Historical Tales [calibre 5.4.1]

ELY CATHEDRAL.

Of the exploits of this band of active warriors but one is told in full, and that one is worth repeating. The Abbey of Peterborough, not far removed from Ely, had submitted to Norman rule and gained a Norman abbot, Turold by name. This angered the English at Ely, and they made a descent upon the settlement. No great harm was intended. Food and some minor spoil would have satisfied the raiders. But the frightened monks, instead of throwing themselves on the clemency of their fellow countrymen, sent word in haste to Turold. This incensed the raiding band, composed in part of English, in part of Danes who had little regard for church privileges. Provoked to fury, they set fire to the monks' house and the town, and only one house escaped the flames. Then they assailed the monastery, the monks flying for their lives. The whole band of outlaws burst like wolves into the minter, which they rapidly cleared of its treasures. Here some climbed to the great rood, and carried of its golden ornaments. There others made their way to the steeple, where had been hidden the gold and silver pastoral staff. Shrines, roods, books, vestments, money, treasures of all sorts vanished, and when Abbot Turold appeared with a party of armed Normans, he found but the bare walls of the church and the ashes of the town, with only a sick monk to represent the lately prosperous monastery. Whether or not Hereward took part in this affair, history does not say.

King William had hitherto disregarded this patriot refuge, and the bold deeds of the valiant Hereward. All England besides had submitted to his authority, and he was too busy in the work of making a feudal kingdom of free England to trouble himself about one small centre of insurrection. But an event occurred that caused him to look upon Hereward with more hostile eyes.

Among those who had early sworn fealty to him, after the defeat of Harold at Hastings, were Edwin and Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumberland. They were confirmed in the possession of their estates and dignities, and remained faithful to William during the general insurrection of northern England. As time went on, however, their position became unbearable. The king failed to give them his confidence, the courtiers envied them their wealth and titles, and maligned them to the king. Their dignity of position was lost at the court; their safety even was endangered; they resolved, when too late, to emulate their braver countryman, and strike a blow for home and liberty. Edwin sought his domain in the north, bent on insurrection. Morcar made his way to the Isle of Ely, where he took service with his followers, and with other noble Englishmen, under the brave Hereward, glad to find one spot on which a man of true English blood could still set foot in freedom.

His adhesion brought ruin instead of strength to Hereward. If William could afford to neglect a band of outlaws in the fens, he could not rest with these two great earls in arms against him. There were forces in the north to attend to Edwin; Mortar and Hereward must be looked after.

Gathering an army, William marched to the fen country and prepared to attack the last of the English in their almost inaccessible Camp of Refuge. He had already built himself a castle at Cambridge, and here he dwelt while directing his attack against the outlaws of the fens.

The task before him was not a light one, in the face of an opponent so skilful and vigilant as Hereward the Wake. The Normans of that region had found him so ubiquitous and so constantly victorious that they ascribed his success to enchantment; and even William, who was not free from the superstitions of his day, seemed to imagine that he had an enchanter for a foe. Enchanter or not, however, he must be dealt with as a soldier, and there was but one way in which he could be reached. The heavily armed Norman soldiers could not cross the marsh. From one side the Isle of Ely could be approached by vessels, but it was here so strongly defended that the king's ships failed to make progress against Hereward's works. Finding his attack by water a failure, William began the building of a causeway, two miles long, across the morasses from the dry land to the island.

This was no trifling labor. There was a considerable depth of mud and water to fill, and stones and trunks of trees were brought for the purpose from all the surrounding country, the trees being covered with hides as a protection against fire. The work did not proceed in peace. Hereward and his men contested its progress at every point, attacked the workmen with darts and arrows from the light boats in which they navigated the waters of the fens, and, despite the hides, succeeded in setting fire to the woodwork of the causeway. More than once it had to be rebuilt; more than once it broke down under the weight of the Norman knights and men-at-arms, who crowded upon it in their efforts to reach the island, and many of these eager warriors, weighed down by the burden of their armor, met a dismal death in the mud and water of the marshes.

Hereward fought with his accustomed courage, warlike skill, and incessant vigilance, and gave King William no easy task, despite the strength of his army and the abundance of his resources. But such a contest, against so skilled an enemy as William the Conqueror, and with such disparity of numbers, could have but one termination. Hereward struck so valiant a last blow for England that he won the admiration of his great opponent; but William was not the man to rest content with aught short of victory, and every successful act of defence on the part of the English was met by a new movement of assault. Despite all Hereward's efforts, the causeway slowly but surely moved forward across the fens.

But Hereward's chief danger lay behind rather than before; in the island rather than on the main land. His accessions of nobles and commons had placed a strong body of men under his command, with whom he might have been able to meet William's approaches by ship and causeway, had not treason laid intrenched in the island itself. With war in his front and treachery in his rear the gallant Wake had a double danger to contend with.

This brings us to a picturesque scene, deftly painted by the old chroniclers. Ely had its abbey; a counterpart of that of Peterborough. Thurston, the abbot, was English-born, as were the monks under his pastoral charge; and long the cowled inmates of the abbey and the armed patriots of the Camp of Refuge dwelt in sweet accord. In the refectory of the abbey monks and warriors sat side by side at table, their converse at meals being doubt less divided between affairs spiritual and affairs temporal, while from walls and roof hung the arms of the warriors, harmoniously mingled with the emblems of the church. It was a picture of the marriage of church and state well-worthy of reproduction on canvas.

Yet King William knew how to deal with Abbot Thurston. Lands belonging to the monastery lay beyond the fens, and on these the king laid the rough hand of royal right, as an earnest of what would happen when the monastery itself should fall into his hands. A flutter of terror shook the hearts of the abbot and his family of monks. To them it seemed that the skies were about to fall, and that they would be wise to stand from under.

While the monks of Ely were revolving this threat of disaster in their souls, the tide of assault and defence rolled on. William's causeway pushed its slow length forward through the fens. Hereward assailed it with fire and sword, and harried the king's lands outside by sudden raids. It is said that, like King Alfred before him, he more than once visited the camp of the Normans in disguise, and spied out their ways and means of warfare.

There is a story connected with this warlike enterprise so significant of the times that it must be told. Whether or not William believed Hereward to be an enchanter, he took steps to defeat enchantment, if any existed. An old woman, who had the reputation of being a sorceress, was brought to the royal camp, and her services engaged in the king's cause. A wooden tower was built, and pushed along the causeway in front of the troops, the old woman within it actively dispensing her incantations and calling down the powers of witchcraft upon Hereward's head. Unfortunately for her, Hereward tried against her sorcery of the broomstick the enchantment of the brand, setting fire to the tower and burning it and the sorceress within it. We could scarcely go back to a later date than the eleventh-century to find such an absurdity as this possible, but in those days of superstition even such a man as William the Conqueror was capable of it.