About this entry, as Mr Freeman observed, 'there can be no doubt'. But as the result of his careful inquiry,[8] he limited 'our positive knowledge', from Domesday, to this entry and to two in the text of the Lincolnshire survey (364b-377). It is strange that he did not follow up the clue the 'Clamores' gave him. The relevant entry in the text of the Survey is duly found under the Peterborough fief:
In Witham et Mannetorp et Toftlund habuit Hereward xii. bovatas terræ ad geldum.... Ibi Asuert [sic] homo abbatis Turoldi habet, etc....
Berew[ita] hujus M. in Bercaham et Estou i. carucata terræ ad geldum. ... Ibi Asford habet, etc....
In Estov Soca in Witham iiii. bovatæ terræ et dimidia ad geldum.... Ibi Asfort de abbate habet, etc.... (i. 346).
This is the 'terra Asford' referred to in the 'Clamores', and, as amounting to 31⁄16 carucates, it is clearly the 'iii. carucatas' assigned in our list to 'Ansford'. Thus, through his successor Ansford, we have at last run down our man; Hereward was, exactly as is stated by Hugh 'Candidus', a 'man' of the Abbot of Peterborough; and his holding was situated at Witham on the Hill,[9] not far from Bourne, and, at Barholme-with-Stow a few miles off, all in the extreme south-west of the county. This is the fact for which Mr Freeman sought in vain, and which has eluded Professor Tout, in his careful life of the outlaw for the Dictionary of National Biography.
We are now in a position to examine the gloss of Hugh 'Candidus', showing how 'Baldwin Wake' possessed the holdings both of Hugh and of Ansford:[10]
Primus Hugo de Euremu. Baldwinus Wake tenet in Depinge, Plumtre, et Stove feoda duorum militum.... Et præterea dictus Baldewinus tenet feodum unius militis in Wytham et Bergham de terra Affordi. Et prædictus Baldewinus de predictis feodis abbati de Burgo debet plenarie respondere de omni forensi [servitio].
Here we see how the legendary name and legendary position of Hereward were evolved. The Wakes, Lords of Bourne, held among their lands some, not far from Bourne, which had once been held by Hereward. Thus arose the story that Hereward had been Lord of Bourne; and it was but a step further to connect him directly with the Wakes, by giving him a daughter and heir married to Hugh de Evermou, whose lands had similarly passed to the Lords of Bourne. The pedigree-maker's crowning stroke was to make Hereward himself a Wake,[11] just as Baldwin fitz Gilbert (de Clare) is in one place transformed into a Wake.[12] The climax was reached when the modern Wakes revived the name of Hereward, just as 'Sir Brian Newcome of Newcome' set the seal to his family legend by giving his children 'names out of the Saxon calendar'.
Returning to Hereward himself, we find Mr Freeman writing (of the spring of 1070):
At this moment we hear for the first time of one whose mythical fame outshines all the names of his generation, and of whom the few historical notices make us wish that details could be filled in from some other source than legend.... Both the voice of legend and the witness of the great Survey agree in connecting Hereward with Lincolnshire, but they differ as to the particular spot in the shire in which he is to be quartered. Legend also has forgotten a fact which the document has preserved, namely, that the hero of the fenland did not belong wholly to Lincolnshire, but that he was also a landholder in the distant shire of Warwick. But the Survey has preserved another fact with which the legendary versions of his life have been specially busy. Hereward, at some time it would seem, before the period of his exploits, had fled from his country.[13]
Let us first dismiss from our minds the alleged fact as to Warwickshire. There is absolutely nothing to connect the Count of Meulan's tenant there with the Lincolnshire hero; indeed Mr Freeman admits in his appendix 'that the Hereward of these entries may be some other person' (p. 805). Legend had an excellent reason for ignoring this alleged 'fact' as had 'romances' for having 'perversely forgotten' to mention the deeds or the fate of William Malet in the Isle (Ibid., p. 473). We must also dismiss the 'fact'—'undoubted history' though it be (Ibid., p. 805)—of Hereward's 'banishment' at some time between 1062 and 1070. For the Survey gives no date; it merely speaks of 'die quâ aufugiit' (i. 376b), which phrase, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, must be referred to his escape from the 'Isle',[14] when (1071) in the words of Florence, 'cum paucis evasit'. This at once explains the Domesday entry (ante, p. 160), for he would, of course, have forfeited his holding before that date.