Charles Kingsley

Hereward the Wake Charles Kingsley

Hereward the Wake: Last of the English (also published as Hereward, the Last of the English) is an 1866 novel by Charles Kingsley. It tells the story of Hereward, the last Anglo-Saxon holdout against the Normans. It was Kingsley's last historical novel, and was instrumental in elevating Hereward into an English folk-hero. Hereward is, in Kingsley's novel, the son of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and Lady Godiva. He is introduced as an eighteen-year-old "bully and the ruffian of the fens" who is outlawed by Edward the Confessor at the request of his father. He sets off to see the world in the company of his boyhood friend Martin Lightfoot. In one adventure he defeats a caged polar bear in single combat in the north of England. He brawls his way through Cornwall and eventually turns up at the court of Baldwin of Flanders. Once there, he demonstrates his prowess against Baldwin's knights, and wins the love of Torfrida whom he marries. Three years after the Norman Conquest, Hereward and Martin return to England and discover the brutality of the Norman regime. Hereward takes revenge on the Normans who killed his brother. At a drunken feast he kills fifteen of them, with the assistance of Martin Lightfoot.