Sack of Peterborough Abbey by Turold
Who Fought
Hereward the Wake and his followers; Norman garrison and new abbot Turold
History & Significance
Hereward the Wake (also known as Hereward the Outlaw or Hereward the Exile) was an Anglo-Saxon nobleman and a leader of local resistance to the Norman Conquest of England. His base when he led the rebellion against the Norman rulers was the Isle of Ely, in eastern England. According to legend, he roamed the Fens, which covers parts of the modern counties of Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Norfolk, and led popular opposition to William the Conqueror.
Several primary sources exist for Hereward's life, but 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 of 1086, the Liber Eliensis (Latin 'Book of Ely') and, by far the most detailed, the Gesta Herewardi.
The texts are sometimes 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 traditions about Hereward were already current in the Fens 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, and 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.
The Gesta Herewardi (or Herwardi) is a Middle Latin text, probably written around 1109–31.
The 12th-century Latin text purports to be a translation of an earlier (and now lost) work in Old English, with gaps in the damaged original filled out from oral history. The earliest surviving copy of the Gesta Herewardi is in a manuscript produced around the middle of the 13th century at Peterborough Abbey, along with other materials relating to the abbey. This 13th-century manuscript is known as the "Register of Robert of Swaffham".
What is known of the earlier history of the Gesta Herewardi comes from its prologue, according to which the original text was written in Old English by Leofric, a priest of Hereward's household, who became one of his companions in arms during Hereward's resistance to William the Conqueror. Leofric's work may have been precipitated by Hereward's death.
The ground they fought on
The site of Sack of Peterborough Abbey by Turold lies on Great Oolite Group, bedrock that formed in the Bathonian. The rock here is sandstone, limestone and argillaceous rocks.
The notice of Hereward preserved in the Peterborough Chronicle carries a particular edge, having been written within the very monastery he was said to have sacked, approximately fifty years after the raid took place; the monks who set down their account wrote from within walls that had felt the consequences of his assault, giving their record of the outlaw a quality of institutional grievance that no other source quite matches. Hereward's base lay on the Isle of Ely in eastern England, and he ranged across the Fens of Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Norfolk, drawing on networks of local support, possibly including Danish allies, as he maintained resistance against William the Conqueror and the new Norman lords being installed across the region.
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- Hereward the Wake · Wikipedia
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