“Assuredly not quite so,” said the Prior of Ely, who opposed Hereward the more because the Lord Abbat Thurstan was disposed to agree with him; “assuredly not quite so, my Lord of Brunn, for there hath been large admixture of Danish blood in our Anglo-Saxon race,[[164]] and Danes and English sprang, ab origine, from nearly one and the same great hive of nations in the north.”
“And so also do these North men, or Normans,” said Hereward, “only they have more affinity to Danes and Norwegians than to us; and while the Danish pirates were ravaging the coasts of England, Rollo, the North man, ravaged the coasts of France, and gained a settlement and sovereignty, and gave the name of Normandie to the country which has now sent forth these new conquerors and devastators upon England. Trace back our blood to the source, and I, and the Lord Abbat Thurstan as well as I, and many other true Englishmen, natives of the English Danelagh, may be called half Danes; but a man can have only one country, and only one people that he can call countrymen, and these admixtures of blood in parts and parcels of England will not be considered by the English people at large; and let it be Danes, or let it be Normans, it will be the same to them.”
“But,” said the Abbat of Cockermouth, “the Danes be now very poor, and their king will not be able to raise an army sufficiently strong to aim at any great thing by himself.”
“And therefore is it,” quoth the Lord of Brunn, “that come king or come king’s brothers, they will get what they can from us poor Saxons as the price of their assistance, then get all the gold they can get from the Normans as the price of their neutrality, then betray all such of our secrets as they possess, and then embark and sail away for their own country, leaving us in a far worse plight than before. I say, let us not send for them, or ask their aid at all! If a people cannot defend themselves by their own swords, they will never be defended at all. If England cannot be saved without calling in one foreign people to act against another, she will never be saved. If this king of Danemarck comes this year he will act as his kinsmen did last year, and we shall rue the day of his coming. Wherefore, I say, let us pray for the speedy return of King Harold, and let us keep what little store of gold and silver we possess to nurture and pay our own native soldiers, and to purchase in the Netherlands such munition and warlike gear as we may yet need; but let us not waste it by sending into Danemarck.”
“Were our enemies less numerous and powerful,” said one of the chiefs, “we still might hope to stand our ground, in this wet and difficult corner of England, alone and unaided!”
“We shall be the better able to stand our ground against any foe if we be on our guard against false friends, and keep our money and our own counsels,” said Abbat Thurstan. “Lord Hereward hath reason for all he saith; take my word for it he is right.”
But there were many there that would not take my Lord Abbat’s word, and that would not be persuaded by the arguments of the Lord of Brunn; and in an inauspicious hour it was determined to send an embassage from the lords and prelates in the Camp of Refuge to the king and lords and free rovers of Danemarck, to implore their aid and assistance, and to present them with a sum of money, as the earnest of a large future reward. The strong money-box at the shrines of Ely church, wherein the pilgrims deposited their offerings, was now in reality broken open and emptied; at which some of the unworthy members of the house who had most opposed Hereward and their Lord Abbat went about whispering and muttering, in the corners of the cloisters, and even among the townfolk of Ely, that sacrilege had been committed. Yet was the total sum thus procured so very disproportionate to the well-known appetites of the Danes for money, that a collection was made in the Camp of Refuge, and even Jews were secretly invited from Norwich and St. Edmundbury in order to see whether they could be tempted to advance some money upon bonds: and here were raised fresh whisperings and murmurings about impiety, together with severe censures on Abbat Thurstan for want of uniformity or consistency of conduct, seeing that he had formerly been the sworn foe to all the Israelites whom the Normans had brought over in their train; and that, nevertheless, the convent were now sending for the Jews to open accounts and dealings with them. It suited not these back-biters to remember that they themselves, in determining that the aid of the Danes should be required, had agreed that money should and must be sent to them; and that when Abbat Thurstan said there was but very little money in the house, they themselves had recommended sending for the Israelites who made a trade of usury. All points connected with the unhappy business had been decided, after the public discussions in the hall, by the members of the house in close chapter, wherein the Lord Abbat had only given his vote as one. But these unfaithful monks and untrue Englishmen hoped to make people believe that their opinions had been overruled, and that Thurstan was answerable for everything.
It was also noticed—although not by the abbat and the monks that were faithful unto him, and that were never allowed to hear any of the whisperings and murmurings—that several of those who had most eagerly voted for calling in the assistance of the Danes shrugged their shoulders whenever men mentioned the expected invasion of the fen country and the new attack on the Camp of Refuge, and spoke of the Norman as a power too formidable to be resisted by the English, or by any allies that the English could now procure.