The conquest of England was completed, as we have seen, in 1070. But it was six years more before William enjoyed the throne in peace. The remnant of the conquered nation gathered around a national hero, called Hereward, in the Fen country. His origin is not certain, but he seems to have been a Lincolnshire man who had been deprived of his property by a Norman intruder. He first appears as assailing with a host of outlaws the monastery of Peterborough, where one of those soldier abbots just mentioned, Turold by name, had been lately appointed. He is next heard of when, in 1071, the Earls Edwin and Morkere, who had seen the destruction of their old earldoms, while living in inglorious ease, half prisoners half guests at the Norman court, at length awoke from their lethargy and attempted to renew the war. Edwin was killed as he fled, stopped by the flooding of some river; Morkere succeeded in joining the insurgents at Ely. Hereward’s fastness was known by the name of the Camp of Refuge. There were collected many of the noblest of the old English exiles; and legend speaks of the presence of several people who were undoubtedly not there; but, at all events, Æthelwine, the deposed Bishop of Durham, was with the patriots. The attack was intrusted to William of Warenne, Earl of Surrey, and Ivo of Taillebois, under the superintendence of William himself, who came to Cambridge. The difficulties of the situation were overcome by the building of a great causeway across the fens. The defence of the camp is described as lengthened and heroic, but before the end of the year it seems to have been captured, and Morkere and Æthelwine both prisoners. Hereward himself escaped, and in 1073 is mentioned as leading the English contingent in William’s attack on Maine. The legend describes how, while living in peace with the king, he was surprised at his meals by a band of Normans, and after a terrific combat, in which he slew fifteen or sixteen Frenchmen, was finally overpowered by numbers. In sober fact, his end seems to have been peaceful, as he appears in Domesday Book as holding property both in Worcester and Warwick. [Sidenote: Wales held in check by the Earls of Chester and Shrewsbury.]