As Lord Hereward had ever been averse to cruelty, and constant in his endeavours to prevent his people being cruel to the prisoners they took in battle, the Normans had no scores of vengeance against him; and when they found that they were not to be gratified by dividing his broad lands among them, as they had long expected to do, they lived in a neighbourly manner with him, and even sought his friendship. Not one of them but allowed that he had been a great warrior; and when the monks of their nation, who had seen much of the war in England with their own eyes, began to chronicle the war and to relate the high emprises of William the Conqueror, maugre their Norman prejudices they paid a tribute of praise and admiration to the military skill, and the indomitable courage, and perseverance of Hereward, the son of Leofric, Lord of Brunn.
There were troubles in the land after the year of grace one thousand and seventy-six, but they came not near to Brunn. Twenty-four years after the submission of Hereward, when the Conqueror was in his grave, and his son Rufus had been slain by the arrow of a Norman knight, his other son, Henry the Clerk, ascended the throne, and in so doing he passed the good Charter called the Charter of Liberties, whereby he restored the laws of King Edward the Confessor, and engaged to redress all the grievances of the two preceding reigns. And shortly after his accession to the throne, King Henry still further conciliated his Anglo-Saxon subjects by espousing a Saxon wife, the fair Maud, daughter of Malcolm, King of Scots, and of Margaret the good queen, the relation of King Edward the Confessor, and of the right kingly kin of England. Maud had been sent from Scotland at a very early age and committed to the care of her English aunt Christina, the pious Abbess of Wilton. Many great Norman lords, as Alain the Lord of Richmond, and William de Garenne, Earl of Surrey, had asked her in marriage, but she had refused them all; and even when Henry Beauclerc, a crowned and anointed king, made suit for her hand, and offered to place her by his side on the throne which her ancestors had sat upon for ages, she testified a preference for the quiet religious life she was leading; and it required the representations and entreaties of many noble Saxon friends to make her forego her purpose of entering into religion. “Oh most noble and fair among women,” said these Saxons, “if thou wilt, thou canst restore the ancient honour of England, and be a pledge of reconciliation and friendship; but if thou art obstinate in thy refusal, the enmity between the two races will endure, and the shedding of human blood know no end!” To these representations she yielded; and those Saxons who had advised her lived to see much good to England proceed from the marriage, which was a great step towards that intermixture of the Saxon and Norman races which had been begun many years before, and which we have since seen proceed so rapidly. The elevation of the fair Maud to the throne filled the hearts of the English with joy, for not only was she their countrywoman and a descendant from the royal stock of Alfred the Great, but she was also at the time of her marriage beautiful in person, charitable unto the poor, and distinguished above all the ladies of her time by a love for learning and learned men. Elfric the sword-bearer, who was yet in the prime vigour of life, brought to mind the dying prediction of Frithric the Abbat of St. Albans, and said joyously to his lord, that “England would be England still, and that the Saxon tongue and laws were things that could not be rooted out!”
“Elfric,” said Lord Hereward, “the great stream of our old Saxon blood is fast absorbing the less stream of Norman blood, and so will it continue to do. The children of Normans, being born in England and suckled by Saxon nurses, will cease to be Normans. All men love to keep that which they have gotten; and as our old Saxon laws are far more free than those of France, and give more security for life and goods, and oppose a stronger barrier to the tyranny of princes, the Normans that now live among us, or their sons that shall succeed them, will, for their own sakes, cling to our old laws, and help the chiefs and the great body of the English people to make the spirit of them to be enduring in the land.”
Thus talked the Lord of Brunn and his faithful sword-bearer; and thus they lived to teach their children’s children.
Hereward continued to live comfortably and peaceably with his neighbours and with all men, and he died in peace after he had lived many more years. Both he and the Ladie Alftrude reached a patriarchal age, and they left a patriarchal stock behind them. They were buried with all honour in Crowland Abbey, which, by this time, had become a holier and a better governed house than ever it had been before. A learned monk of Crowland wrote good verses in Latin upon the tombstone of the Lord of Brunn; but we find in our own home tongue lines which might have been a still better epitaph:—
Him loved young, him loved old,
Earl and baron, dreng and kayn,
Knight, bondeman, and swain,
Widows, maidens, priests, and clerks,
And all for his good werkes.