Fall of Ely and end of Hereward's rising

1071

William the Conqueror built a causeway across the Fens and captured the abbey of Ely, scattering or executing most of the rebels holed up there. Hereward himself escaped into legend. The conquest of England was effectively complete, and Anglo-Saxon England was finished as a political entity for good. Within a generation the English language itself would retreat from court and law to the speech of peasants.