Hereward of the Fens

In the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings a series of rebellions broke out across a defeated and demoralised Anglo Saxon state that lay prostrate under the oppressive grip of William 'the Conqueror' and his barbaric Norman knights.

Uprisings in Kent, Chester, Durham and York, led by various disaffected English nobles, were savagely and mercilessly beaten down and quashed, with thouands upon thousands slaughtered or left to perish in the devastation and ethnic cleansing that came to be known as the

'Harrying of the North'.

In the Fenlands to the East one of history's mysterious shadowy-figures by name of Hereward 'the Outlaw' rose to the fore and, armed with a multitude of dissidents, peasants and refugees, stopped the most formidable fighting force of the time dead in its tracks, inflicting humiliating damage to their number.

After a resistance of what appears to have been at least eighteen months, the fortified monastery on the Island of Ely in the southern Fenlands eventually capitulated, through treachery, and Hereward is reported to have fled, disappearing into the mists of the wild fen and on into legend...

​