Hereward, the Last of the English by Charles Kingsley (easy to read books for adults list TXT) 📕

Endure, as ye may see.”

Then called they themselves “merry men,” and the forest the “merry greenwood”; and sang, with Robin Hood,—

“A merrier man than I, belyye There lives not in Christentie.”

They were coaxed back, at times, to civilized life; they got their grace of the king, and entered the king’s service; but the craving after the greenwood was upon them. They dreaded and hated the four stone walls of a Norman castle, and, like Robin Hood, slipt back to the forest and the deer.

Gradually, too, law and order rose among them, lawless as they were; the instinct of discipline and self-government, side by side with that of personal independence, which is the peculiar mark and peculiar strength of the English character. Who knows not how, in the “Lytell Geste of Robin Hood,” they shot at “pluck-buffet,” the king among them, disguised as an abbot; and every man who missed the rose-garland, “his tackle he should tyne”;—

“And bere a buffet on his head, Iwys ryght all bare, And all that fell on Robyn’s lote, He smote them wonder sair. “Till Robyn fayled of the garlonde, Three fyngers and mair.”

Then good Gilbert bids him in his turn

“‘Stand forth and take his pay.’ “‘If it be so,’ sayd Robyn, ‘That may no better be, Syr Abbot, I delyver thee myn arrowe, I pray thee, Syr, serve thou me.’ “‘It falleth not for myne order,’ saith the kynge, ‘Robyn, by thy leve, For to smyte no good yeman, For doute I should hym greve.’ “‘Smyte on boldly,’ sayd Robyn, ‘I give thee large leve.’ Anon our kynge, with that word, He folde up his sleve. “And such a buffet he gave Robyn, To grounde he yode full nere. ‘I make myn avowe,’ sayd Robyn, ‘Thou art a stalwarte frere. “‘There is pyth in thyn arme,’ sayd Robyn, ‘I trowe thou canst well shoote.’ Thus our kynge and Hobyn Hode Together they are met.”

Hard knocks in good humor, strict rules, fair play, and equal justice, for high and low; this was the old outlaw spirit, which has descended to their inlawed descendants; and makes, to this day, the life and marrow of an English public school.

One fixed idea the outlaw had,—hatred of the invader. If “his herde were the king’s deer,” “his treasure was the earl’s purse”; and still oftener the purse of the foreign churchman, Norman or Italian, who had expelled the outlaw’s English cousins from their convents; shamefully scourged and cruelly imprisoned them, as the blessed Archbishop Lanfranc did at Canterbury, because they would not own allegiance to a French abbot; or murdered them at the high altar, as did the new abbot of Glastonbury, because they would not change their old Gregorian chant for that of William of Fécamp. [Footnote: See the “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle”.]

On these mitred tyrants the outlaw had no mercy, as far as their purses were concerned. Their persons, as consecrated, were even to him sacred and inviolable,—at least, from wounds and death; and one may suppose Hereward himself to have been the first author of the laws afterward attributed to Robin Hood. As for “robbing and reving, beting and bynding,” free warren was allowed against the Norman.

“‘Thereof no fors,’ said Robyn, ‘We shall do well enow. But look ye do no housbonde harme, That tilleth wyth his plough. “‘No more ye shall no good yemàn, That walketh by grene wood shawe; Ne no knyght, ne no squyer, That will be good felàwe. “‘These bysshoppes, and these archbysshoppes, Ye shall them bete and binde; The hye sheryff of Nottingham, Hym holde in your mynde.’ “Robyn loved our dere Ladye, For doubt of dedely synne, Wolde he never do company harme That any woman was ynne.”

And even so it was with Hereward in the Bruneswald, if the old chroniclers, Leofric especially, are to be believed.

And now Torfrida was astonished. She had given way utterly at Ely, from woman’s fear, and woman’s disappointment. All was over. All was lost. What was left, save to die?

But—and it was a new and unexpected fact to one of her excitable Southern blood, easily raised, and easily depressed—she discovered that neither her husband, nor Winter, nor Geri, nor Wenoch, nor Ranald of Ramsey, nor even the romancing harping Leofric, thought that all was lost. She argued it with them, not to persuade them into base submission, but to satisfy her own surprise.

“But what will you do?”

“Live in the greenwood.”

“And what then?”

“Burn every town which a Frenchman holds, and kill every Frenchman we meet.”

“But what plan have you?”

“Who wants a plan, as you call it, while he has the green hollies overhead, the dun deer on the lawn, bow in his hand, and sword by his side?”

“But what will be the end of it all?”

“We shall live till we die.”

“But William is master of all England.”

“What is that to us? He is not our master.”

“But he must be some day. You will grow fewer and fewer. His government will grow stronger and stronger.”

“What is that to us? When we are dead, there will be brave yeomen in plenty to take our place. You would not turn traitor?”

“I? Never! never! I will live and die with you in your greenwood, as you call it. Only—I did not understand you English.”

Torfrida did not. She was discovering the fact, which her nation have more than once discovered since, that the stupid valor of the Englishman never knows when it is beaten; and sometimes, by that self-satisfied ignorance, succeeds in not being beaten after all.

So Hereward—if the chronicles speak truth—assembled a formidable force, well-nigh, at last, four hundred men. Winter, Geri, Wenoch, Grogan, one of the Azers of Lincoln, were still with him. Ranald the butler still carried his standard. Of Duti and Outi, the famous brothers, no more is heard. A valiant Matelgar takes their place; Alfric and Sexwold and many another gallant fugitive cast up, like scattered hounds, at the sound of “The Wake’s” war-horn. There were those among them (says Gaimar) who scorned to fight single-handed less than three Normans. As for Hereward, he would fight seven.

“Les quatre oscist, les treis fuirent; Naffrez, sanglant, cil s’en partirent En plusurs lius issi avint, K’encontre seit très bien se tuit De seit hommes avait vertu, Un plus hardi ne fu veu.”

They ranged up the Bruneswald, dashing out to the war-cry of “A Wake! a Wake!” laying all waste with fire and sword, that is, such towns as were in the hands of Normans. And a noble range they must have had for gallant sportsmen. Away south, between the Nene and Welland, stretched from Stamford and Peterborough the still vast forests of Rockingham, nigh twenty miles in length as the crow flies, down beyond Rockingham town, and Geddington Chase. To the west, they had the range of the “hunting counties,” dotted still, in the more eastern part, with innumerable copses and shaughs, the remnants of the great forest, out