Outlaws in Medieval and Early Modern England

Crime, Government and Society, c.1066–c.1600

John C. Appleby, Paul Dalton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780754658931
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317084631
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

With some notable exceptions, the subject of outlawry in medieval and early-modern English history has attracted relatively little scholarly attention. This volume helps to address this significant gap in scholarship, and encourage further study of the subject, by presenting a series of new studies, based on original research, that address significant features of outlawry and criminality over an extensive period of time. The volume casts important light on, and raises provocative questions about, the definition, ambiguity, variety, causes, function, adaptability, impact and representation of outlawry during this period. It also helps to illuminate social and governmental attitudes and responses to outlawry and criminality, which involved the interests of both church and state. From different perspectives, the contributions to the volume address the complex relationships between outlaws, the societies in which they lived, the law and secular and ecclesiastical authorities, and, in doing so, reveal much about the strengths and limitations of the developing state in England. In terms of its breadth and the compelling interest of its subject matter, the volume will appeal to a wide audience of social, legal, political and cultural historians.

1 The Outlaw Hereward ‘the Wake’ His Companions and Enemies

Paul Dalton

DOI: 10.4324/9781315599236-1

Hereward ‘the Wake’, an enigmatic Anglo-Saxon landholder from Lincolnshire, was elevated by a historical novel written by Charles Kingsley, first published in book form in 1866, into one of the most romantic figures of English medieval history: an outlaw and national hero famous for his determined resistance to the Norman invaders of 1066, and a forerunner of the greatest outlaw of English popular mythology, Robin Hood.¹ Since Kingsley’s novel first appeared, Hereward has continued to attract considerable interest and is still the subject of many historical and fictional publications, despite the paucity and brevity of the reliable historical evidence for his life.² Contrastingly, the men who appear as Hereward’s companions and enemies in some of the more extensive but less trustworthy twelfth-century sources for his career, have received much less historical attention. These men repay further examination, and are central to this chapter. The discussion which follows builds on work by Cyril Hart and others which argues that some of the English companions of Hereward in these sources were real historical figures, linked with the outlaw in various ways. It also suggests that the roles of some of Hereward’s French companions and enemies, men whose historical existence are not in doubt, is quite plausible and supported by their connections with the outlaw and the regions where he was active, and by their administrative and military positions in post-Conquest England. In doing so, the discussion casts new light on the identity, connections, motives and fate of some of the individuals, English and French, who played a part in Hereward’s story; on Hereward’s deeds, destiny and status; on the credibility, functions and dating of some of the literature written about Hereward during the twelfth century; and on the history of the Norman Conquest and the nature of political and tenurial conflict in the first century of Norman rule.

Before considering Hereward’s companions and enemies, however, it is helpful to begin by reviewing the main sources for his life and what they reveal.

The Sources and their Information

The reliable historical evidence relating to Hereward is limited.³ It includes a brief entry in the D version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, describing William the Conqueror’s famous siege of the English rebels gathered on the Isle of Ely in 1071, all of whom eventually surrendered, ‘except Hereward alone and those who could escape with him, and he led them out valiantly’.⁴ It also comprises a few short references in Domesday Book (completed in 1086) to Hereward and the estates he held in southern Lincolnshire.⁵ More information on the outlaw that is reasonably trustworthy can be found in a number of historical works composed in the twelfth century. They include an interpolation in the E version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1070, written at Peterborough abbey c.1121, which states that, after a Danish army invaded England and went to Ely, ‘the monks of Peterborough heard it said that their own men meant to plunder the monastery – that was Hereward and his following’, and goes on to describe how the outlaws attacked and burned the town of Peterborough, invaded and plundered its abbey, and took the stolen treasure to Ely.⁶ The troubling of Peterborough abbey ‘by brigands under one Hereward’ is also mentioned, briefly, in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, written in the mid-1120s, and is recounted in much greater detail in a history of Peterborough abbey composed by one of its monks, Hugh Candidus, at some point in the period 1155–c.1160.⁷ The Worcester chronicle, written by 1140, merely notes, in an account closely resembling that in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, that after the murder of Edwin, earl of Mercia, a group of English lords, including Morcar, earl of Northumbria, the bishop of Durham, Siward Barn and ‘the most vigorous’ Hereward ‘with many others sailed to the island of Ely, intending to spend the winter there’, were besieged by the Normans and surrendered, ‘except for the valiant Hereward who fled with a few men through the fens’.⁸ Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum, written between April 1123 and c.1154, gives a very similar report.⁹ And the ‘Hyde’ (or Warenne) chronicle, written in the late 1150s, includes a terse description of Hereward’s fenland rebellion and plundering activities, his killing of Frederick the brother (-in-law) of the Norman magnate William I de Warenne, and his eventual encirclement and killing by the Normans.¹⁰

In addition to this limited but largely reliable material, information on Hereward that is more extensive, but widely regarded as much less trustworthy, is to be found in three twelfth-century sources which show that the Hereward legend was already well established within a hundred years of 1066: the Gesta Herwardi, Geoffrey Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis, and the Liber Eliensis. These sources will now be considered in turn.

The Gesta Herwardi is a romantic account, in the heroic tradition, of Hereward’s deeds from his youth to the time of his eventual reconciliation with William the Conqueror. It was apparently written by a monk of Ely named Richard, and is usually dated c.1109 x 1131. It is by far the most extensive account of Hereward’s life and was based, according to its author, on a manuscript written in English by Hereward’s priest Leofric, information supplied by local people, and the recollections of men familiar with Hereward’s exploits.¹¹ Its narrative can be précised as follows. Hereward was the son of Leofric of Bourne, a kinsman of Earl Ralph the Staller, and his wife Eadgyth, a relation of Earl Oslac. Banished at the age of eighteen by King Edward the Confessor for unruly behaviour, Hereward acquired the name ‘outlaw’ and went to the court of his godfather, Gilbert de Gant, in Northumbria. There he saved the life of Gilbert’s wife and daughters by killing a rampaging bear, was offered knighthood for his valiant deed, but eventually departed after attracting the hostility of Gilbert’s men. Hereward then joined Alef, a prince of Cornwall, fought and killed a wicked and arrogant man named Ulcus Ferreus who was hoping to marry Alef’s daughter, was imprisoned by Alef but then freed by Alef’s daughter and sent by her to the son of the king of Ireland. Hereward successfully fought against the king’s enemies and rescued Alef’s daughter from an unwanted marriage. Leaving Ireland, Hereward was then shipwrecked near Saint-Omer, captured by the count of Flanders, fought for him against the count of Guînes, fell in love with his future wife Turfrida, and campaigned for the count of Flanders against the people of Scaldemariland. Leaving his wife and two nephews, Siward the Blond and Siward the Red, on the Continent, Hereward returned to England to discover that his brother had been killed while protecting his widowed mother from the Normans, who had seized his father’s property at Bourne in Lincolnshire. Hereward took bloody revenge on the murderers and gathered a band of followers. Receiving knighthood from Abbot Brand of Peterborough, the outlaw then helped to defend the Isle of Ely against William the Conqueror. During this defence Hereward killed Frederick, brother of the Norman magnate William, earl of Warenne, who was planning to capture and punish or kill him, and then departed for Saint-Omer in Flanders to visit his wife. There Hereward and his nephews, Siward the Blond and Siward the Red, joined a campaign against the viscount of Picquigny, before returning to England to resume the struggle against the Normans.

The struggle was conducted at first from Bruneswald forest, where Hereward gathered a band of men which included his two nephews. He then escaped an ambush by the earl of Warenne, and went on successfully to defend Ely against a Norman attack led by King William. During the attack Hereward rescued a Norman knight named Deda and allowed him to return to the Normans to give a report about the English rebels and their situation on the Isle. Deda’s praise for the rebels angered the earl of Warenne but influenced King William to consider making peace with Hereward. Dissuaded from this by his magnates, one of whom, Ivo Taillebois, advised using the artifices of a witch against the rebels, the king again laid siege to the Isle. To discover the plans of the Normans, Hereward went to the king’s court disguised as a potter, was attacked by the king’s kitchen servants and imprisoned, but escaped back to Ely where he led the resistance to the Norman assault. Deserted by the English earls Edwin, Morcar and Tostig, who went off to join the rebellion against King William led by the Norman Ralph de Gael, earl of East Anglia (1075), and betrayed by the monks of Ely, who secretly made peace with the king, Hereward escaped to the forests of Northamptonshire and continued to fight Norman forces, led by Ivo Taillebois and Turold abbot of Peterborough, sent to hunt him and his men. Hereward captured and ransomed Turold, burnt the town of Peterborough, and plundered its abbey. He then agreed to marry the wife or widow of the English Earl Dolfin as part of a peace agreement with King William; his first wife, Turfrida, making way for this by taking (possibly under compulsion) the veil at Crowland abbey. After fighting a brave Englishman named Letold, Hereward then went to the king, performed homage to him, and expected to receive his father’s lands in return. On being challenged to single combat by Ogger, one of the king’s courtiers who were indignant at the royal favour shown to Hereward, the outlaw fought and defeated him. Imprisoned for this by King William at Bedford, in the custody of Robert de Horepol, Hereward was kept there on the advice of William, earl of Warenne, Robert Malet and Ivo Taillebois, who remained hostile to him and blamed him for the lack of peace in the realm. While being delivered, through the machinations of Ivo Taillebois, from Bedford into the charge of a detestable man at Rockingham castle, and with the help of de Horepol, Hereward escaped and made peace with William the Conqueror. Restored by the Conqueror to his father’s lands and possessions, Hereward then lived on for many years faithfully serving the king.

The account of Hereward’s deeds in Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis, a work written in French in the 1130s or 1140s at the behest of a Hampshire and Lincolnshire aristocrat, Constance wife of Ralph Fitz Gilbert, by a man who was possibly a clerk in her household, shares some of the Gesta Herwardi’s romantic and chivalric influences but tells a fundamentally different and more tragic tale.¹² Hereward first appears here as the leader of disinherited English outlaws who were joined by Morcar, earl of Northumbria, Bishop Æthelwine of Durham and others, and went to Ely. There they were besieged by King William who intimidated them into asking for mercy, except Hereward who escaped in a boat with a few companions and attacked a party of Frenchmen led by Guy the sheriff. Hereward and his men then escaped into the surrounding woods, eventually reaching Bruneswald. From there, they attacked Peterborough and plundered its monks, and assaulted Stamford. Hereward subsequently held out for many years against the Normans with his companions, defeating forces that outnumbered him until a lady named Alftrued sent for him to become her husband and receive her father’s land. Hereward went to her under a truce from King William, and was about to fight for William in Maine when a group of Frenchmen broke the peace and attacked him while he was eating. Hereward fought bravely against his attackers, killing several of them, but was eventually killed by a Breton named Ralph de Dol from Tutbury, and then beheaded by a certain Halselin.¹³

The information about Hereward which appears in the Liber Eliensis, a history of the church of Ely and its estates composed, wholly or partly, by an Ely monk possibly named Richard (who may have been Richard, prior of Ely) between 1131 and 1174, is largely incorporated within an account of the Ely rebellion of 1071 based mainly on three apparently separate elements of local tradition. These are an account that appears to summarise elements of the Gesta Herwardi and draws on the phraseology of a biblical source (1 and 2 Maccabees); the Gesta Herwardi or possibly an earlier version of it; and a pro-Norman description of the Norman assault on the Isle of Ely.¹⁴ The first of these traditions describes Hereward as the leader of the rebels gathered on the Isle of Ely, who urged his companions to fight for the liberty of their country and the heritage bequeathed to them by their fathers, and rescued them from fear th...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction—John C. Appleby and Paul Dalton
• 1 The Outlaw Hereward ‘the Wake’: His Companions and Enemies—Paul Dalton
• 2 Outlawry as an Instrument of Justice in the Thirteenth Century—Susan Stewart
• 3 Justices and Injustice? England’s Local Officials in the Later Middle Ages—Richard Gorski
• 4 Sacred Outlaws: Outlawry and the Medieval Church—Candace Gregory-Abbott
• 5 ‘Sons of Iniquity’: The Problem of Unlawfulness and Criminality amongst Professional Soldiers in the Middle Ages—Neil Jamieson
• 6 Political Ideology in the Early Stories of Robin Hood—A.J. Pollard
• 7 Poachers and Gamekeepers: Four Fifteenth-Century West Country Criminals—Hannes Kleineke
• 8 Pirates and Communities: Scenes from Elizabethan England and Wales—John C. Appleby
• Index