Hereward, The Last of the English | Page 7

squares of rich corn and verdure,--will confess that the
lowland, as well as the highland, can at times breed gallant men.
[Footnote: The story of Hereward (often sung by minstrels and
old-wives in succeeding generations) may be found in the "Metrical
Chronicle of Geoffrey Gaimar," and in the prose "Life of Hereward"
(paraphrased from that written by Leofric, his house- priest), and in the
valuable fragment "Of the family of Hereward." These have all three
been edited by Mr. T. Wright. The account of Hereward in Ingulf
seems taken, and that carelessly, from the same source as the Latin
prose, "De Gestis Herewardi." A few curious details may be found in
Peter of Blois's continuation of Ingulf; and more, concerning the sack
of Peterborough, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. I have followed the
contemporary authorities as closely as I could, introducing little but
what was necessary to reconcile discrepancies, or to illustrate the
history, manners, and sentiments of the time.--C. K.]
CHAPTER I.
HOW HEREWARD WAS OUTLAWED, AND WENT NORTH TO
SEEK HIS FORTUNES.
Known to all is Lady Godiva, the most beautiful as well as the most
saintly woman of her day; who, "all her life, kept at her own expense
thirteen poor folk wherever she went; who, throughout Lent, watched
in the church at triple matins, namely, one for the Trinity, one for the
Cross, and one for St. Mary; who every day read the Psalter through,
and so persevered in good and holy works to her life's end,"--the
"devoted friend of St. Mary, ever a virgin," who enriched monasteries
without number,--Leominster, Wenlock, Chester, St. Mary's Stow by
Lincoln, Worcester, Evesham; and who, above all, founded the great
monastery in that town of Coventry, which has made her name
immortal for another and a far nobler deed; and enriched it so much
"that no monastery in England possessed such abundance of gold,
silver, jewels, and precious stones," beside that most precious jewel of

all, the arm of St. Augustine, which not Lady Godiva, but her friend,
Archbishop Ethelnoth, presented to Coventry, "having bought it at
Pavia for a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold." [Footnote:
William of Malmesbury.]
Less known, save to students, is her husband, Leofric the great Earl of
Mercia and Chester, whose bones lie by those of Godiva in that same
minster of Coventry; how "his counsel was as if one had opened the
Divine oracles"; very "wise," says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, "for
God and for the world, which was a blessing to all this nation"; the
greatest man, save his still greater rival, Earl Godwin, in Edward the
Confessor's court.
Less known, again, are the children of that illustrious pair: Algar, or
Alfgar, Earl of Mercia after his father, who died, after a short and
stormy life, leaving two sons, Edwin and Morcar, the fair and hapless
young earls, always spoken of together, as if they had been twins; a
daughter, Aldytha, or Elfgiva, married first (according to some) to
Griffin, King of North Wales, and certainly afterwards to Harold, King
of England; and another, Lucia (as the Normans at least called her),
whose fate was, if possible, more sad than that of her brothers.
Their second son was Hereward, whose history this tale sets forth; their
third and youngest, a boy whose name is unknown.
They had, probably, another daughter beside; married, it may be, to
some son of Leofric's stanch friend old Siward Biorn, the Viking Earl
of Northumberland, and conqueror of Macbeth; and the mother, may be,
of the two young Siwards, the "white" and the "red," who figure in
chronicle and legend as the nephews of Hereward. But this pedigree is
little more than a conjecture.
Be these things as they may, Godiva was the greatest lady in England,
save two: Edith, Harold's sister, the nominal wife of Edward the
Confessor; and Githa, or Gyda, as her own Danes called her, Harold's
mother, niece of Canute the Great. Great was Godiva; and might have
been proud enough, had she been inclined to that pleasant sin. And
even then (for there is a skeleton, they say, in every house) she carried

that about her which might well keep her humble; namely, shame at the
misconduct of Hereward, her son.
Her favorite residence, among the many manors and "villas," or farms
which Leofric possessed, was neither the stately hall at Loughton by
Bridgenorth, nor the statelier castle of Warwick, but the house of
Bourne in South Lincolnshire, between the great woods of the
Bruneswald and the great level of the fens. It may have been her own
paternal dowry, and have come down to her in right of her Danish
ancestors, and that great and "magnificent" Jarl Oslac, from whom she
derived her all-but-royal blood. This is certain, that Leofric, her
husband,