The Camp of Refuge: A Tale of the Conquest of the Isle of Ely

by Charles MacFarlane

  CHAPTER XIV.

  HEREWARD IS MADE KNIGHT.

  Before the marriage festival was well ended, the festival of theEpiphany arrived. The Lord of Brunn could not go to Ely; but he was nowin constant correspondence with the good Lord Abbat and the prelatesand lay nobles there; and in sending off his last Norman prisoners, hehad sent to tell the abbat that he must hold him excused, and that hewould eat the paschal lamb with him, hoping before the Easter festivalto have gained many more advantages over the Normans. The returningmessenger brought Hereward much good advice and some money from Ely.Among the many pieces of good counsel which the Abbat Thurstan gave wasthis, that the young Lord of Brunn should lose no time in gettinghimself made a lawful soldier or knight, according to the forms andreligious rites of that Saxon military confraternity which had beenauthorised by the ancient laws of the country, and which had existedlong before the Normans came into England with their new-fashionedrules and unholy rites. The great lay lords at Ely and in the Camp ofRefuge had all been initiated, and their swords had been blessed bySaxon priests; and as all these knights and lords had agreed inappointing Hereward to the supreme command, it behoved him to beinaugurated in the Saxon knighthood; otherwise there would be a mark ofinferiority upon him, and people might proclaim that he was not alawful soldier. Now the young Lord of Brunn had thought well of thesethings before, and had been reminded of them by the taunting Normans.Any Lord Abbat or other prelate could perform the rites. The Abbat ofCrowland had now returned to his house, and would rejoice to confer thehonour upon Hereward; but Hereward's own uncle, and by his father'sside, was Lord Abbat of Peterborough;[157] and not only was it moresuitable that the rites should be performed by him and in his church,but also was it urgent that the young Lord of Brunn should marchspeedily upon Peterborough in order to rescue his kinsman and the Saxonmonks that yet lived under his rule from the oppression and tyranny ofthe Normans. This uncle of Hereward and Lord Abbat of Peterborough,whose secular name was Brand, had been sundry times plundered andmaltreated, and now expected every day to be dispossessed. Brand hadnot long been Lord Abbat, and he had put on the Peterborough mitre, ofsilver gilded, at a time of the greatest trouble. His predecessor theAbbat Leofric[158] had gone forth with the English army of King Harold;and, after Hastings, he had sickened, and returning unto Peterborough,he had died on the night of Allhallow mass: God honour his soul! In hisday was all bliss and all good at Peterborough. He was beloved of all.But afterwards, as we shall see, came all wretchedness and all evil onthe minster: God have mercy on it! All that he could do had been doneby good Leofric's successor. Abbat Brand had given a large sum of moneyto Duke William, in the view of keeping the house and convent free frommolestation. Always a rich and always a bountiful man had been theuncle of Lord Hereward; and while yet a cloister monk and one of theobedientiarii, he had given to the monastery many lands, as in Muscham,Schotter, Scalthorp, Yolthorp, Messingham, Riseby, Normanby, Althorp,and many other parts. Judge ye, therefore, whether the brothers ofPeterborough were not largely indebted to Abbat Brand,[159] and whetherAbbat Brand was not the proper man to confer Saxon knighthood on hisnephew. After the disastrous journey of Ivo Taille-Bois and his brotherto Ey, the news of which was rumoured all over the country, Brand haddispatched an intelligencer to his bold nephew, and had sent othermessengers to his neighbours, and to all the good Saxon people thatdwelt between Peterborough and Stamford. He had beseeched Hereward tomarch to his rescue, and to the rescue of his house; and Hereward, likea duteous nephew and loving kinsman, had sent to promise that he wouldbe with him with good two hundred armed men on the octave of theEpiphany.

  But, before going for Peterborough, the young Lord of Brunn had much todo in the way of collecting men and arms, strengthening the house at Eyand the house at Brunn, and the abbey of Crowland, and the succursalcell at Spalding; and much time he spent with Girolamo of Salerno indevising war stratagems, and in planning the means by which the wholefen country might be rendered still more defensible than it was, as bythe cutting of new ditches, the making of sluices and flood-gates,movable bridges, and the like. The men-at-arms, left by Ivo Taille-Boisto guard the manor-house near to Spalding, becoming sorely alarmed, anddespairing of finding their way across the fens, sent a Saxon messengerto the returned Prior of Spalding, with an offer to surrender the houseto the soldiers of Lord Hereward, if the good prior would only securethem in their lives by extending over them the shield of the church.The conditions were immediately agreed to: a garrison of armed Saxonstook possession of the moated and battlemented house, and the Normanswere sent as war prisoners to Ely. Hereward gave orders that all duerespect should be paid to the house, and to all other the goods andchattels of the Ladie Lucia; for albeit that ladie was forcibly thewife of Ivo, she was cousin to Alftrude and relative to King Harold,and her heart was believed to be wholly Saxon. As Brunn was a house ofgreater strength, and farther removed from that skirt or boundary ofthe fen country upon which the Normans were expected to collect theirstrength, Hereward removed his bride to Brunn, and there he left her inthe midst of friends and defenders; for his followers were now sonumerous that he could keep his promise with his uncle Brand withoutleaving his bride exposed to danger, and without weakening one of thesundry posts he had occupied, as well along other rivers as upon thebanks of the Welland.

  By the octave of the Epiphany, being the thirteenth day of theWolf-month, or kalends of January, and the day of Saint Kentigern, aSaxon abbat and confessor, the Lord of Brunn was at the Abbey ofPeterborough with more than two hundred well-armed Saxons! and on thatvery night--a night of the happiest omen--was begun his initiation inthe old abbey church. First, Hereward confessed himself to the prior,and received absolution. After this he watched all night in the church,fasting and praying. At times a cloister monk prayed in company withhim; but for the most part he was left alone in the ghostly silence ofthe place, where light was there none save the cressets that burneddimly before the effigies of his patron saint. But while he kneltthere, Elfric his faithful sword-bearer stood guard outside the door ofthe church, whiling away the time as best he could, by calling to mindall the legends and godly stories connected with the Peterborough Abbeyand its first founders, and _specialiter_ that marvellously prettymiracle which Saint Chad performed in the presence of his recentconvert King Wolfere. Which miracle was this, according to the faithfulrelation of Walter of Whittlesey, a monk of the house: One day, afterpraying a long while with King Wolfere in his oratory, the weatherbeing warm, Saint Chad put off his vestment and hung it upon a sunbeam,and the sunbeam supported it so that it fell not to the ground; whichKing Wolfere seeing, put off his gloves and belt, and essayed to hangthem also upon the sunbeam, but they presently fell to the ground,whereat King Wolfere was the more confirmed in the faith.[160] In themorning, at the hour of mass Hereward placed his sword upon the highaltar; and when mass had been said, and he had confessed himself andbeen absolved again, the Lord Abbat took the now hallowed sword and putit about Hereward's neck with a benediction, and communicating the holymysteries, finished the simple and altogether religious ceremonial: andfrom thenceforward Hereward remained a lawful soldier and Saxon knight.In the good Saxon times men were never so vain and sinful as to believethat a knight could make knight, or that any lay lord, or even anysovereign prince or king, could give admittance into the confraternityof knights by giving the accolade with strokes of the flat of the swordupon the shoulders and with the tying on of spurs and hauberks, and thegirding on the sword, and such like vanities. These things were broughtin among us by the Normans; and being brought in, our knights losttheir religious character, and ceasing to be the defenders of thechurch, and the protectors of all that wanted protection, they becameunhallowed oppressors, depredators, barefaced robbers, and the scourgesof their kind. And it was so at the very first that these Normans didaffect to contemn and abhor our old Saxon custom of consecration of asoldier, calling our Saxon knights in derision priest-made knights andsha
veling soldiers, and by other names that it were sinful to repeat.

  The good Abbat Brand had now nothing more to fear for his shrines andchalices. Every Norman that was in Peterborough, or in the vicinage ofthat town, fled to Stamford; and the Lord of Brunn, with the help ofthe Salernitan, strengthened the abbey, and made good works to defendthe approaches to it, even as he had done at Crowland and elsewhere.Happy was Abbat Brand, and hopeful was he of the deliverance of allEngland; but he lived not long after this happy day, and when he wasgone cowardice and treachery invaded his house, and monks who had losttheir English natures made bargains and compacts with the Normans, andbrought about many calamities and shames, as will be seen hereafter. IfBrand had lived, or if Hereward could have remained at Peterboroughthese things would not have happened, and disgrace would not have beenbrought down upon a convent which for four hundred and more years hadbeen renowned as the seat of devotion, hospitality, and patriotism. Butthe Lord of Brunn could not stay long on the banks of the Nene, hispresence being demanded in many other places. Between the octave of theEpiphany and the quinzane of Pasche, Hereward recovered or liberatedtwenty good townships near the north-western skirts of the greatfen-country, fought and defeated Norman troops in ten battles, and tookfrom them five new castles which they had built. A good score of Normanknights were made captive to his sword; but he had not the chance toencounter either Ivo Taille-Bois or his brother.

  As the paschal festival approached, Hereward received various urgentmessages from the Abbat of Ely. These messages did not all relate tothe coming festivity, and the promise of the Lord of Brunn to be theLord Abbat's guest: while Hereward had been beating the Normans, andgaining strength on the side of Peterborough and Stamford, the Normanshad been making themselves very strong at Cam-bridge, and were nowthreatening to make another grand attack upon the Camp of Refuge fromthat side. Abbat Thurstan therefore required immediate assistance, andhoped that Hereward would bring with him all the armed men he could.Moreover, jealousies and heartburnings had again broken out among theSaxon chiefs, who had all pledged themselves to acknowledge the supremeauthority of the Lord of Brunn. If Hereward would only come, thesedissensions would cease. Other weighty matters must be discussed; andthe discussion would be naught if Hereward were not present. Thusstrongly urged, Hereward left his young wife in his house at Brunn, andtaking with him nearly three hundred armed men, he began his march downthe Welland in the hope of raising more men in that fenniest of thefen-countries, which lies close on the Wash, and with the intention ofcrossing the Wash, and ascending the Ouse in ships and boats. Itgrieved him to leave the Ladie Alftrude, and much did it grieve Elfrichis sword-bearer to quit maid Mildred; but Hereward thought that hiswife would be safe in his strong house at Brunn, and Elfric was madehappy by the assurance that as soon as they came back again he shouldbe allowed to marry Mildred. The Ladie Alftrude had shed a few tears,and her handmaiden had made sundry louder lamentations; but the ladywas full of heart and courage and hope, nor did the maid lament out ofany fear.

  When the Lord of Brunn moored his little fleet of barks, and raised hisstandard on the shores of the Wash, many more good fen-men cametrooping to him, as he had expected. Many came from Hoiland.[161] Andhow did they come? They came marching through the mires and waters uponhigh stilts, looking all legs, or, at a distance, like herons of somegiant breed. Voyagers have related that in that sandy country whichlies along the Biscayan gulf, and between Bordeaux and Spain, men andwomen and children all walk upon high stalking poles or stilts, as theonly means of getting across their soft, deep sands; and here, in themost marshy part of the fens, men, women, and children were trained touse the same long wooden legs, not to get over dry loose sand, but toget over water and quagmire, and broad and deep ditches. These stiltedmen of Hoiland, who were all minded to go help in the Camp of Refuge,threw their stilts[162] into Lord Hereward's bark; which was as if menof another country should throw away their legs, for without thesestilts, we ween, there was no walking or wayfaring in Hoiland: but thething was done to show that they were devoted to the good cause and putan entire trust in the victorious Lord of Brunn, and that they would gowith him, legs, arms, and hearts, wherever he might choose to lead them.

  At Lynn, on the other side of the Wash, still more Saxons joined LordHereward's army, some of them coming in boats, and some marching byland. Ha! had there been but five Herewards in England, England wouldhave been saved!

  It was on the eve of the most solemn, yet most joyous festival ofPasche, or on the 24th day of the month Aprilis, in the year of graceone thousand and seventy-one, that the Lord of Brunn, arrived with hishost at the great house of Ely, to the inconceivable joy of every trueSaxon heart that was there. Pass we the welcome and the feast, and comewe to the councils and deliberations in the Aula Magna of the house. Onthe third day after the paschal Sunday all the Saxon lords and chiefs,prelates and cloister-monks, met early in the morning, or immediatelyafter prime, and ceased not their deliberations until the dinner hour.On one great point there was no difference of opinion--the victoriousLord of Brunn was to hold supreme command over all the troops andbands, of whatsoever description, collected in the Camp of Refuge, andhave the entire management of the war wherever it should be carried. Onother heads of debate opinions were very various, but the greatestdivergency of all was upon the question whether the Danes should orshould not be invited again to the assistance of the Saxons. When allhad spoken on the one side or the other, and with much vehemence ofspeech, the Lord of Brunn, who had been forced to correct his taciturnhabits, and to speak on many occasions at greater length than he hadever fancied he should speak, rose and said--

  "Prelates and chiefs, ancients and younger men, if one so young asmyself may deliver opinions in this assemblage, I would say let ustake heed ere we tamper any more with Danemarck. The woes of theAnglo-Saxons first began when the Danes crossed the seas in theirnailed ships and came among them first to rob and plunder, and next toseek a settlement in this fat and fertile land of England. Our rubricis filled with Saxon martyrs butchered by the Danes. This noble houseof religion where we now consult was plundered and burned by theDanes; and the Danes slew all the ancient brotherhood of the house,and did the foulest things upon the tombs of the four Saxon virginsand saints--Saint Etheldreda, Saint Sexburga, Saint Ermenilda, SaintWithburga. I am lately from the Abbey of Peterborough, where I readupon the monumental stones the names of the good Saxon abbats andmonks of that house that were murthered by the Danes. The same thinghappened at Crowland, and at fifty more religious houses. The Daneshave been the great makers of Saxon martyrdoms. The worst famed of ourSaxon kings are those who submitted to them or failed in conqueringthem; the name of King Alfred is honoured chiefly for that he defeatedthe Danes in an hundred battles, and checked their rapacity andblood-thirstiness."

  "Oh, Hereward of Brunn!" said the bishop of Lindisfarne, "this is alltrue; but all this happened when the Danes were unconverted Pagans."

  "But good my Lord Bishop of Lindisfarne," quoth the Lord of Brunn, "letus note well the conduct of the Danes since they have been Christianmen, and we shall find as Saxons that we have not much to praise themfor. Had it not been for the unmeet alliance between Lord Tostig andthe strangers, and the invasion of Northumbria and York, and the needKing Harold lay under of breaking that unholy league, and fightingTostig in the great battle by Stamford Bridge, King Harold would neverhave been worsted at the battle of Hastings, for his armed forces wouldhave been entire, and fresh for the fight, instead of being thinned asthey were by that first bloody combat, and worn out by that long marchfrom York unto Hastings."

  "It was an army of Norwegians that fought King Harold by StamfordBridge," said the Prior of Ely.

  "I fought in that battle," quoth Hereward, "and know that it was amixed army of Danes and Norwegians, even like most of the armies that,for two hundred years and more, devastated this land and the kingdom ofScotland. But let that pass. Those armies came as open enemies: let ussee the conduct of an army that came as fri
ends. Only last year thegood Saxon people from the Tyne to the York Ouse were deserted in thehour of success and victory by an army of Danes, commanded by thebrothers of the King of Danemarck, who had been invited into thecountry by the suffering Saxons, and who had sworn upon the relics ofsaints not to leave this land until it was clear of the Normans. Thetwo royal Danes took the gold of the son of Robert the Devil and theharlot of Falaise, and thereupon took their departure in their ships,and left the Saxons, with their plan all betrayed, to be slaughtered inheaps, and the whole north country to be turned into a solitude anddesert, a Golgotha, or place of skulls."

  "This is too true," said the Bishop of Durham; "and terrible is allthis truth!"

  "But," said the Bishop of Lindisfarne, "the King of Danemarck'sbrothers are not the King of Danemarck himself. We hear that the kingis incensed at what those brothers did, and that he hath banished themfrom his presence and from the land of Danemarck, and that he hathsworn by the rood[163] that he will send four hundred keels across theocean, and take himself the command of the army."

  "Yet even if he come," quoth the Lord of Brunn, "he may prove asfaithless and as greedy for gold as his brothers; or he may set up hispretended right to the throne of King Harold, our absent but not lostlord, and in that case we shall find that the Saxon people will fallfrom our side; for if they are to be cursed with a new and foreignmaster, they will not overmuch care whether his name be William ofNormandie or Svend of Danemarck."

  "Assuredly not quite so," said the Prior of Ely, who opposed Herewardthe more because the Lord Abbat Thurstan was disposed to agree withhim; "assuredly not quite so, my Lord of Brunn, for there hath beenlarge admixture of Danish blood in our Anglo-Saxon race,[164] and Danesand English sprang, _ab origine_, from nearly one and the same greathive of nations in the north."

  "And so also do these North men, or Normans," said Hereward, "only theyhave more affinity to Danes and Norwegians than to us; and while theDanish pirates were ravaging the coasts of England, Rollo, the Northman, ravaged the coasts of France, and gained a settlement andsovereignty, and gave the name of Normandie to the country which hasnow sent forth these new conquerors and devastators upon England. Traceback our blood to the source, and I, and the Lord Abbat Thurstan aswell as I, and many other true Englishmen, natives of the EnglishDanelagh, may be called half Danes; but a man can have only onecountry, and only one people that he can call countrymen, and theseadmixtures of blood in parts and parcels of England will not beconsidered by the English people at large; and let it be Danes, or letit be Normans, it will be the same to them."

  "But," said the Abbat of Cockermouth, "the Danes be now very poor, andtheir king will not be able to raise an army sufficiently strong to aimat any great thing by himself."

  "And therefore is it," quoth the Lord of Brunn, "that come king or comeking's brothers, they will get what they can from us poor Saxons as theprice of their assistance, then get all the gold they can get from theNormans as the price of their neutrality, then betray all such of oursecrets as they possess, and then embark and sail away for their owncountry, leaving us in a far worse plight than before. I say, let usnot send for them, or ask their aid at all! If a people cannot defendthemselves by their own swords, they will never be defended at all. IfEngland cannot be saved without calling in one foreign people to actagainst another, she will never be saved. If this king of Danemarckcomes this year he will act as his kinsmen did last year, and we shallrue the day of his coming. Wherefore, I say, let us pray for the speedyreturn of King Harold, and let us keep what little store of gold andsilver we possess to nurture and pay our own native soldiers, and topurchase in the Netherlands such munition and warlike gear as we mayyet 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 difficultcorner of England, alone and unaided!"

  "We shall be the better able to stand our ground against any foe if webe on our guard against false friends, and keep our money and our owncounsels," said Abbat Thurstan. "Lord Hereward hath reason for all hesaith; take my word for it he is right."

  But there were many there that would not take my Lord Abbat's word, andthat would not be persuaded by the arguments of the Lord of Brunn; andin an inauspicious hour it was determined to send an embassage from thelords and prelates in the Camp of Refuge to the king and lords and freerovers of Danemarck, to implore their aid and assistance, and topresent them with a sum of money, as the earnest of a large futurereward. The strong money-box at the shrines of Ely church, wherein thepilgrims deposited their offerings, was now in reality broken open andemptied; at which some of the unworthy members of the house who hadmost opposed Hereward and their Lord Abbat went about whispering andmuttering, in the corners of the cloisters, and even among the townfolkof Ely, that sacrilege had been committed. Yet was the total sum thusprocured so very disproportionate to the well-known appetites of theDanes for money, that a collection was made in the Camp of Refuge, andeven Jews were secretly invited from Norwich and St. Edmundbury inorder to see whether they could be tempted to advance some money uponbonds: and here were raised fresh whisperings and murmurings aboutimpiety, together with severe censures on Abbat Thurstan for want ofuniformity or consistency of conduct, seeing that he had formerly beenthe sworn foe to all the Israelites whom the Normans had brought overin their train; and that, nevertheless, the convent were now sendingfor the Jews to open accounts and dealings with them. It suited notthese back-biters to remember that they themselves, in determining thatthe aid of the Danes should be required, had agreed that money shouldand must be sent to them; and that when Abbat Thurstan said there wasbut very little money in the house, they themselves had recommendedsending for the Israelites who made a trade of usury. All pointsconnected with the unhappy business had been decided, after the publicdiscussions in the hall, by the members of the house in close chapter,wherein the Lord Abbat had only given his vote as one. But theseunfaithful monks and untrue Englishmen hoped to make people believethat their opinions had been overruled, and that Thurstan wasanswerable for everything.

  It was also noticed--although not by the abbat and the monks that werefaithful unto him, and that were never allowed to hear any of thewhisperings and murmurings--that several of those who had most eagerlyvoted for calling in the assistance of the Danes shrugged theirshoulders whenever men mentioned the expected invasion of the fencountry and the new attack on the Camp of Refuge, and spoke of theNorman as a power too formidable to be resisted by the English, or byany allies that the English could now procure.