As part of my follow up to my article on William the Conqueror (the first king of England) and the close relationship of his occupying Norman regime with jewish moneylenders. (1) It is important to point out that the most famous of the rebels against Norman rule (enforced in economic terms by an imported jewish community from northern France) Hereward the Wake was fighting just this kind of oppression according to the stories associated with him (which, it should be remembered, are necessarily a mixture of fantasy and fact).
Hereward's story is remarkably simple: he was born in 1035 or 1036 to a Danish father and (possibly) an English mother. He was a bit of a rebel and at the age of eighteen he went into exile in the geographic area that is now low countries (i.e., Belgium and the Netherlands). When Hereward finally returned to England in 1069 or 1070 it had been conquered by the Normans and his family dispossessed (as many landholders were who didn't borrow from jewish money lenders to pay the crown its desired ransom) (2) by King William's agents.
This caused Hereward to join up with rebels - led by a small contingent of Danes - in the Isle of Ely (i.e. an area that was then extremely marshy and difficult to traverse [and ideal for both hiding and guerrilla warfare]) who were fighting a localized struggle against the Norman overlords. A fact that actually caused William (through his jewish moneylenders and tax farmers backed by his Norman soldiers) to increase the economic oppression of the Anglo-Saxons several fold by new measures designed to crush resistance once and for all as well as extract the maximum amount of coin from his newly conquered subjects. (3)
Indeed the Gesta Herewardi puts it bluntly when it states that the principle motivation for king and his agents in putting down the revolt that included Hereward on the Isle of Ely was because they believed the rebels had a considerable store of gold and silver, which they could then plunder and add to their own coffers. (4)
With the fall of the Isle of Ely after the Norman forces had bribed the monks of Ely to show them a secret way to access the isle that didn't involve a frontal assault on the defenders: Hereward escaped and either (the accounts of his life diverge substantially on this) made his peace with the king after several more years of guerrilla warfare, was killed by Norman forces during this period of guerrilla warfare or lived in exile in Scotland.
The point however that I want to drive home about Hereward's story is that his principal reason for rebellion was the socioeconomic program (with its resulting political disenfranchisement of the English people) that was instituted by King William onto England (which dispossessed him and his family) and that program was largely instituted on the ground by jews imported by the King for that purpose and backed up with Norman military muscle.
Thus when we speak, think and write about Hereward the Wake: we should remember that while he fought the Normans to (quite possibly) the bitter end. He also fought the jews (who were identified directly as being Norman agents by the English people) (5) and he should be remembered fondly for having done so.
References
(1) https://karlradl14.subs tack.com/p/william-the-conqueror-and-the-jews
(2) David Crouch, 2002, 'The Normans: The History of a Dynasty', 1st Edition, Continuum: London, pp. 99-101; in the context of Robert Chazan, 2006, 'The Jews of Western Medieval Christendom, 1000-1500', 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, p. 154 and Christopher Dyer, 2002, 'Making a Living in the Middle Ages: The People of Britain, 850 - 1520', 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven, pp. 81; 178
(3) Ibid., p. 88; Crouch, Op. Cit., pp. 101; 107
(4) Gesta Herewardi, 21
(5) Chazan, Op. Cit., p. 154