Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/248

 great, that the legends put Eadwine, who was dead, and Stigand, who was in prison, among those who sought shelter there. At last William himself led an expedition against the valiant outlaws, and from his camp at Cambridge assailed the island by land and water. Hereward displayed prodigies of valour, but at last William ‘wrought a bridge, and went in.’ Thereupon Æthelwine, Morkere, and all who were with him, lost heart and surrendered to the king, ‘except only Hereward,’ says the chronicle, and ‘all who could flee away with him.’ ‘And he boldly led them out, and the king took their ships, weapons, and treasures, and all the men, and did with them what he would’ (ib. s.a. 1071). Florence of Worcester confirms the account of the chronicle, and says that the ‘vir strenuissimus’ Hereward escaped through the marshes with a few companions. The undoubted history of Hereward here ends, but the legend goes on to speak of his later exploits against the Normans. According to the ‘Gesta’ he obtained in the end a pardon from William, and thus died in peace. This is confirmed by the entries in ‘Domesday Book,’ which make Hereward still holding at the time of the ‘Survey’ the lands at Marston Jabbett and Barnacle, which he had possessed in the days of King Edward (Domesday, f. 240, 240 b). But instead of ‘holding them freely,’ he held them of the Count of Meulan. Their value was still the same as in King Edward's days. If, therefore, we could be sure that this Hereward was the same as the defender of Ely, we should know that he was alive in 1086.

The French rhyming chronicler, Geoffrey Gaimar [q. v.], who wrote within eighty years of Hereward's escape from Ely, gives a different account. As in the ‘Gesta,’ Hereward is reconciled with William through his wife, and in 1073 William took him along with him to the war of Maine. One day his chaplain, who was on the watch, went to sleep. Some Normans at once fell on Hereward, who after he had slain sixteen of his foes was himself slain. One of his murderers, Asselin, swore that had there been three other such men in England, the French would have all been killed or driven out.

Up to the thirteenth century a wooden castle in the fenland was known as Hereward's Castle (Flores Hist. ii. 9, Engl. Hist. Soc.) 

HERFAST known to the Normans as (d. 1084?), chancellor and bishop, was probably of Norman birth, though in all likelihood, as his name suggests, of Teutonic extraction. Modern authorities describe him, on insufficient evidence, as a monk in early life of the abbey of Bec. The first fully authenticated mention of him is as chaplain to William of Normandy, several years before the duke came to England. According to William of Malmesbury he was a man of slender ability and moderate learning, but there are difficulties about the story that when, as the duke's chaplain, he rode in high state to the monastic school of Bec he exposed himself by his ignorance and arrogance to the open scorn of Lanfranc, and that he consequently prejudiced his master against Lanfranc. Herfast followed William to Eng-