A History of England, Period I. Mediæval Monarchy

by J. Franck Bright

Final struggle against the Normans under Hereward. 1070.

William conquers him. 1071.

The conquest of England was completed, as we have seen, in 1070. But it was six years more before William enjoyed the throne in peace. The remnant of the conquered nation gathered around a national hero, called Hereward, in the Fen country. His origin is not certain, but he seems to have been a Lincolnshire man who had been deprived of his property by a Norman intruder. He first appears as assailing with a host of outlaws the monastery of Peterborough, where one of those soldier abbots just mentioned, Turold by name, had been lately appointed. He is next heard of when, in 1071, the Earls Edwin and Morkere, who had seen the destruction of their old earldoms, while living in inglorious ease, half prisoners half guests at the Norman court, at length awoke from their lethargy and attempted to renew the war. Edwin was killed as he fled, stopped by the flooding of some river; Morkere succeeded in joining the insurgents at Ely. Hereward’s fastness was known by the name of the Camp of Refuge. There were collected many of the noblest of the old English exiles; and legend speaks of the presence of several people who were undoubtedly not there; but, at all events, Æthelwine, the deposed Bishop of Durham, was with the patriots.

The attack was intrusted to William of Warenne, Earl of Surrey, and Ivo of Taillebois, under the superintendence of William himself, who came to Cambridge. The difficulties of the situation were overcome by the building of a great causeway across the fens. The defence of the camp is described as lengthened and heroic, but before the end of the year it seems to have been captured, and Morkere and Æthelwine both prisoners. Hereward himself escaped, and in 1073 is mentioned as leading the English contingent in William’s attack on Maine. The legend describes how, while living in peace with the king, he was surprised at his meals by a band of Normans, and after a terrific combat, in which he slew fifteen or sixteen Frenchmen, was finally overpowered by numbers. In sober fact, his end seems to have been peaceful, as he appears in Domesday Book as holding property both in Worcester and Warwick.

Wales held in check by the Earls of Chester and Shrewsbury.

From the English William had no further trouble; with the neighbouring kingdoms he had still some difficulties. With the Britons in Wales, the old Earls of Mercia and the house of Leofric had had friendly connection; but all sign of this had ceased upon the Conquest. The wars carried on against them were however local in character; for, contrary to his usual practice, William had established upon the West March two palatine counties of Chester and Shrewsbury. In these counties the whole of the land belonged to the earl and his tenants, and the king had no domain. They were, therefore, like the great feudal holdings of France. Chester he at first placed in the hands of Gerbod the Fleming, his stepson, and, upon his withdrawal to the Continent, in those of Hugh of Avranches, surnamed Lupus, a man of whom the chroniclers speak much evil as at once licentious and tyrannical. Together with his lieutenant, Robert of Rhuddlan, he waged continual war with the Welsh. The same task fell to Roger of Montgomery, Earl of Shrewsbury, who took advantage of the disputes among the Welsh Princes, and succeeded so far as to build and hold, far in Wales, the castle of Montgomery, called after his own property in the neighbourhood of Lisieux in Normandy.

Scotland’s savage invasions.

Malcolm Canmore had throughout appeared as the supporter of the conquered English, and at his court the exiles had been constantly received. This did not prevent him from pushing his ravages into the Northern counties; nor did they cease when he received Eadgar Ætheling and his sisters on their flight to the North (1070). This was followed by acts of extraordinary barbarity. Gospatric, who had found favour with William, and accepted the Earldom of Northumberland, attempted a counter invasion into the Scotch district of Cumberland. In rage at this Malcolm gave orders to spare neither sex nor age. The old and the infants were slaughtered, the able-bodied men and maidens were carried off into slavery, so that there were few Scotch villages where there were not English slaves. Malcolm, however, grew milder under the influence of his wife Margaret, Eadgar’s sister, and the effect of the presence of the numerous English, either refugees or slaves, was such that the Lowlands became thoroughly Anglicised.

William makes Malcolm swear fealty. 1072.

In 1072, William himself revenged the inroad of the year 1070, by marching into Scotland and receiving the oath of fealty of Malcolm at Abernethy on the Tay. It is mentioned that the last great noble who had held out against him, Eadric the Wild, accompanied him on this expedition, which marks not only the Conquest of England, but the assumption on the part of William of that Imperial position in Great Britain which the great English kings had held.