In the gray dawn of an autumnal morning, in the year 1071, the Normans, guided through the labyrinth by the traitors-the guards having been decoyed from their posts-entered the camp.

Hereward and his men fought like heroes, with all the courage of despair; they did all that men could do; but, assailed from all sides, many of the English lords, dismayed by the hopeless character of the conflict, threw down their swords, and cried for quarter.  But their brave chieftain-with a mere handful of men-disdaining to save their lives by submission, cut their way through the foe, and escaped across the marshes, after most doughty deeds of valour, for the assault was led by William in person.

For a long time Hereward maintained the hopeless struggle-for it was now hopeless-till the king sent to offer him his favour, and restoration to his paternal estates, on condition his accepting accomplished facts, and taking the oath of allegiance to the Conqueror.  Feeling that all hope of shaking off the Norman yoke was lost, Hereward laid down his arms and accepted “the king’s peace.”

There are two accounts of his death; the one, which we hope is true, that he ended his days in peace; the other, that his Norman neighbours fell upon him as he was sleeping in the open air; that he awoke in time to defend himself, and slew fifteen men-at-arms and a Breton knight ere he succumbed to numbers-the chief of the troop, named Asselin, swearing, as he cut the head from the corpse, that he had never seen so valiant a man.  It was long a popular saying amongst the English, and amongst the Normans that, had there been four such as he, the Conquest could not have been accomplished.

The fate of those who submitted, or were taken in the Camp of Refuge, was pitiable; many had their hands cut off, or their eyes put out, and with cruel mockery were set “free;” the leaders were imprisoned in all parts of England.

Egelwin, Bishop of Durham, was sent to Abingdon, where within a few months he died of hunger, either voluntary or enforced; while Archbishop Stigand was condemned to perpetual imprisonment.

xxiii Lanfranc.

This noted ecclesiastic was a native of Pavia; he was bred up to the law, and, coming to France, established a school at Avranches, which was attended by pupils of the highest rank.

On a journey to Rouen he was robbed and left bound in a wood, where some peasants found him, and brought him for shelter to the Abbey of Bec, recently founded by Herluin.  Here he felt himself called to the monastic life, and became a monk at Bec, which sprang up rapidly under him into a school no less of literature than of piety, where William often retired to make spiritual retreats, and where an intimacy sprang up between them.  He became successively Prior of Bec and abbot of William’s new foundation of St. Stephen’s at Caen.  His influence with the Pope procured the papal sanction for the invasion of England; and afterwards, in 1070, the Archbishopric of Canterbury was pressed upon him by William, which he held until his death in 1089, in the eighty-fourth year of his age.