IV
EADRIC silvaticus, salvagius, or the wild is one of the better-known leaders of English resistance to the Norman Conquest. In the D version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle he is said to have joined the Welsh in attacking the garrison of Hereford in 1067 and to have inflicted great losses. Here he is described as Eadric ‘cild’ but Plummer and Earle suggest that ‘cild’ is, given the context, probably a slip for ‘se wilda’.1 The Worcester chronicle, written fairly early in the twelfth century but based on a lost version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, has a little more information, which seems to reflect local knowledge: Eadric ‘cognomento silvaticus’, a ‘praepotens minister’, was the son of Aelfric brother of Eadric Streona. Because he refused to surrender, the Norman garrison of Hereford, with Richard fitz Scrob, frequently laid waste his lands while he as often attacked them. His Welsh allies are named and his ravages of Herefordshire in August 1067 are said to have reached the river Lugg. In 1070 he made peace with the king and in 1072 went with him on the invasion of Scotland.2 Orderic Vitalis, writing at about the same time as John of Worcester, introduces Eadrivc as ‘cognomento guilda id est silvaticus’ and mentions his relationship to Eadric Streona, but says that he surrendered to William immediately after the coronation. Eadric’s subsequent rebellion, when he attacked Shrewsbury along with other fierce Englishmen and with the Welsh and men of Chester, then appears as part of a wider resistance. Orderic does not mention Eadric’s later submission but the association of the rebellion with Shrewsbury suggests that he may have derived that bit of his account from stories he had heard in his own Shropshire childhood.3
Domesday Book mentions ‘Edric salvage’ as the former tenant of six manors in Shropshire and one in Herefordshire.4 Some of the many estates held tempore regis Edwardi by other, unidentified Edrics in these counties, if not elsewhere, may also have belonged to him.5 Eyton identified him with the Eadric who was described in Domesday merely as a free man (‘liber homo’) who had held some of Ralph Mortimer’s lands, but whom the fourteenth-century Wigmore abbey chronicle calls earl of Shropshire and lord of Wigmore and Maelienydd. According to the chronicle, which is clearly very garbled, this Eadric was captured by Ralph after long struggles and handed over to the king for life imprisonment, some of his lands afterwards descending to the abbey. He may not have lost all his estates: Eyton commented that ‘a genealogical enthusiast would have little hesitation in assuming as a conclusion’ the possibility that William le Savage, who held Eudon Savage, Neen Savage and Walton Savage of the Mortimer fee in the twelfth century, was a descendant of Eadric.6
One last reference to Eadric which seems to have independent value comes from Walter Map. Writing about the eleven-eighties Walter told a story about him which, underneath its supernatural plot, seems to have a basis of historical reality. ‘Edricus wilde quod est silvestris’, so called from his physical agility and the mirthfulness of his words and deeds ‘jocunditate verborum et operum’), was a man of great probity and lord of Lydbury North (Salop) during William I’s reign. He married a fairy but left a wise and holy son Aelfnoth (Alnodus), who became paralysed in old age, was cured at the shrine of St. Ethelbert, and therefore gave his estate to the church of Hereford.7 Walter added that Lydbury was said to be worth £30 a year to the bishop at the time of writing. The only reason for doubting his story—apart from what concerns Eadric’s wife, which was of course its chief point—is that according to Domesday the manor of Lydbury had belonged to the see since the time of Edward the Confessor, though a part of it was held from the bishop in 1086 by a free man (‘quidam franco’)and William the clerk. Possibly Aelfnoth, who was evidently piously remembered at Hereford, was at some time a life-tenant of the bishop, and the story about Eadric became connected with Lydbury by the clergy because Aelfnoth was his son.8
Historians have generally treated Eadric’s surname as a nickname, describing his personal qualities, and in this they thus have the authority of Walter Map. Walter may, however, have been rationalizing a description of forgotten origin.9 A more likely explanation of it is that Eadric was one of a group of people well known in their own day as silvatici. Orderic Vitalis says in his description of the English risings of c. 1068-9 that many of the rebels lived in tents, disdaining to sleep in houses lest they should become soft, so that certain of them were called silvatici by the Normans.10 Although this comes just after a reference to the northern rebellion Orderic does not seem to mean that the silvatici were restricted to the north. He has also said that the English leaders sent messages all over the country to raise support and he is not the only chronicler to make it clear that the English resistance was very widespread or to describe the rebels as taking to the woods and marshes.11 The Abingdon chronicle says that many plots were hatched by the English and that some hid in woods and some in islands, plundering and attacking those who came their way, while others called in the Danes, and that men of different ranks took part in these attempts. Some of the abbey’s own men were captured on their way to join in.12 The Evesham chronicle tells how William, early in his reign, wasted Yorkshire, Cheshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire and Derbyshire because of the outlaws (‘exules’) and robbers who hid in the woods and did much damage to many people, so that great crowds came to Abbot Aethelwig for succour.13 William of Malmesbury makes Edwin and Morcar themselves disturb the woods with secret robberies, rather than meet William in open combat.14 According to the twelfth-century versions of his legend Hereward, after he left Ely, retreated to the woods and lived as an outlaw with a large following.15
Not all these remarks are of independent or equal authority, but there is no reason to doubt the substantial truth of the picture they draw. For some years the Conquest must have looked very insecure. When William left for Normandy in 1067 his military conquest had hardly gone much beyond the Thames, and a good many of the English nobles who—like Eadric in Orderic’s account—had already submitted were later to revolt. National solidarity had developed at a political level before the Norman invasion,16 but, given the lack of leadership, guerrilla warfare was the best the English resistance could manage by now. That they should have made their bases in wild country and, like the twentieth-century maquis, have been named for it, is perfectly credible. How many silvatici later surrendered and were restored to some sort of legal if inferior position, as Eadric seems to have been, cannot be known. His nickname may imply that he was unusual at least in the publicity of his submission. In any case the movement had presumably lost its effective political character by 1075, when the rebellion of the earls met with little English support.17 If it is true, however, that the silvatici were for some years a widespread and well-known phenomenon, that might help to explain aspects of later outlaw stories that have puzzled historians. Few outlaws in other countries have apparently left so powerful a legend as Robin Hood. The nearest parallels are said to be figures ‘on the epic scale who could be transformed into politically conscious national heroes of a type very unlike’ him.18 Even if the stories about Robin Hood himself originated in real events of the thirteen-thirties, as has recently been suggested,19 they could have gained some of their unusual force from association with older stories of heroes who had once resisted foreign invaders. The anomalous social position of the later, legendary Robin might also owe something, as Dr. M. H. Keen suggested, to these older stories.20 The most famous outlaws of the greenwood before him were probably the Old English nobility on their way down and out.21
AFTERTHOUGHTS
C. Edwards, ‘Heinrich von Morungen and the fairy-mistress theme’, in Celtic and Germanic Themes in European Literature, ed. N. Thomas (Lewiston, 1994), 13-30, at 24, draws attention to Burchard of Worms’ reference to the belief in agrestes feminas, quas sylvaticas vocant, quas dicunt esse corporeas, who showed themselves to their would-be lovers, and who then disappeared (Decretum, XIX. 5, in Pat. Lat. 140, col. 971). If this usage was known further west, or if Walter Map could have read of it, it might help to explain his combination of Eadric as the hero of a fairy-tale with Eadric as a rebel silvaticus.
p. 104: Richard fitz Nigel, Dialogue of the Exchequer, ed. C. Johnson (Oxford, 1983 edn.), 52, tells how for some years the English lay in wait for the Normans and murdered them secretly in woods and remote places.
p. 104-5: Professor P. Stafford drew my attention to Eadric, king of the ceorls, outlawed by Cnut (Two Saxon Chronicles, i. 154-5 (1017 D, E; 1020 C; Florence of Worcester, Chronicon, ed. B. Thorpe (London, 1848), i. 181.
1 Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. C. Plummer and J. Earle (2 vols., Oxford, 1892–9), i. 200, ii. 259
2 Florentii Wigorniensis Monachi Chronicon, ed. B. Thorpe (2 vols., Eng. Hist. Soc., 1848–9), ii. 1, 7, 9. For its date and authorship, see A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England, c. 550 to c. 1307 (1974), pp. 39, 144, and works there cited: especially The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ii, ed. M. Chibnall (Oxford, 1969), p. 186n. A reference in De controversia … inter Ricardum le Scrope et Robertum Grosvenor, ed. N. H. Nicolas (2 vols., ?–1832), i. 229 seems to be derived from a copy of the Worcester chronicle at Bardney priory.
3 Eccles. Hist., ii. 194, 228. Eadric’s submission after Christmas 1066 comes in a passage where Orderic’s chronology and geography may be at fault: ibid., p. 195n.
4 Domesday Book (4 vols., Record Comm., 1783–1816), i, fos. 183V, 253V, 256, 256V, 258V: ‘salvage’ is in each case interlined after ‘Edric’,
5 E. A. Freeman, The Norman Conquest (6 vols., Oxford, 1867–79), iv app. 1 pp. 738–41; Feudal Documents from the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, ed. D. C. Douglas (1932), pp. xci-xciii; J. F. A. Mason, ‘Edric of Bayston’, Trans. Shropshire Archaeol. Soc., lv (1954–6), 112–18.
6 R. W. Eyton, Antiquities of Shropshire (12 vols, in 11, 1854–60), iii. 48–50, iv. 194. An extract from the chronicle is in W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. J. Caley and others (6 vols., 1817–30), vi. 348–9; cf. Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, ed. N. R. Ker (1964), p. 198; Complete Peerage, comp. G. E. Cokayne and others (13 vols., 1910–59), ix. 271n.
7 Walter Mapes, De Nugis Curialium, ed. T. Wright (Camden Soc., 1, 1850), pp. 79–82. For the identification of Lydbury (‘Ledburia borealis’, ‘Ledibiria’) see Victoria History of Shropshire, i. 290–1.
8 Domesday Book, i, fo. 252; but see comments by E. S. Hartland and J. E. Llwyd in M. R. James’s translation of De Nugis Curialium (Cymmrodorion Soc. Record ser., ix, 1923), pp. 78–9, 82n, and the alternative version of the bishop’s acquisition of Lydbury (Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, ed. J. S. Brewer (8 vols., Rolls Ser., 1861–91), iii. 422–3). For William the clerk and other life tenants of the bishop of Hereford see V. H. Galbraith, ‘An episcopal land-grant of 1085’, Eng. Hist. Rev., xliv (1929), 353–72. For the 12th-century vicissitudes of the bishop’s tenure of Lydbury (including the grant of the advowson to what later became Wigmore abbey) see Eyton, xi. 194–6.
9 As Hartland suggested. For possible meanings of the various words see R. L. G. Ritchie, The Normans in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1954), p. 3111; Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, comp. J. Bosworth and T. N. Toller (Oxford, 1898), s.v. wilde; Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. savage; Glossarium Du Cange (7 vols., Paris, 1840–50), s.v. sylvaticus.
10 Eccles. Hist., ii. 216–18.
11 Eccles. Hist., ii. 216–36.
12 Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon, ed. J. Stevenson (2 vols., Rolls Ser., 1858), i. 485–6.
13 Chronicon Abbatiae de Evesham, ed. W. D. Macray (Rolls Ser., 1863), pp. 90–1.
14 William of Malmesbury, De Gestis Regum Anglorum, ed. W. Stubbs (2 vols., Rolls Ser., 1887–9), 311.
15 Gaimar, L’Estoire des Engleis, ed. A. Bell (Anglo-Norman Text Soc., xiv-xvi, i960), 11. 5457–61, 5547–8; ‘Gesta Herwardi’ in Gaimar, L’Estorie des Engles, ed. T. D. Hardy and C. T. Martin (2 vols., Rolls Ser., 1888–9), i. 372, 392–3. For the dates of composition, see Gransden, pp. 209, 275.
16 Two Saxon Chronicles, i. 175 (D), 180–1 (C, D).
17 Ibid., p. 211 (D, E); Flor. Wig., ii. 11.
18 Rymes of Robin Hood, ed. R. B. Dobson and J. Taylor (1976), p. 274.
19 J. R. Maddicott, ‘The birth and setting of the ballads of Robin Hood’, Eng. Hist. Rev., xciii (1978), 276–99.
20 M. H. Keen, Outlaws of Medieval Legend (1961), pp. 23–38; recent writing on the subject is surveyed in Dobson and Taylor, pp. 30–6.
21 Like the later stories (see n. 15) the E version of the chronicle (Two Saxon Chronicles, i. 205) refers to Hereward and his gang ‘genge’) as outlaws.