ting, and made his
last conflict as wonderful as that of Roland at Roncesvalles. If
Roland is the ideal of Norman feudal chivalry, Hereward is equally
the ideal of Anglo-Saxon sturdy manliness and knighthood, and it seems
fitting that the Saxon ideal in the individual should go down before
the representatives, however unworthy, of a higher ideal.

Leofric of Mercia

When the weak but saintly King Edward the Confessor nominally ruled
all England the land was divided into four great earldoms, of which
Mercia and Kent were held by two powerful rivals. Leofric of Mercia
and Godwin of Kent were jealous not only for themselves, but for their
families, of each other's power and wealth, and the sons of Leofric
and of Godwin were ever at strife, though the two earls were now old
and prudent men, whose wars were fought with words and craft, not with
swords. The wives of the two great earls were as different as their
lords. The Lady Gytha, Godwin's wife, of the royal Danish race, was
fierce and haughty, a fit helpmeet for the ambitious earl who was to
undermine the strength of England by his efforts to win kingly power
for his children. But the Lady Godiva, Leofric's beloved wife, was a
gentle, pious, loving woman, who had already won an almost saintly
reputation for sympathy and pity by her sacrifice to save her
husband's oppressed citizens at Coventry, where her pleading won
relief for them from the harsh earl on the pitiless condition of her
never-forgotten ride. Happily her gentle self-suppression awoke a
nobler spirit in her husband, and enabled him to play a worthier part
in England's history. She was in entire sympathy with the religious
aspirations of Edward the Confessor, and would gladly have seen one of
her sons become a monk, perhaps to win spiritual power and a saintly
reputation like those of the great Dunstan.

[Illustration: "Her pleading won relief for them"]

Hereward's Youth

For this holy vocation she fixed on her second son, Hereward, a wild,
wayward lad, with long golden curls, eyes of different colours, one
grey, one blue, great breadth and strength of limb, and a wild and
ungovernable temper which made him difficult of control. This reckless
lad the Lady Godiva vainly tried to educate for the monkish life, but
he utterly refused to adopt her scheme, would not master any but the
barest rudiments of learning, and spent his time in wrestling, boxing,
fighting and all manly exercises. Despairing of ma