BoAr:FNQ:HerewardXIX

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De Gestis Herwardi Saxonis.

XIX.

Quomodo in Angliam reversus sui ad eum collecti sunt, facto signo quod eis dederat quando ab eis discessit.

Ut autem Herwardus suis promiserat, in Angliam reversus est, una cum duobus præfatis nepotibus, jam in omni militia præclaris, et uxore ipsius Turfrida1 comite, quæ etiam omnem muliebrem jam superexcedebat mollitiem, in omni necessitate perspicui viri compos sæpe probata. Cum quo nempe et quidam capellanus ipsius, Hugo Britannicus ex nomine2, venit, licet presbyter non minus omni virtute præditus armisve instructus, et Wirhardus frater ejus, etiam eques ex militari virtute magnificus, adductis scilicet nec non sibi servientibus. Ex quibus quosdam statim propriam provinciam et paternam domum3 explorare misit, ut quid de eo apud regiam majestatem definitum sit diligenter inquirerent4, et ubi nam sunt quos in Angliam reliquerat cautissime ab suis amicis in paterna patria investigarent. Quibus denique profectis, hæreditatem illius omnio liberam invenerunt, nullus in eam ingredi ausus5. Quosdam vera ex suis latendo, et sic saluti suæ providendo compererunt. Qui repente de adventu ejus congratulantes festino ad eum recurrerunt, videlicet Wynter quidam, insignis miles, qui erat brevi statura sed valde robustissimus ex fortitudine, et Wenotus et Alutus Gurgan, in omni virtute et fortitudine perspicui ; hi enim, sicut proceri et magni, ita in opere efficaces, adjunctis illis adhuc tribus nepotibus ipsius 6; Godwinus Gille qui vocabatur Godwinus, quia non impar Godwino filio Guthlaci, qui in fabulis antiquorum valde prædicatur, et Duti et Outi, ambo fratres gemini, moribus et facie consimiles, atque ex militia laudabiles. Reliqui vero ex collega suorum in toto regno erant dispersi. Propterea quod illis ad signum ab eis recedens constituerat fecit, injectis flammis in tres villas super Bruneswold, juxta Brunne7, igni tradidit, et in silvam discessit usque sui sibi recollocarentur.

Collectis autem in unum omnibus, fuerunt et cuncti etiam præclarissimi, nullusque inter illos militari dignitati habendus vel considerandus nisi prius iterum prædicandorum operum auctor extitisset, quorum nomina hæc sunt, cum illis quos memoravimus numerum explentes ; Wluncus Niger, ex hoc huic cognomini sortitus, quod quodam tempore depicta facie carbonibus inter munitos incognitus venit, ex quibus solo hastile x. prostravit. Et istius socius fuit quidam Wluricus Rahere, vel Ardea, inde sic cognominatus, quoniam ad pontem de Wrokesham8 quadam vice erat, ubi adducti sunt iiij fratres innocenter damnati ut crucifigerentur, carnificibus perterritis, quod dicebant eum esse ardeam ad invicem illudentes illum, pro quo enim innocentes viriliter erepti sunt, et inimici eorum nonnulli occisi. Alii equidem et conversati sunt inter insigniores milites Herwardi, Godricus de Corbi9, nepos comitis de Warewic10, et Tosti de Davenesse, cognatus comitis ejusdem, cujus et nomen in baptismo suscepit11, et Acere Vasus, cujusdam generosi suburbani Lincolniæ filius, cujus et turrim civitatis ipsius erat12, et Lewinus Mone, id est Falca, inde cognomen adeptus quod in quodam prato quadam vice quum herbam solus falcaret, a xx. ipsius loci villicis cum furcis ferreis et hastibus in manibus surreptus, ipse inter omnes cum solo falce multos vulneravit et aliquos occidit, sicut qui falcat inter illos discurrens, tandem effugatis omnibus.

Horum quidem et in consortio quidam Turbertinus, pronepos Edwini comitis13, et Lefwinus Prat, [id est] Astutus, quod ab inimicis sæpe captus caute evaserit, multociensque et suis occisis custodibus, unde sic vocatus : cum quibus nec non et alii in militia probatissimi adhuc computati sunt, Lefricus diaconus14, et Villicus de Draitone15, atque Turkillus16 et Utlamhe, id est exul, cocus Herwardi, Hogor cognatus Herwardi, Winter et Liveret, duo præclari, et Rapenaldus dapifer de Ramesia17, hi fuerunt signiferi, hi et Wluricus18 Niger et Wluricus Albus, Wluricus Grugam, Ylardus, Godwinus Gille19, Outi et alias Outi, cum prædictis, et illi duo magnifici, cum Siwardo et alio Siwardo Rufo, qui fuerunt nepotes Herwardi. Cum eis ergo fuerunt et cæteri milites excellentissimi Godricus de Corebi, Hugo Normannus et presbyter, et Ylardus frater ejus, Levricus20 diaconus, Tosti de Rothewelle21, et Godwinus de Rothewelle, Osbernus22, Alsinus23, Lefwinus Prat, Hurchillus, et Villicus de Draitone. Hi omnes quidem præclarissimi et magnifici milites fuerunt in omni regno, cum cæteris nonnullis, de quibus longum est nominare et recitare per singulos.

The Exploits of Hereward the Saxon

XIX.

How on his return to England his men gathered themselves together to him, on his giving the signal which he had arranged at his departure.

But Hereward, as he had promised to his people, returned to England, together with his two nephews aforesaid, now eminent in all military knowledge, and with his wife Turfrida1, who went far beyond the common weakness of women, being proved capable in every emergency that occurred to her famous husband. And with him there came a chaplain of his, Hugo Britannicus2 by name, who though a priest was not less endued with all virtue when trained in arms ; and Wirhardus his brother, a knight of great repute in valour, bringing with him some men that were in his service. And some of these he sent at once to explore his own district and his father’s house3, to make diligent enquiry as to what had been settled about him by the king4, and to ascertain with the greatest caution, from his friends in his father’s country, where those men were whom he had left in England. And when these went, they found his inheritance wholly unmolested, no man daring to enter it5. And some of his men they found in hiding, and so providing for their own safety. And these, delighted at his return, hasten to join him ; namely, one Wynter, a famous knight, who was short in stature but excessively robust and strong, and Wenotus and Alutus Gurgan, notable in all valour and bravery ; for these, as they were tall and big, so were they efficient in deed. And joined with them were three other nephews of Hereward’s6, Godwin Gille, who was called Godwin because not unlike Godwin the son of Guthlac who is celebrated in stories of the ancients ; and Duti and Outi, twin brothers, alike in character and in person, and of repute as soldiers. But the rest of the band of his followers were scattered over the whole kingdom. And because he had appointed to them a signal at his departure, he set fire to three villages over Bruneswold, near Bourne7, and then departed into the woods until his men should be gathered together.

But when they were all assembled, all were most eminent men, and not one of them to be esteemed worthy of knightly dignity unless he had first achieved some memorable deeds. And these are their names, making (with those we have named above) the whole number. Wluncus, The Black, so called because he had once stained his face with charcoal and gone unrecognised among some enemies who were in security, and had overthrown ten of them with his single spear. And his mate was one Wluricus Rahere, or the Heron, so called because he was once by some chance at Wrokesham Bridge8, where four brothers who had done no wrong were condemned to be executed, and terrifying the executioners, who called him a Heron in mockery, he manfully caused the innocent men to be liberated, and some of their enemies killed. Others too were associated with the more famous of Hereward’s knights, Godricus of Corby9, nephew of the Earl of Warwick10, and Tosti of Davenesse, kinsman of the same Earl, whose name he took in baptism11, and Ancere Vasus, son of a gentleman near Lincoln, who owned the tower of the city (?)12, and Lewinus Mone, that is The Sickle ; so called because being by chance in a meadow, when he was cutting the grass by himself, he was set upon by a score of labourers of the place with pitchforks and spears in heir hands, and alone among them all, with nothing but his sickle, he wounded many and killed some, dashing among them like a reaper, and so put them all to flight.

In company with those was also one Turbentinus [sic], great-grandson of Earl Edwin13, and Lefwinus Prat, that is, The Crafty, because though often captured by his enemies he had cunningly escaped, many times killing his very guards, whence his surname. And with them moreover others most experienced in warfare must be reckoned, Leofric the Deacon14, and Villicus* of Drayton15, and Turkillys16, and Utlamhe, that is The Outlaw, Hereward’s cook, Hogor, his kinsman Winter and Liveret, two men of mark, and Rapenaldus, steward of Ramsey17 ; these were standard bearers. So too were Wluricus18, The Black, and Wluricus, The White, Wluricus Grugam, Ylardus, Godwinus Gille19, Outi, and another also named Outi, with those named before, and those two splendid men, Siward and Siward, the Red, who were Hereward’s nephews. With these then there were other very famous knights, Godricus of Corby, Hugo the Norman, a priest, and Ylardus his brother, Leofric20 the Deacon, Tosti of Rothwell21, and Godwinus of Rothwell, Osbernus22, Alsinus23, Lefwinus Prat, Hurchillus, and Villicus* of Drayton. All of these were the most renowned and splendid knights in the whole kingdom ; and there were several others, whom it would be tedious to enumerate individually.

Commentary.

?          [Sweeting’s query]

*          [Sweeting’s footnote] Perhaps an officer, bailiff, not a name.

1.       We learnt about her in Chapter X

2.       The English version of his name would be Hugh Welsh or Hugh Breton. He could have been of indigenous Brythonic stock which does not rule out his being local to the district between Peterborough and Bourne. However, in earlier chapters, we have seen the mobility and intercommunication among the societies of Hereward’s social equals. Hugh might easily have been a Breton or of Breton descent. Compare Ralph Guader.

3.       We heard about this in Chapter XIV.

4.       Though, since the nineteenth century, Hereward has been portrayed as a hero on behalf of Anglo-Saxon society, the story does not really attempt to hide the fact that he was concerned to recover his father’s property for his family if not for himself. He will not have wished to undo any remaining spark of goodwill there might have been towards him on the part of King William. But he needed to know whether such a thing existed.

5.       For the reason, see Chapter XIV.

6. ↑    These would have been sons of the children of Leofric, Earl of Mercia by Edith or perhaps by Godiva. There is also the possibility that they were the sons of Turfrida’s siblings, of whom we know nothing. Two of Leofric’s grandsons are well known, namely Edwin, Earl of Mercia and Morcar, Earl of Northumbria.

7.       As one of the forms taken by the name ‘Bourne’ is ‘Brunne’, Bruneswold looks as though it should be ‘Bourne Forest’. However it lay to the west of the Fens, and to the east of the River Nene, in Northamptonshire, twenty miles and more away form Bourne (OS871-1066). Considering it in relation to the village of Bourn in Cambridgeshire makes the position no better. It seems odd that a man writing in Peterborough should not have known that; so perhaps, the Bruneswold name was then more widely interpreted, as it appears to be explicitly qualified as ‘near Bourne’. But Bruneswold is more a medieval name than a modern one – few people have heard of it nowadays outside this Hereward reference. Such a mistake might be made today but not in the twelfth century.

          super Bruneswold, juxta Brunne: Bruneswold is used here in its English form so we do not know what its Latin ending might have been. If it should have been accusative, then super probably means ‘over’ in the sense of ‘beyond’ rather than the usual ‘above’, in which case, the noun would have been given the ablative ending. (Langenscheidt) In this case, we probably have ‘beyond Bruneswold’. In other words, we are not reading about events in Bruneswold but beyond it, near Bourne.

8.       Possibly Rockingham, (grid reference SP8691) called Rochingeham in the Domesday Book. (Home of the followers of Hroc) (Mills 2007). The bridge crosses the River Welland at the lower end of the village.

9.       The now large town of Corby is adjacent to Rockingham in Northamptonshire but there is another option, near Bourne. It is now known as Corby Glen, to differentiate it from the Northamptonshire Corby. Much of the modern town of Corby is built on the former Rockingham Forest, which continued the Bruneswold forest, north of the Nene to the Welland.

Godric of Corby is suggested as a son of one Burgheard, a brother of Edwin and Morcar (DNB 2007 Ælfgar). He would therefore be Hereward’s great nephew but it is becoming difficult to fit all these generations in to the available time. If Leofric and Godiva had married in 1010, by 1070 there would have been room for 20 years per generation. That would make Godiva getting on for 45 years old when Hereward was born and in her late seventies when she died in 1067. It is all within the bounds of possibility but beginning to become rather tight.

10.     The creation of the first earldom of Warwick is dated from 1088, under William II. But if the kings are numbered from the Norman Conquest, there seems no reason to think that Anglo-Saxon earldoms were not similarly disregarded. Certainly, there had been earls since the early eleventh century but they were at the top of the hierarchy, under the king. Warwick was in Mercia but there was certainly an Earldom of Hereford held by Ralph. He was, in effect a marcher lord.

It is possible that Hugh Candidus is referring to Leofric, Earl of Mercia. He was writing after the Anglo-Norman title had been created in 1088 and it may have been seen as the then, modern counterpart of the earldom of Mercia. If so, the nephew relationships with Hereward, which are then noted, would fall into place by descent through Ælfgar or some other, unknown children of Leofric, whether by Roman or Danish custom. But see note 11.

11.     The Earl of Warwick’s name was therefore Tosti(g). This name does not appear in the Norman hierarchy so the reference to the Earl of Warwick cannot be one to an earl of the period after 1088.

12.     cujus et turrim civitatis ipsius erat : this might mean a castle but there were very few in the country before 1066 and those were owned by Norman supporters of the pre-Conquest Earl of Hereford. Latin words frequently have a range of meanings and turris can be a dovecote. Ownership of such an enterprise by one other than a lord would indicate significant merchant class wealth, as it was an important meat source, particularly in late winter and early spring. But it was also a significant investment. It is revealing that this man, apparently of a merchant class, had his building in the City of Lincoln, so that it was freer from the system of lordship governing the countryside. Nevertheless, he lived outside Lincoln and had his son trained in knightly skills.

13.     I have not been able to find anyone who could have been called Earl Edwin in this period, apart from Edwin, Earl of Mercia. Given that he is the man, it puts the birth of Ælfgar, his father between 1010 and 1020 and that of Leofric, his grandfather, back to 990 or so, as suggested by the DNB. See the commentary of Chapter II.

14. ↑  Apparently, the man who wrote the present story up in the first place. See Chapter I. It may be that this should be read so as to make Leofric both the Deacon and Bailiff (or steward, or overseer) of Drayton. There were several owners in Drayton of whom Ralph the Staller was the major one but much of his financial interest was managed under the Drayton heading and lay physically elsewhere, notably, in Skirbeck, which is to say Boston (Morris). The interests in the town of the abbots of Ramsey and Crowland may have associated Leofric with one of them. However, later in the chapter, Vicillus is listed again as though it were a personal name. So, it looks as though Leofric the Deacon and ‘Mr. Steward from Drayton’ were two people.

15.     There are several Draytons around England but the likely one here is at grid reference TF2439, part of Swineshead, near Boston. It had been a significant port until the early eleventh century but by 1070, much of its trade had moved to Boston.      

16.     Thorketill, possibly the same man, was a prominent pre-conquest landowner in Lincolnshire (MorrisJ31). This included ½ carucate in Rothwell, Lincs. See note 19. A man who appears to be his son figures in Chapter XXII.

17.     This seems likely to do with Ramsey Abbey. Its people, like those at Peterborough and Ely, will have questioned the desirability of being taken over by unknown Normans.

18.     Ulrich.

19.     If this is Godwin de Gael, he was the brother (DNB 2007) of Ralph the Staller, who owned a good deal of property in south Lincolnshire, including much of Drayton. (MorrisJ31)

20.     Levricus diaconus : Leofric is long out of use as a name but it is still heard in Bourne as there is a road named after Leofric, Earl of Mercia. It is now, usually pronounced ‘Leöfric’, with the two vowels, e and o, clearly separated but here, we see an indication that its pronunciation was closer to ‘Lefric’.    

21.     Tosti is a Danish name spelt, according to an English ear, as it would be said. A Dane would probably spell it Tostig. This international variation in the pronunciation of a terminal g is why we find dag and day meaning the same thing on opposite sides of the North Sea. There are Rothwells in Yorkshire, in Lincolnshire at TF1599 and in Northamptonshire at SP8181. The first is not in Mercia and the third falls much the most comfortably, into the pattern set by the other information here.

Tostig, Harold II’s brother had died in 1066.

22.     An Osbern, possibly this man, was a pre-conquest landowner in Lincolnshire (MorrisJ31).

23.     The name Alsinus brings to mind that of Alsige, Ralph the Staller’s nephew (DNB 2007) but suggesting identity of the two men would be rather a long shot.

When I began dealing, one by one, with the points arising from this chapter, I was expecting a puzzling outcome. As I drew towards the end of the page, I was surprised at how it had fallen out into a coherent story. Hereward had a group of supporters in northern Northamptonshire. This is reasonable, as that area was in his father’s earldom. Having come into England from Flanders, he moved northwards through Northamptonshire, gathering those supporters and sent one or two on to Bourne to reconnoitre while he organized the others in the cover of the wooded country.

The major figure in Drayton had been Ralph the Staller (MorrisJ31). By 1070, he was dead. His father appears to have had been brought from Brittany, into England when Emma moved there for her marriage to Æthelred II in 1002. After Edward the Confessor returned from exile in 1041, Ralph became staller in his court. Views as to what this entailed vary but it appears to have meant that he was in charge of domestic security. The name arises from the fact that the holder of the post was the man who stood behind the king to see that nobody stabbed him in the back. He had therefore, to be one whom the king trusted. Ralph did witness several documents in which he was variously described as ‘king’s steward’, ‘count’ and ‘courtier’. In the Domesday Book, he is referred to as ‘Ralph the Constable’ (MorrisJ31). That he was on reasonably good terms with William I, straight after the Conquest, is not completely surprising. His Edwardian acquisitions were in Norfolk and Lincolnshire, part of the Danish influenced part of England which was not a centre for the support of Earl Godwin’s family, of which Harold II was a member, though Gyrth, Harold’s brother had been a rival, taking over in Norfolk as Earl of East Anglia at one stage.

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