All this is not only possible, but probable enough, the dates considered:
the chroniclers, however, are silent. They only say that Hereward was in
those days beyond Northumberland with Gisebert of Ghent.
Gisebert, Gislebert, Gilbert, Guibert, Goisbricht, of Ghent, who
afterwards owned, by chance of war, many a fair manor about Lincoln city,
was one of those valiant Flemings who settled along the east and northeast
coast of Scotland in the eleventh century. They fought with the Celtic
princes, and then married with their daughters; got to themselves lands
"by the title-deed of the sword"; and so became--the famous "Freskin the
Fleming" especially--the ancestors of the finest aristocracy, both
physically and intellectually, in the world. They had their connections,
moreover, with the Norman court of Rouen, through the Duchess Matilda,
daughter of their old Seigneur, Baldwin, Marquis of Flanders; their
connections, too, with the English Court, through Countess Judith, wife of
Earl Tosti Godwinsson, another daughter of Baldwin's. Their friendship was
sought, their enmity feared, far and wide throughout the north. They seem
to have been civilizers and cultivators and traders,--with the instinct of
true Flemings,--as well as conquerors; they were in those very days
bringing to order and tillage the rich lands of the north-east, from the
Frith of Moray to that of Forth; and forming a rampart for Scotland
against the invasions of Sweyn, Hardraade, and all the wild Vikings of the
northern seas.
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