Hereward the Wake was the son of Leofric, the Earl of Mercia and his wife, Lady Godiva. He was born in 1035, and was a rebel all his life. The Wake means, watchful or alert.

Earl Leofric was a very harsh ruler and the people of Coventry were unhappy because of the suffering he imposed on them.His wife, Lady Godiva was entirely different to him. She was a gentle, religious, lady who loved her citizens and she gained a great reputation for sympathy and pity by her efforts at helping the oppressed people. Her pleading for them changed the earl after her ride through the streets of Coventry, naked.
Lady Godiva wanted Hereward to become a monk, but Hereward being the rebel that he was, refused to study. He was a wild, wayward lad, with long golden curls, eyes of different colours, one grey, and one blue. He had great strength and a wild and ungovernable temper, which made him difficult to control. Instead of studying, he spent his days wrestling, boxing, fighting, hunting, and other manly pursuits. When he became a teenager he became the terror of the Fen Country, gathering a band of youths as wild and reckless as himself. Hereward was their leader and they obeyed him implicitly. His band of youths met and fought other bands in the area.

Hereward’s father, leofric, could do nothing to control his son, so he begged an audience with  King Edward the Confessor, and formally asked for his son to be declared an outlaw. The King agreed and in 1062 signed the warrant. Hereward went into exile and was followed by his friend, Martin Lightfoot, who left Leofric’s service and joined up with his son. His godfather Gilbert of Ghent lived in Northumbria, so Hereward sailed up the coast to his castle where he underwent training for a knighthood. He soon showed himself to be a brave warrior, an unequalled wrestler, and a wary fighter, who outdid them in all manly sports. Hereward then left for the continent where he fought in the armies of foreign princes. In 1066, after William of Normandy won the battle of Hastings, he learned how his aged mother was suffering insults at the hands of the Normans. His father was already dead and the estates had become the property of a Norman, Peter de Bourne. On his return to England he found that the new Norman owners had not only taken the land, but also slain his brother, whose head was set above the door of the house. He gathered some of his relatives and friends, collected an armed band and like an avenging thunderbolt, he descended upon the killers and slew them all with his famous sword Brainbiter. Next day fourteen Norman heads had replaced that of his brother above the door. News of Hereward’s exploits spread making him the hero of the countryside. Soon other armed bands joined him and he became the leader of a mixed band of English and Danish warriors, who flocked to join him at his new base at the great Abbey of Ely. He gained the name Hereward the Wake, meaning alert or watchful.

Hereward harassed the Normans for the next five years. At last in 1072 William the Conqueror, his patience exhausted, decided to take action against this outlaw. Hereward had established a camp of refuge in the Isle of Ely in the midst of the Fens where it was very difficult to reach him. The ground was treacherous and boggy, providing no footing for an army, neither was there enough water for the warriors to approach the camp by boat. Archers could find no suitable ground to make a stand and the knights in their armour dare not take their horses into the bogs. William who was always a man of action, decided to construct a causeway across the Fens at their narrowest point from the outlaws, and his men cut a large number trenches so that the water would be drained off. He then raised a bank of stone and turf to gain access to the camp but Hereward was on the alert and constantly stopped the operations. He raided here there and everywhere and for months the Normans could do nothing more than blockade the English rebels. During William's third attempt at building a causeway, he made camp at Brandon. Hereward rode there on his horse, to try to find out William's plans, and on his way there he met a tinker who agreed to swap clothes with him and lend him his goods. Disguised, Hereward got into William’s camp and overheard his plans. When William ordered his men to attack Ely again, Heward’s men were hidden in the reeds and they set fire to the reed beds, causing an inferno which rapidly expanded in the wind. The flames rapidly engulfed the Normans and those who tried to escape were picked off by Herewards bowmen.Then the treacherous monks of Ely went in secret to the king and offered to show him a way across the Fens. William agreed and a band of Normans was led across the marshes. Hereward and his men were surprised and a thousand of them were killed and their camp captured. Hereward and five of his comrades fought on and crossed the marshes at a place where the enemy did not dare follow. They escaped into Lincolnshire and were hidden by some Saxon fisherman, while the hue and cry went up. Still the disaffected English rallied to Hereward and he made constant raids upon the Normans greatly harassing them, killing many and putting the rest to flight. William offered to pardon Hereward, for he had come to respect him and preferred to have the English leader as a friend rather than as a foe. Hereward went to Winchester where he swore allegiance to William and gained the king’s favour, who restored his lands. One night in 1072, however he was set upon by a band of envious Normans and although he managed to kill fifteen of them with his famous sword, Brainbiter he was stabbed in the back and he fell dead.

An author writing more than fifty years after William’s assault on Ely, writes that he remembers seeing fishermen dredging Norman skeletons, still in their rusty armour, out of the fens. Folk songs were being sung a hundred years after Herewards death.