof were in any way like unto you, who call yourselves his people. Do you remem- ber who told them to set the peat-stack on fire under me ten years ago ? Ah, ha, Sir Monk, you forget that I have been behind the screen, — that I have been a monk myself, or should have been one, if my pious lady mother here had had her will of me, as she may if she likes of that doll thei'e at her knee. Do you forget why I left Peterborough Abbey, when Winter and I turned all your priest's books upside