The weak, helpless, and aged, were sheltered by the monastery and its buildings; the strong, enrolled in Hereward’s gallant band. Some of them were of higher rank than himself, and in order that he might be on a par with them, as well as with his Norman enemies, he sought the order of knighthood from his uncle, Abbot Brand.
The Normans in general were knighted by lay nobles, and though their prince, William Rufus, received the order from Lanfranc, they would not acknowledge Hereward as a knight, though they could not help respecting his truth, honor, and courage; and it was a common saying among them, that if there had been only four men like him in England, they should never have gained a footing there. No wonder, when he never hesitated to fight singly with seven Normans at once, and each of his five principal followers was a match for three. They were Ibe Winter, his brother-in-arms; Eghelric, his cousin; Ital; Alfric; and Sexwald.
Many fugitives of high rank did Hereward receive in his Camp of Refuge. He had nearly been honored by the presence of his hereditary sovereign, Edgar the Etheling, but the plan failed. He did, however, shelter his two cousins, Morkar and Edwin. They had suffered much from the insolence of the Normans, and experienced the futility of the promises in which they had trusted, until at length they had been driven to join a rising in the North. It had been quickly suppressed, and the worst of all the cruelties of the Normans had avenged it, while the two earls, now become outlaws, fled to the Camp of Refuge. Thence Edwin was sent on a mission to Scotland, but on the way he was attacked by a party of his enemies and slain, after a gallant resistance. He was the handsomest man of his time, and his betrothed, Agatha, was devotedly attached to him; it is even said that the stern William himself wept when the bloody head of his daughter’s lover was presented to him. A curious gold ornament has been of late years found in the field where Edwin was killed, and antiquaries allow us to imagine that it might have been a love-token from the Norman princess to the Saxon earl.
Another fugitive in Hereward’s camp was the high-spirited Abbot Frithric, whose steady opposition to the illegal encroachments of the Normans had given great offence to William. Once Frithric had combined with other influential ecclesiastics to require of the Conqueror another oath to abide by the old English laws, and thus brought on himself an accusation of rebellion and sentence of banishment. He assembled his monks, and told them the time was come when, according to the words of Holy Scripture, they must flee from city to city, bade them, farewell, and, taking nothing with him but a few books, safely reached the Camp of Refuge, where he soon after died.