oned his fame as of
the very highest; ordinary current events of the day would not suit
their ideas of the fitness of things. Hereward was as Alfred had been,
as Arthur had been, and so he must have his share of the national
tradition, even as these heroes had. To say less of him was to have
put him below the others. And history in this case could not help, for
it was in the hands of Hereward's enemies, and they were careful to
say nothing or very little of English heroes at this period. The great
battle of Hastings had been lost, but of all the English men who had
fought and died there we only know of three names beyond those of the
king and his house. Leofric the abbot of Peterborough, Godric the
sheriff of Berkshire, and Asgar the sheriff of London, have become
known by accident, as it were. All others are unnamed and unhonoured.
Therefore, when the great deeds of Hereward came to be chronicled, it
was not enough to say he was at Hastings; the deeds of old must be
chronicled of him as they had been chronicled of others.

This accretion of popular tradition to account for the fame of
Hereward when he took command at Ely, though it proclaims in the
strongest terms that Hereward was famous in the eyes of his
countrymen, displaces history therefore. Putting the case in this
way, we may proceed to examine what recorded history exactly has to
say of Hereward, and then by noting what it has left unsaid, we may
perhaps be able to fill the gap by a reasonable deduction from the
facts. In Domesday there are clearly two Herewards, one having lands
in Lincolnshire in the time of King Edward and _not_ at the date of
the survey, the other having lands in Warwickshire in the time of King
Edward and _also_ at the date of the survey. Here we have two widely
different counties and two widely different conditions, and it is
right with all the evidence to conclude that they relate to different
personages. The Lincolnshire Hereward is the hero of the fens. He held
of the abbot of Peterborough, and Ulfcytil, who was appointed in 1062,
was the abbot in question. This brings us to only four years before
the battle of Hastings, and another entry in Domesday, thanks to the
scholarship of Mr. Round, proves that Hereward was deprived of his
Lincolnshire lands not before but after the great fights at Hastings
and in the fens. Therefore the story shapes itself somewhat in this
fashion. Hereward was in England in 1062. He was then a man of the
ab