Many people know Hereward as Hereward the Wake, taken from the novel by Charles Kingsley. Alan came along to try and dispel some of the myths but add to the story of this Freedom Fighter of the Fens.
The main sources for Herward’s life are the Gesta Herewardi, the Peterborough Chronicle (the version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle written at Peterborough), the Domesday Book, and Liber Eliensis (the Book of Ely).
Hereward appears in lots of records. However, many are contradictory in their information, and many have significant gaps (no factual records actually name his father!), and the legend has often overtaken the facts.
He was the son of Leofric and Godiva (of naked through Coventry fame) – No!
He was the Lord of Bourne – No!
He was known as Hereward The Wake – No!
There is documentary evidence that he held lands in the south of Lincolnshire as a thegn, but it was quite common in the 12th century to embroider the facts with a bit of attention-grabbing fiction to enhance the stories to make them entertaining and good to read (or tell).
Some details of his life can be confirmed as there are accounts in several sources, for example that he was exiled due to disobedience to his father and outlawed by Edward the Confessor, becoming a a mercenary in Flanders, and he was still abroad at the time of the Norman Conquest.
In 1070 he returned to England and joined up with the Danish King Sweyn, who had sent a small army to England. Disaffected Saxons and Vikings saw King Swein (pick your own spelling!) as a liberator from the Normans. A stronghold was based on the Isle of Ely.
There followed the Sack of Peterborough by Hereward and the Danish army and the Siege of Ely by the Normans.
Hereward’s aim was to save the treasures and relics at Peterborough Cathedral from the Normans. William the Conqueror used local nobles and those in authority to try and keep Hereward in check (as he was busy elsewhere).
However, in 1071 William took control as Hereward was putting skills he had learned as a mercenary to good use and excelled at guerilla warfare.
The siege was finally lifted in 1072 (following tales of the Normans building a causeway which was sabotaged by the rebels, or monks from the abbey leading the Normans through secret pathways). Ely’s Abbot Thurstan paid a fine to William and the King kept his promise not to take action against the common people of Ely.
After Ely it is unknown what happened to Herward. Anecdotes have it that he was killed in Maine, France, or lived out his days and died in Crowland, or he could have moved elsewhere before dying or being killed.
From his known history, it is probable that he returned to be a mercenary abroad.
‘The Wake’ started being used in the 1300s. The link between Hereward and the Wakes appears to be a result of land and inheritance disputes in East Deeping and the Wakes becoming Lord of Bourne.
The line of inheritance can be seen through Margaret Wake and her marriage to Edward I’s son, Edmund of Woodstock. Their daughter Joan Plantagenet (The Fair Maid of Kent), became Lady of Wake as during the Black Death, through family deaths, Joan inherited all the Wake estates. Widowed in 1361, she married Edward ‘The Black Prince’, becoming the first Princess of Wales
It was the 4th Earl of Kent, in support of his inheritance, who claimed the link back to Hereward ‘The Wake’ and the Lords of Bourne.
One member of the Wake family who is known to have positively contributed to family history is Joan Wake (1884-1974). As a local historian she gained the epithet ‘best burglar in the county’ for her encouragement of family houses to deposit their archives in record offices.