Hereward the Wake (1032?-1072?) was a Lincolnshire landowner who became a leader of English resistance to William the Conqueror in 1070. He joined forces with a group of Danish raiders based at the Isle of Ely. With them, he attacked Peterborough and sacked its abbey. He and his raiders were such a threat to William’s control of the area that William made a treaty with the Danish king, Sweyn, who withdrew his raiders from Ely. But Hereward remained, and Ely became a refuge for William’s enemies.
Hereward carried on guerrilla warfare against William, who laid siege to Ely in 1071. Most of the garrison surrendered, but Hereward escaped into the fen country inland. He became an English folk hero and the subject of many popular legends. Charles Kingsley gathered some of them together in his novel Hereward the Wake (1865).
