page_title: Hereward the Wake
section_title: Later life
hierarchical_section_title: Hereward the Wake / Life and legend / Later life
caption_attribution_description: English: Herward the Wake with his second wife Alfruda
context_page_description: Hereward the Wake, was an Anglo-Saxon nobleman and a leader of local resistance to the Norman Conquest of England. His base, when leading the rebellion against the Norman rulers, was the Isle of Ely in eastern England. According to legend he roamed the Fens, which nowadays covers the parts of the modern counties of Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Norfolk, leading popular opposition to William the Conqueror.
  Hereward is an Old English name, composed of the elements here, "army" and ward "guard". The epithet "the Wake", first recorded in the 14th century, may mean "the watchful", or derive from the Anglo-Norman Wake family who later claimed descent from him.
context_section_description: There are conflicting accounts about Hereward's life after the fall of Ely. The Gesta Herewardi says Hereward attempted to negotiate with William but was provoked into a fight with a man named Ogger. The fight led to his capture and imprisonment. His followers, however, liberated him when he was being transferred from one castle to another. Hereward's former gaoler persuaded the king to negotiate once more, and he was eventually pardoned by William and lived the rest of his life in relative peace. It also says that he married a second wife after Turfida entered a convent. She is said have been called Alftruda and was the widow of Earl Dolfin.
  Geoffrey Gaimar, in his Estoire des Engleis, says instead that Hereward lived for some time as an outlaw in the Fens, but that as he was on the verge of making peace with William, he was set upon and killed by a group of Norman knights. It is also possible that Hereward received no pardon and went into exile, never to be heard from again; this was in fact the fate of many prominent Englishmen after the Conquest. Ogger ("Oger the Breton"), either the person Hereward is supposed to have fought or an heir, appears to have taken over his lands. Joseph Harrop in his 1764 A New History of England, suggests that after his escape from Ely, Hereward went to Scotland.
caption: Hereward escorts Alftruda, illustration by Henry Courtney Selous
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