There chanced to be one very hard winter, and the rivers and streams were frozen over, as well as the bogs and swamps. It was such a winter as one of those in which King Canute went to visit the monks of Ely.[257] Then the nobles of Canute’s court said, “We cannot pass; the king must not pass on the slippery, unsafe ice, which may break and cause us all to be drowned in the fen-waters.” But Canute, like the pious and stout king that he was, up and said, “Hold ice or break ice, I will keep the feast of the Purification with the good monks of Ely! An there be but one bold fenner that will go before over the ice by Soham mere and show the way, I will be the next to follow!” Now there chanced to be standing amidst the crowd one Brithmer, a fenner of the Isle of Ely, that was called, from his exceeding fatness, Budde, or Pudding; and this heavy man stood forward and said that he would go before the king and show him a way on the ice across Soham mere. Quoth Canute, who, albeit so great a king, was but a small, light man: “If the ice can bear thy weight, it can well bear mine! So go on, and I follow!” So Brithmer went his way across the bending and cracking ice, and the king followed him at a convenient distance; and one by one the courtiers followed the king, and after a few falls on the ice they all got safe to Ely. And, for the good deed which he had done, King Canute made fat Brithmer, who was but a serf before, a free man, and gave unto him some free lands, which Brithmer’s posterity hold and enjoy unto this day by virtue of the grant made by King Canute. But there was not a fenner of Lord Hereward’s party, fat or lean, that would show the Norman a way across the ice; and the Duke was in no case to undertake any such adventurous journey, and hardly one of his chiefs would have exposed himself and his people to such a march, and to the risks of a sudden thaw; and the Saxons passed the season of frosts without any alarm, albeit every part of the fens was passable for divers weeks.