Hereward the Wake

Hereward the Wake
Hereward fighting Normans, illustration from Cassell's History of England (1865)
Born	c.1035 Lincolnshire
Died	c.1072 (aged 36-37)
Other names	Hereward the Outlaw and Hereward the Exile
Movement	English Anti-Norman rebellion

Hereward the Wake (also known as Hereward the Outlaw or Hereward the Exile, c. 1035 – c.1072) was an 11th-century leader of local resistance to the Norman conquest of England. Hereward's base, when leading the rebellion against the Norman rulers, was in the Isle of Ely, and according to legend he roamed The Fens, covering North Cambridgeshire, Southern Lincolnshire and West Norfolk, leading popular opposition to William the Conqueror.

Hereward is an Old English name, composed of the elements here "army" and ward "guard" (cognate with the Old High German name Heriwart). The epithet "the Wake" is recorded in the late 14th century, and may mean "the watchful", or derive from the Anglo-Norman Wake family who later claimed descent from him.

Several primary sources exist for Hereward's life, though the accuracy of their information is difficult to evaluate. They are the version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle written at Peterborough Abbey (the "E manuscript" or Peterborough Chronicle), the Domesday Book (DB), the Liber Eliensis (Book of Ely) and, much the most detailed, the Gesta Herewardi (Gesta).

To a small extent, they are sometimes mutually contradictory. For example, Gesta Chapter XXVIII places Hereward's attack on Peterborough Abbey after the Siege of Ely whereas the Peterborough Chronicle (1070) has it immediately before. This probably indicates, as the preface to the Gesta suggests, that conflicting oral legends about Hereward were already current in the Fenland in the late 11th and early 12th centuries. In addition, there may be some partisan bias in the early writers: the notice of Hereward in the Peterborough Chronicle, for instance, was written in a monastery which he was said to have sacked, some fifty years after the date of the raid. On the other hand, the original version of the Gesta was written in explicit praise of Hereward; much of its information was provided by men who knew him personally, principally, if the preface is to be believed, a former colleague-in-arms and member of his father's former household named Leofric the Deacon.