Hereward The Wake

   Ancestral File Number: 9NR4-2X.

  General Notes:

Many very mighty men are recorded from among the English people, and the outlaw Hereward is reckoned the most distinguished of all -- a notable warrior among the most notable. Of very noble descent from both parents, his father was Leofric of Bourne, nephew of Earl Ralph the Staller; and his mother was Eadgyth, the great-great-niece of Duke Oslac. As a boy he was remarkable for his figure and handsome in his features, very fine with his long blond hair, open face and large gray eyes -- the right one slightly different from the left. However, he was formidable in appearance and rather stout because of the great sturdiness of his limbs; but despite his moderate stature he was very agile and there was great strength in all his limbs. From his childhood he exhibited such grace and vigor of body; and from practice when a youth the quality of his courage proved him a perfect man. He was excellently endowed in every way with the grace of courage and strength of spirit.

The exploits of so notable a hero immediately captured the popular imagination. It is said that women and girls sang about him in their dances, and the author of the pseudo-Ingulf claimed to know ballads celebrating, and no doubt exaggerating, his deeds (Gesta III; Rerum Anglicarum Scriptorum Veterum, pp. 67-68). An extensive folk-literature was circulating within a few years of his death. Much of what was said seems to have been incorporated into the Gesta, from which extracts are printed here. He was soon ascribed fine family connections, and an elaborate by those keen to claim him as an ancestor. Of course, if he was actually related to one or another noble family, it would account for the prominence he is given in the record of resistance to William. The cognomen "the Wake" (i.e., the watchful one) is first recorded in a later chronicle attributed to one John of Peterborough (Chronicon Angliae Petriburgense) that acknowledges the necessary characteristics of the successful guerilla leader. Charles Kingsley's novel published in 1866, in which the story of this most famous of English freedom-fighters achieved its definitive modern form, is simply an engrossment of the Gesta material.


Partly because of the sketchiness of evidence for his existence, his life has become a magnet for speculators and amateur scholars. The earliest references to his parentage make him the son of Edith and Leofric of Bourne. Alternatively, it has also been argued that Leofric, Earl of Mercia and his wife Lady Godiva were Hereward's real parents. There is no evidence for this - and Abbot Brand of Peterborough, stated to have been Hereward's uncle, does not appear to have been related to either Leofric or Godiva. Some modern research suggests him to have been Anglo-Danish with a Danish father, Asketil: since Brand is also a Danish name it makes sense that the Abbot may have been Asketil's brother

Hereward married Thurfrida. (Thurfrida was born in 1024 in ofLincolnshire, England.)