xxi Ivo Taille-Bois.

This petty tyrant, of infamous memory, was the chief of the Angevin auxiliaries of William, who received as his reward the hand of Lucy, sister of the Earls Edwin and Morcar; and with her also received all the ancient domains of their family in the neighbourhood of the Camp of Refuge, which proximity did not augment his prosperity.  The ancient chronicler of the Abbey of Croyland (Ingulf) says: 

“All the people of that district honoured Ivo with the greatest attention, and supplicated him on bended knee, bestowed on him all the honour they could, and the services they were bound to render; still he did not repay their confidence, but tortured and harassed, worried and annoyed, imprisoned and tormented them, every day loading them with fresh burdens, till he drove them, by his cruelty, to seek other and milder lords.  Against the monastery and the people of Croyland he raged with the utmost fury; he would chase their cattle with dogs, drown them in the lakes, mutilate them in various ways, or break their backs or legs.”

It is pleasing to learn that he met some punishment for his evil deeds.  Hereward took him prisoner, very ignominiously, and held him a captive for a long time, to the delight of the poor vassals; he fell under the displeasure of William Rufus, in 1089, as a partisan of Robert and was sent home to Anjou deprived of all his ill-gotten wealth.  He was, however, allowed to return under Henry, and died of paralysis in 1114 at his manor of Spalding, where, the old chronicler pithily says, “he was buried amidst the loudly expressed exultation of all his neighbours.”

xxii The Camp of Refuge.

There still exists, in the southeastern district of Lincolnshire and the northern part of Cambridgeshire, a vast extent of flat land, intersected in every direction by rivers and dykes, known as the fen country.

Eight centuries ago, before many attempts had been made to confine the streams within their banks, this country resembled an inland sea, interspersed with flat islands of firm ground.

One portion of this country was called the “Isle of Ely;” another the “Isle of Thorney;” another, partially drained by the monks, the “Isle of Croyland.”

In many parts half bog, it was quite impracticable for heavy-armed soldiers, and hence it offered a refuge to bands of patriots from all the neighbouring districts when worsted by the Normans.

Hither came the true Englishman Stigand, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, and after the conquest of the north, Egelwin, Bishop of Durham, who found both substantial entertainment at the board of Abbot Thurstan, abbot of the great monastery of Ely, and one of the stoutest patriots of the day.

At this time Hereward was living in Flanders; but hearing that his father was dead, that a Norman had seized his inheritance, and was grievously maltreating his aged mother, he returned home secretly, and, assembling a band of relations and retainers, expelled the intruder from his house after a sharp but brief conflict.