Hereward: The Last Englishman

by PeterRex (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $12.13

  After the Norman victory in Hastings in 1066, William the Conqueror's oppression of the English led to widespread famine, death and destruction, culminating in the brutal Harrying of the North and the deaths of 100,000 people. Did the English submit to the tyranny of their oppressors? Or was this to be the beginning of one man's fight for liberty? Returning from Flanders to find his country taken over by the Normans, Hereward, known traditionally as 'the Wake', embarked on a path of resistance that was to start with the violent plundering of the monastery at Peterborough. Subsequently abandoned by the Danes he had relied upon, Hereward barricaded himself on the Isle of Ely. Holding out alone until reinforced by the arrival of Earls Edwin and Morcar from the North, Hereward found himself the object of William's personal hatred and his desire to stamp out the last remnants of English resistance.Peter Rex rescues Hereward from the myths associated with his life and career, and finally reveals the mystery of his parentage and baffling disappearance into the mists of the Fens...

• Used

  Paperback
  2005

  $3.40

  Hereward was a thorn in William the Conqueror's side, the man who led the last stand against the king and engaged his personal hatred. In this book Peter Rex brings the historical figure of Hereward out of the realms of fiction and folklore. This well-rounded account outlines the historical details of Hereward's parentage, his Danish background, his time spent in exile before the Conquest and his return to England to lead an Anglo-Danish stand of resistance to the king. Piecing together a wide range of source material, Rex looks in detail at the events of Hereward's attack on Peterborough Abbey, his refuge on the Isle of Ely and his attempts to hold off Norman soldiers while awaiting reinforcements. His fate sealed, the story ends with the question of Hereward's descendants and the legitimacy of their claims, as well as a discussion of the cards Hereward has been dealt by generations of historians, novelists and others.