The Silvatici were the last Anglo-Saxon freedom fighters who refused to submit to Norman rule after 1066. The name comes from the Latin silvaticus, meaning “of the woods” - the Normans’ way of describing the English who retreated into forests and wild country to continue the fight.
After the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror seized the throne, but many Englishmen would not yield. They took to the forests, hills, and fens - living rough, striking from the shadows, and vanishing into the wild. These men were the Silvatici - forest-dwellers and outlaws, but patriots in the truest sense.
They came from all walks of English society: dispossessed thegns, soldiers, and common men who would not swear loyalty to a foreign king. They saw themselves as the last defenders of their land, law, and blood.
Eadric the Wild (Eadric Silvaticus) was a proud Anglo-Saxon noble from the borderlands whose resistance began soon after Hastings. He led raids on Norman outposts and fought fiercely for years, earning his name as a man of the woods.
Hereward the Wake, the best-known of the Silvatici, led the resistance based around Ely. He and his followers turned the marshes and forests into a fortress, waging guerrilla war against the Normans long after others had surrendered.
The Silvatici fought with ambushes, sudden attacks, and sabotage. They struck quickly at Norman garrisons, tax convoys, and collaborators, disappearing again into the woods. They lived off the land, using England’s forests and fens as their shield - sleeping under trees, eating what they could hunt, and surviving on courage, cunning, and loyalty to their kin.
By the early 1070s, Norman rule had crushed most open rebellion. Yet the Silvatici lived on in English memory - the last free men of England, who chose hardship over submission. Their defiance became the seed of the later English outlaw tradition: men who lived in the greenwood and resisted tyranny.
They were not mere bandits, but warriors of the old Anglo-Saxon realm - the wild men of the woods who kept England’s spirit alive when its crown had been taken. Though their names faded from record, the Silvatici embodied the unbroken will of the English - free men who would rather live wild in their own land than kneel to a foreign crown. Their spirit still whispers through England’s woods, where freedom once took refuge among the trees. Their blood is in our veins. 🏴
