The legendary accounts of the exploits of Hereward tell many tales of the struggle which raged before the Norman army had pierced the natural defences of Ely, but we cannot be sure of the exact means by which the place was finally reduced. One stream of tradition assigned the fall of the Isle to the treachery of the abbot and monks of Ely, and, although the authority for such a statement is not first-rate, it has commonly been accepted as representing the truth of the matter.[228] It is at least certain that the position in which the monks of Ely found themselves was undesirable at the best. The conduct of Hereward and his men at Peterborough proves them to have been no respecters of holy places, and if the abbey bought immediate safety by conniving at the deeds of the outlaws in its neighbourhood, it ran the risk of the ultimate confiscation of its lands when King William had restored order. Small blame should rest upon the abbot if he broke through the dilemma in which he was placed by assisting the Conqueror in the reduction of the Isle. But whatever the immediate cause of the fall of Ely, a large number of its defenders fell into William’s hands and many of them received from him such measure as twenty years before he had dealt to the men of Alençon. Some were blinded or otherwise mutilated and allowed to go free, others were thrown into prison. Earl Morcar himself was sent into Normandy a prisoner and committed to the charge of Roger de Beaumont[229]; the other captives of note were scattered over the country in different fortresses. But Hereward, who in all our authorities stands out as the leader of the resistance, escaped through the marshes and a small part of his band got clear of the Isle in his company.[230]
Whatever the recent behaviour of the monks of Ely may have been, the abbey was constrained to buy the king’s peace at a heavy price. Seven hundred marks of silver were originally demanded by the Conqueror, but the money was found to be of light weight, and three hundred marks more were exacted before the abbot and monks were reckoned quit by the king’s officer. Moreover, the very precincts of the abbey were invaded to find the site for a castle to command the southern fenland: King William himself having chosen the ground during a flying visit which he had paid to Ely one day while the monks were seated at dinner. The building of the castle, by a Norman interpretation of the Anglo-Saxon duty of _burhbot_, was laid upon the men of the three adjacent counties of Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Bedford, and it was garrisoned when built by a body of picked knights. Another castle at Aldreth commanded the eastern approaches to the Isle.[231] On the other hand, it would be some compensation for these disturbances that within four years from the fall of Ely, and in the lifetime of Abbot Thurstan, King William decreed a formal restitution to the abbey of all the lands of which it had unjustly been despoiled in recent years.[232] Now that no further danger was to be apprehended from the nationalist proclivities of the monks of Ely, there was no reason why the abbey should not be suffered to enjoy its ancient possessions in peace; but the record of the plea which followed the Conqueror’s writ directing restitution proves that many of the greater people of the land, including the archbishop Stigand and Count Eustace of Boulogne, had been committing wholesale depredations on the estates of St. Ethelthryth.