Product Description

After the Norman victory in Hastings in 1066, William the Conqueror's oppression of the English led to widespread famine, death and destruction, culminating in the brutal Harrying of the North and the deaths of 100,000 people. Did the English submit to the tyranny of their oppressors? Or was this to be the beginning of one man's fight for liberty? Returning from Flanders to find his country taken over by the Normans, Hereward, known traditionally as 'the Wake', embarked on a path of resistance that was to start with the violent plundering of the monastery at Peterborough. Subsequently abandoned by the Danes he had relied upon, Hereward barricaded himself on the Isle of Ely. Holding out alone until reinforced by the arrival of Earls Edwin and Morcar from the North, Hereward found himself the object of William's personal hatred and his desire to stamp out the last remnants of English resistance.Peter Rex rescues Hereward from the myths associated with his life and career, and finally reveals the mystery of his parentage and baffling disappearance into the mists of the Fens...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70520 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

About the Author
Peter Rex is a retired history teacher. He was Head of History at Princethorpe College for twenty years. His other books include The English Resistance: The Underground War Against the Normans, Edgar: King of the English 959-75 and Harold II, all published by Tempus. He lives in Ely.

Customer Reviews

swamped
What do we know of Hereward (often - and erroneously - dubbed 'the Wake')? Well, up in the east of England (especially in that gap between Ely and Peterborough) the name is plastered everywhere, and a quick look-see on Google or in the Yellow pages confirms it: Hereward Housing, Hereward Field Target & Air Rifle Club, Hereward variety Winter Wheat, Hereward FM (102.7, fact fans), Hereward Brewery, the Hereward Business Centre, etc. Like I say, everywhere.

So, what does it mean, beyond a vague sensation that it might have some distant historical significance? OK, concentrate at the back...

Hereward, very likely the exiled son of a powerful Lincolnshire thegn, and nephew to Abbot Brand of Peterborough, was sent from England prior to the Norman invasion of 1066 and fought in a series of conflicts as a soldier of fortune in Western Flanders. It is on his return to England, post-Hastings, post-Harrying of the North, that he discovers his country overrun and his estates confiscated. Attempting to gather together survivors of William's cruel policies, Hereward goes on the rampage, starting with the violent attack on the monastery at Peterborough, where he tries to frustrate the man who seeks to take over from his uncle, the vicious Turold, by removing the monastery's treasures. After this, he barricades himself on the Isle of Ely.

Ely in the Eleventh Century was, genuinely, an island, surrounded by a mass of sedge, swamp, fen, and a dizzyingly complex network of rivers and tributaries. Even today, approached from almost any angle, the hill that Ely sits on is visible for miles around. In the 1060s and 1070s, afloat a 'desolate, waterlogged hell full of stagnant pools and deadly bogs', it must have seemed the most impregnable fortress imaginable. From this centre of operatons, Hereward set about creating as much nuisance as he could possibly manage. Reinforced by Earls coming in from the North, his actions soon caught the attention of King William himself.

William's initial efforts to take control of the situation were little short of disastrous, and the perilous marshland took its toll on his knights. It was only when Thurstan, the abbot of Ely, decided to seek the King's clemency, and made a deal that helped William gain access to the Isle, that Hereward - or, more accurately, his fellow rebels, for Hereward seems to have given the Normans the slip - was vanquished and the fight for liberty brought to an end.

It was the great Oxford scholar Charles Plummer who said that Hereward had 'a brief life in history and a long one in romance', so what chance does Rex have in giving us the facts? Well, facts are all that he deals in, and anyone who read his earlier The English Resistance will know that everything other than fact is signposted 'surmise' and generously highlighted. Rescuing Hereward from both near-obscurity and the fug of lazy myth, "Hereward: The Last Englishman" provides us with a satisfying and intelligent tale gleaned from the documents that matter, the primary sources, manuscripts and chronicles written at or just after the time. Sifting, filtering and cross-referencing the data he has produced a clear and definitive work that shows a man who was not a gifted politician, nor a supernaturally-gifted adventurer, but an able soldier and battle-hardened rebel. The research here is exemplary, every aspect of Hereward's familial connections, his lands, his associations, his activities, is picked over in minute detail. Where surmise is the only way forward it is done with clear-sighted logic with nothing assumed. When Charles Kingsley - yes, that Charles Kingsley - wrote a popular fictional account of the story in 1867 he may have done Hereward a great service in reinvigorating the tale for a new audience, but this is the real deal. You're in good hands here and the final picture is well worth the effort it requires to understand the alien world of England, one thousand years ago.

And the name, 'the Wake'? Well, it would seem that this first appeared more than 200 years after the events at Ely, when the Wakes, a family owning much of the land that Hereward had been associated with, claimed descent from him, adopting him as their ancestor.

Hereward 'The Wake' becomes Hereward 'The Aside'
Rex has a very hard job here, trying to make a factual account of the real Hereward half as interesting as the shadowy, enigmatic myth of Hereward 'The Wake' constructed notably by Charles Kingsley among others. One of the major problems of a strict scholarly study into the man is the lack of reliable evidence that can be verified; with which one could build up a real profile. I thought Rex had managed to pull it off. Sadly though he hasn't been wholly successful and what we have instead is a rather disappointing yet nevertheless enjoyable account of everything surrounding Hereward; the society he lived in, his family, the people he fought with and against, the myth of Hereward 'The Wake' and the environment he fought in; but little on Hereward the person. This book is worth purchasing but do not expect too much about the leading character he seems to be an aside.