Bourne Archive: FNQ: Hereward XXVI

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De Gestis Herwardi Saxonis.

XXVI.

Quomodo et quare Elienses cum rege concordati sunt, pro quo Herwardus ecclesiam et villam ardere voluit.

Jam ergo his ita paratis, rex tandem nihil suam prævalere industriam intelligens, ut insulam bello aut vi obtineret, sui omnes penitus quos nunc ibi simul amiserat et alio tempore quam innumerabiles illuc perdiderat, decrevit suis insignioribus partiri forinsecas terras ecclesiæ et res monachorum, ut solum de foris insulam custodirent. Qua de causa etiam nonnulli vicinas terras ecclesiæ propriæ ditioni usurpantes sibi eas vindicaverunt.  Quod audientes monachi ejusdem ecclesiæ saniorem consilium de quibus jam inceperant eligentes, reverso abbate qui cum prædictis comitibus dissimulans una cum ornamentis et thesauro ecclesiæ in Angerhale1 fugerat, rogaverunt regi ea quæ pacis sunt, si tamen omnes terras ecclesiæ in cunctis libere et honorifice restitutas eis redderet.  Hoc tamen quadam die secrete factum est, ne ab Herwardo intelligeretur.  Quibus gratanter a rege susceptis, repente porro regem cum suis insulam clam venire fecerunt, quum Herwardus quodam tempore cum suis ad prædam foras egressus est, ut absque sanguine et gravi cæde hoc fieret.  Tamen unus ex monachis ad eum profectus est, Alwinus filius Orgar, ut illi innotesceret se regem jam suscepisse et pactum cum eo confirmasse.  Quem statim obvium habuit in via de ripa cum suis quibusque progressum, portantes faces ut ecclesiam et villam incenderent, pro eo quod audierant.  Cui in multis precibus et obsecrationibus ne hoc ei fieret restitit, monens potius ut suæ saluti ex fuga consuleret, si ad pacem cum eis convertere nollet, subjugens etiam regem esse apud Wycheford2 prope unius stadii cum omni suo exercitu.  Cujus tandem persuasionibus et verbis obtemperans, quod amicum eum et bonum consortem habuerat in militia et in multis necessitatibus illius effectus, propterea, sicut illi persuasit, magis credidit, et repente hoc fecit cum suis navibus quas habebat bene armis munitas ad custodiendas aquas in circuitu insulæ, in quodam mare Wide vocatum3 juxta Welle secessit, magnum et spatiosum lateribus aquarum et liberos exitus habens4.  Et idcirco ibi expectare voluit quod quosdam ex suis Cissahum5 constitutos reliquerat, ut mala ibi perpetrarent et flammis terram vastarent, quatenus missis clam exploratoribus illos repente ne caperentur adducerent.  Quibus tandem in quadam minima insula quæ Stimtencia vocatur prope inventis arbitrati sunt suos persequutores esse, in palude inter arundines eminus se absconderunt.  Duo vero ex ipsis, quidam Starcufulfi nomine et Broker, simul latitantes aliquid remedium salutis sibi æstimabant si coronas haberent, eo quod monachi fuerant, cum suis gladiis prout potuerant coronam alter alteri impressit.  Ac denique ex clamore et loquela sibi invicem agnoscentes, congregati sunt et e vestigio ad dominum suum reversi.

The Exploits of Hereward the Saxon

XXVI.

How and wherefore the men of Ely made an agreement with the King ; upon which Hereward wanted to burn the church and town.

Notwithstanding all these preparations the King, perceiving that his energy was of no avail to obtain possession of the Isle by war or by force, and considering how many*1 of his men he had now lost all at once, and also what great numbers he had previously lost, made a decree to divide amongst his more eminent followers, although outside the Isle, the lands of the church and the property of the monks, so that they might only have to guard the Isle from without. Whereupon some of his men appropriating to their own use the lands of the church that were near, claimed them for themselves. Hearing which the monks of the same church, adopting a more prudent plan in their undertakings, upon the return of the Abbot who with the earls aforesaid had fled in disguise to Angerhale,1 with the ornaments and treasures of the church, asked the King for conditions of peace, he to restore to them all the lands of the church freely and honourably. This however was done on a certain day in secret, that it might not come to Hereward’s knowledge. The messengers were received graciously by the King, and they made arrangements for him to come at once secretly to the Isle, when Hereward should happen to have gone forth with his men foraging, in order that the affair might be managed without bloodshed and grievous slaughter. But yet one of the monks, Alwinus the son of Orgar, went to him, to signify that they*2 had already received the King and made a covenant with him. But he soon met him on the road coming from the bank with his men, carrying torches to set fire to the church and town in consequence of what they had heard. The monk with many prayers and entreaties opposed this design, urging him rather to consult his own safety by flight, if unwilling to join them in securing peace, adding also that the King with all his army was near Wychford,2 within a furlong’s distance. Yielding at length to his persuasive words, because he had regarded him as a friend and good comrade in warfare and in many of his necessities efficient ; because also he was convinced by his arguments ; he decided upon immediate action, and, with his vessels which he had well provided with arms to guard the waters round about the Isle, withdrew to a certain sea called Wide, 3 near Welle, a piece of water large and with ample channels,† and having ready means of egress.4 And there he had despatched some of his men to Cissahum5 to inflict mischief and lay the land waste with fire, until the scouts that he sent, secretly should quickly lead them to him to prevent their being captured. And when they were found at last in a little island called Stimtencia, they thought Hereward’s messengers were pursuing them, and hid themselves at some distance in the marsh among the reeds. But two of them, Starcufulfi and Broker, lurking together, thought that it might give them a better chance of safety if they had the tonsure, like monks ; and so with their swords, in the best way they could, they made a tonsure for each other. At last some words shouted out produced mutual recognition, and all in one body retraced their steps to their lord, Hereward.

Commentary

*1      [Sweeting’s note] Latin corrupt. [The corruption mentioned appears to lie in sui omnes penitus. Sui omnes is nominative plural = ‘all his men’, and penitus is probably here the adverb meaning ‘internally, deeply, thoroughly’, but the necessary verb, and object if required, are missing. A verb ‘impress, affect’, e.g. commoveo (animum) appears to have been lost at some stage. Supplying such a verb (and object) we get sui omnes penitus animum commoventes, quos hunc .... illuc perdiderat etc.’ (the missing words here supplied are here underlined). This would not be good Classical Latin but the same construction is used many times elsewhere in the narrative, so must have been acceptable Medieval Latin. The translation would be ‘his men, whom he had there and now lost, all at the same time (i.e. at the firing of the reeds) and what a large number he had lost there on another occasion (i.e. the earlier assault when the floating causeway had foundered) affecting him deeply, he ordered .... etc.’

*2      [Sweeting’s note] The Latin says “that he”; but the true meaning must be as here translated. [This refers to the passage ut illi innotesceret .... eo confirmasse. This is an example of oratio obliqua, a common form of indirect speech in Latin, in which the subject is in the accusative and the verb in the infinitive. Here the accusative is ‘se’ , a reflexive pronoun, which in Classical Latin always refers back to the main subject of the sentence, and so here to the singular noun Alwinus. Therefore in Classical Latin ‘se’ here would be singular and translated as ‘he’ as Sweetung says. However, the use of the pronound in Medieval Latin is very arbitrary and subject to no rigid rules (Sidwell G.11); and sinse ‘se’ is declined exactly the same in the plural as is the singular, it can here mean’they’, i.e. the monks. This is the interpretation that makes best sense and is the one adopted by Sweeting.

Note that ‘confirmisse’ is the infinitive verb of the oratio oblique, being a contracted form of ‘confirmavisse’, the perfect infinitive of ‘confirmo, -are’. (Vi and ve are often omitted from the perfect tenses of 1st conjugation verbs in both Classical and Medieval Latin).

The whole passage translates ‘However, one of the monks, Alwinus the son of Orgar, set out (to meet) him (Hereward) in order that he (Hereward) might know that they (the monks) had already accepted the king and had made a pact with him.

†          [Sweeting’s note] Meaning uncertain. [Sweeting has evidently taken magnum, spatiosum and lateribus aquarium as being three different characteristics of the mere, and so can make nothing of the third of these. But in fact the third is an expansion of the second, the second and third together reading spatiosum lateribus aquarium. Lateribus is the ablative singular of latus –eris neuter side, flank; hence edge. Here it is an ablative of respect or specification (see Kennedy para. 235  p. 129). Aquarium is an attributive genitive (see Kennedy para. 249 p. 133). The expression magnum et spatiosum lateribus aquarum therefore means ‘large and spacious in respect of the outer limits of its waters’: in other words ‘large, and great in surface area’. FWP This agrees with what we have just been told: that the people who named the mere expressed this more succinctly, as ‘wide’. RJP]

There is nothing in the Latin passage to suggest channels.

1. ↑    Angerhale: this has not been located. It appears to refer to grassland (anger) in a nook (hale). See Oxford Placenames under Ingram and Hale respectively. It is just possibly, Anglesey (TL5362), a name which appears as Angleseye in a manorial book of Ely, dated 1250 (J.H. Crosby, 584 in FNQ).

2.      Wychford: this lies close to the centre of the Isle at TL5078.

3. ↑    The phrase ‘in quodam mare Wide vocatum’ – (in a certain sea called ‘Wide’) seems to be a translation of Leofric Deacon’s text into Latin. Hugh Candidus claimed in Chapter I, not to understand English perfectly and here he appears to have translated the English ‘mere’ in Leofric’s text, as mare, (the latter appears here as the ablative, governed by ‘in’ but that looks the same as the nominative). This confusion of meaning is understandable, but it converts a broad, shallow lake into a sea. Therefore, when we look for a site for this part of the adventure, we need not look to the open sea but to a wide mere.

Each of the words sea and mere has roots in a broad meaning which does more than overlap. The precursors of the two words have the same broad meaning of an expanse of water. It is not therefore surprising that in modern use, different languages have come to use their versions of the two words in different ways. Indeed, German uses See to mean both the open sea and a lake but differentiates between them not only by context but by gender. However Meer means sea (Collins). Conversely, in Dutch, het meer is the lake and de zee is the sea. In Latin, lacus is unequivocally lake (or something smaller) but stagnum might be either and mare means sea (Langenscheidt) but might be used of a lake (OED mere).

In post-medieval English use, mere has meant sea only where consciously used archaically. The latest uses given by OED are fifteenth century.

The Soil map betrays the sites of former meres in the Fens because the lime rich waters from the chalk and limestone uplands around the Fen basin deposited lime in meres as a result of the fact that a significant proportion of their outflow took the form of evaporation. This left a material called lake marl which derives partly from direct deposition and partly from the accretions made by animals (for example, of the family Tubificidae) for their shelter and has produced the soil type known as the Willingham soil association. It shows clearly as very pale soil amongst the black, humus-rich ones left by fen and bog when the land was drained. The nature of the conditions which produced it can be verified since the same type of soil is found on the site of Whittlesey Mere, which was drained only in the 1850s so that descriptions of the conditions there exist. (See for example, Lord Orford’s Voyage.) The two largest of these patches are of about equal extent. One lies close to the Norfolk edge of the Fens, around grid reference TL6784 and the other just to the south of Denver Sluice. The extent of either would qualify it for the name ‘Wide’ and the latter is quite close to the former course of the Great Ouse, leading from Ely. That course is known as the Old Croft River but its earlier name between here and Wisbech was the Well Stream. Outwell, Upwell and Welney are places which take their names from it and the mere site is adjacent to Upwell Fen. It can therefore be said with some confidence that Hereward’s withdrawal was to the vicinity of TF5897.

The existence of the mere was in the past by the time Saxton published his map including the Isle of Ely, in 1576. Johan Jansson of Amsterdam’s map of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire essentially reproduces Saxton’s information more neatly, in what appears to be about 1630. In those, a waterway named as Maden Lode passed from Welney to the left bank of the Great Ouse, near the confluence of the Wissey, on the right bank.  Something of the sort is traceable on the modern map and passes through the length of the patch of Willingham soil. This appears to have carried the flow of water which had formerly passed through or more probably, past the mere. Both Saxton and Jansson showed the meres remaining in their times so we can be reasonably confident that the Wide Mere’s absence from the two maps is a reflection of sixteenth and seventeenth century reality, although Jansson may have simply re-engraved Saxton’s map. The Maden Lode looks like the old course of the lower Wissey, from a period before the Great Ouse found its way to the sea at Lynn. This change in the Great Ouse’s course will have happened after Wisbech was named. Bech is the same word as beach and represents a place where a fenland river, in this case the Ouse, was conveniently accessible from the land rather than flowing amongst marsh or fen..

4. ↑   The channels and the egress can be explained in two ways, either or both of which, Hugh may have had in mind. The typical fenland mere was a shallow extent of water, very broad in relation to its depth. It did not have a river flowing through it: rather, it lay beside a river with the river’s natural levée separating the two. This meant that the mere was filled by seepage and overflow from the river but that a significant proportion of its outflow was by evaporation during drier periods of the year. In this way, the lime-rich river water from the Jurassic limestone and Cretaceous chalk around the Fens deposited calcium carbonate on the mere’s bed so producing the Willingham soil. Though they were shallow, the meres were navigable by boats as is testified by descriptions of Wittlesea Mere. It was a simple matter to cut a breach in the river’s levée to provide artificial access for fishing and fowling and perhaps for navigation. Thus the channels are accounted for by their presence in the body of the mere or more likely, by their presence in the adjacent river bank. These cuts would provide the egress from the mere which is mentioned. From the Ordnance Survey map (1:50 000) it looks as though the river concerned was the Wissey: joining the Old Croft River at the northern end of Welney (approximately TL520950). Though, the Willingham soil does extend to both sides of its apparent course.

5.       Cissahum has not been located. However the text is in Latin and in that language, the prefix cis in place names, is really a preposition carrying the meaning of ‘on the nearer side of’, as in Cisalpine Gaul, the part of Gaul between the Alps and Rome. Tentative suggestions might be Saham, which now has the later suffix, Toney and is at TF8902, in Norfolk and Soham which is near the Isle of Ely at TL5973.

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