The Norman Conquest did not end with William the Conqueror’s victory at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. There was an older vision of England that remained stubbornly persistent in the decade following the coronation of William I in Westminster Abbey. During the reign of King Canute (1016-1035), England was part of a vast Anglo-Scandinavian Empire, ruled by the same monarch as Sweden, Norway and Denmark. There was an Anglo-Danish elite with a vested interest in the connections between Saxon England and Scandinavia rather than a new Norman regime. In Hereward, the late Peter Rex, author of William the Conqueror: The Bastard of Normandy, The English Resistance and Edward the Confessor reconstructs the life and rebellion of Hereward, who led the best known rebellion against William the Conqueror.

Source material for Hereward’s life beyond the revolt on the Isle of Ely in 1071 is fragmentary. The first line of the book is, “While it is not possible to produce a full biography of the Lincolnshire thegn called Hereward, the main threads of his career can be recovered, at least in outline.” Nevertheless, Rex reaches informed conclusions about who Hereward was and who he was not. There is no evidence that  the outlaw known as Hereward was the son of Leofric, Earl of Mercia and the famous Lady Godiva and therefore a descendant of Alfred the Great. There is also no evidence that Hereward had surviving children despite unsubstantiated claims that the Wakes are descendants in the female line and the Harwoods are descendants in the male line.  Rex argues that that Hereward’s patrimony and lineage were inflated by early chroniclers and later novelists to make him seem a more worthy adversary for a King.

Instead, Hereward appears to have been from a comparatively modest gentry family, an Abbot’s nephew who spent time gaining military experience in Flanders before leading his rebellion. The most dramatic chapters of the book concern the rise and breakdown of Hereward’s insurrection. Hereward counted on Danish support to reverse the Norman Conquest and bring back the Anglo-Scandinavian world of his youth Instead, the Danes abandoned him and he held the Island of Ely with the support of northern Earls before a final defeat and flight from the Normans. The struggle between William and Hereward became personal as the outlaw came to personify the Saxon resistence that the Conqueror was determined to crush at all costs.

As a Harwood descendant, I was disappointed to learn from Hereward that I am probably not descended from Hereward “the Wake,” let alone Alfred the Great. There are many questions about William the Conqueror’s best known English adversary that will always remain unanswered. Rex provides the most complete and accurate account of Hereward’s life and rebellion to date and sheds light on a different path that English history could have taken. If the Danes had supported Hereward and his rebellion had been successful, Scandinavia might have shaped England’s political future and language. A lasting Norman Conquest was only one of many possible outcomes in the aftermath of 1066.

Next week: John Buchan: Model Governor General by J. William Galbraith

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There is a famous portrait of Queen Victoria and her ministers on the day of her accession in 1837. In “Victoria holding a Privy Council meeting,” Sir David Wilkie depicted Victoria as a childlike young woman in white, surrounded by her older, more experienced ministers in dark suits and dress uniforms. The eighteen year old Queen appears ready to be instructed in the business of government by the elder statesmen. The published volumes of the Queen’s correspondence, edited by Viscount Esher and Arthur Benson, seem to confirm the impression created by Wilkie’s art. Just as the painting is not entirely accurate – the new Queen was actually wearing black to mourn the passing of her uncle, King William IV – the edited correspondence presents a distorted portrait of the Queen’s reign. In Censoring Queen Victoria, Yvonne Ward demonstrates how Esher and Benson shaped the Queen’s image, influencing generations of her biographers.

Victoria holding a Privy Council meeting by Sir David Wilkie

The censorship imposed on Queen Victoria’s journals is well known: her youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice rewrote most of the entries and destroyed the originals. The choices made by Esher and Benson in the publication of selections from the Queen’s correspondence are more obscure. Ward convincingly argues that some of Victoria’s most influential biographers treated the published letters as representative first hand sources without considering what was missing.  After biographical chapters on Esher and Benson, Ward turns to analysis of the Queen’s original letters, in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, revealing how much the editors omitted from their final publication.

Ward demonstrates that Benson and Esher had little interest in “women’s business.” The depiction of Victoria in Wilkie’s painting as a lone female political figure surrounded by powerful men suited the worldview of the editors. The full range of the Queen’s correspondence, however, reveals that Victoria had numerous female friends and relatives who influenced her decisions. She reached out to other female political figures in her correspondence, most notably Queen Maria II of Portugal. Since Edwardian mores did not allow for the publication of letters discussing pregnancy and childbirth, Victoria’s experiences as a mother were equally censored for public consumption.

Esher and Benson also concealed the full scope of Victoria’s activities as a political figure. In addition to their own biases and Edwardian views of respectability, Benson and Esher also had to contend with the expectations of King Edward VII. The King was not a prolific reader and the editors knew it was unlikely that he would read the full volumes of edited correspondence before publication. Benson and Esher therefore attempted to anticipate the King’s concerns. Since Edward VII was content to be a comparatively impartial constitutional monarch within Britain, the editors omitted letters that revealed the full extent of Victoria’s political opinions and actions as Queen. Victoria the monarch, like Victoria the mother was obscured by the scope of the published correspondence.

Censoring Queen Victoria is fascinating look at the real Queen Victoria and her editors. 113 years after the Queen’s death, the last word on the longest reigning British monarch has yet to be written.

Next week’s Friday Royal Read: The Romanov Sisters by Helen Rappaport

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