Alongside Eadric ‘the Wild’, Hereward ‘the Wake’ occupies a semi-mythological status. Rising in rebellion in 1070 against Norman occupation following the English defeat at Hastings in 1066 Hereward, so the legend goes, made his heroic stand at Ely (in modern Cambridgeshire). He has become something of an ‘English’ hero in later fiction, embodying the myth of the ‘Norman yoke’.