page_title: Siward Barn
section_title: From York to Ely
hierarchical_section_title: Siward Barn / From York to Ely
caption_attribution_description: English: River Great Ouse &amp; Ely Cathedral
context_page_description: Siward Barn was an 11th-century English thegn and landowner-warrior. He appears in the extant sources in the period following the Norman Conquest of England, joining the northern resistance to William the Conqueror by the end of the 1060s. Siward's resistance continued until his capture on the Isle of Ely alongside Æthelwine, Bishop of Durham, Earl Morcar, and Hereward as cited in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Siward and his confiscated properties in central and northern England were mentioned in Domesday Book, and from this it is clear that he was one of the main antecessors of Henry de Ferrers, father of Robert de Ferrers, the first Earl of Derby.
  Following his capture in 1071, he was imprisoned. This incarceration lasted until 1087, when a guilt-ridden King William, in expectation of his own death, ordered Siward's release. Firm evidence of Siward's later life is non-existent, but some historians have argued that he took up a career in the Varangian Guard at Constantinople, in the service of the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos.
context_section_description: In 1068, there was a revolt in the north of England against the rule of King William, few details of which are recorded. It was serious enough to worry King William, who marched north and began the construction of castles at Warwick, Nottingham, York, Lincoln, Huntingdon and Cambridge.
  Earl Cospatric apparently fled to Scotland and in the beginning of 1069 King William appointed the Picard Robert de Comines as the new earl of Northumbria.
  During the winter the English murdered Earl William and Robert fitz Richard, the custodian of the new castle at York, and trapped William Malet, the first Norman sheriff of York, in the castle. King William went north in the spring or summer of 1069, relieved the siege of Malet, and restored the castle, placing William fitz Osbern in charge. The leaders of the revolt were Edgar the Ætheling (claimant to the English throne), Gospatric of Northumbria, and, among others, Mærle-Sveinn, former sheriff of Lincoln, and many senior Northumbria nobles.
  
  In the autumn of 1069, a fleet under the Danish king Sweyn Estridsson and his brother Earl Osbjorn arrived off the coast of England. It is from this point that Siward's involvement in the revolt is documented. Orderic Vitalis related that:
  The Ætheling, Waltheof, Siward, and the other English leaders had joined the Danes ... The Danes reached York, and a general rising of the inhabitants swelled their ranks. Waltheof, Gospatric (Gaius Patricius), Mærle-Sveinn (Marius Suenus), Elnoc, Arnketil, and the four sons of Karle were in the advance guard and led the Danish and Norwegian forces.
  What followed was William's most devastating punitive expedition, the so-called "Harrying of the North", conducted during the winter of 1069/70. After two minor engagements disadvantageous to the Danes, King William came to an agreement with Earl Osbjorn that neutralised them. William held Christmas court at the ruined city of York, and brought Waltheof and Gospatric back into his peace at the River Tees.
  
  Siward was at Wearmouth in the summer of 1070, with Edgar and Mærle-Sveinn, while William marched to the River Tyne with his marauding army. Although William burnt down the church of Jarrow, he left Edgar's party undisturbed. Siward must have gone to Scotland in this year, for the Historia Regum reports that in 1071 Morcar (previously earl of Northumbria) and Hereward went by ship to the Isle of Ely, and that "Æthelwine, bishop of Durham, and Siward, nicknamed Barn, sailing back from Scotland" arrived there too. This is also related by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which confirms that:
  Bishop Æthelwine and Siweard Bearn came to Ely and many hundred men with them".
   It was at Ely that Siward and all the other notables, save Hereward, were captured by King William.
caption: Ely cathedral with the River Great Ouse in the foreground; though most of the Fenland was drained in the early modern period and Ely is no longer an island, the landscape retains some watery features
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