ETHELRED THE REDELESS.
The story of the long reign of Ethelred consists of little else than
the details of Danish invasions, large payments of ransom to the
raiders, and the king’s dealings with the Dukes of Normandy, at whose
court he was at last obliged to take refuge.
Though many historical verdicts have been reversed in our day, Ethelred
the Redeless, the man devoid of counsel--this rather than “the Unready”
is the best translation of his distinguishing epithet--still remains
unchampioned under the stigma of incompetence as great as was ever
displayed by any occupant of the English throne. When we read the
record of his disastrous reign, when we see how systematically he left
undone the things which he ought to have done, and did, with fitful
and foolish energy, the things which he ought not to have done, we
are inclined to ask, “Was this man bereft of reason?” If he had been
absolutely insane we should probably have had a distinct statement
to that effect in the Chronicle, but it may, perhaps, be suggested
that there was some hereditary weakness in his family which in his
case affected the fibre of his brain. Royal families not renewed by
any admixture of plebeian blood have sometimes shown a tendency to
become worn out. We must remember that the descendants of Cerdic had
now been reigning for five hundred years. As compared with the young
and _parvenus_ dynasties which were coming up into power from the
ranks of sailors and huntsmen and tillers of the soil; as compared
with the Norman dukes, the Capetians and the Angevins, the Kings
of Wessex were an old and apparently a weakening stock. There was
certainly brain-power enough in an Alfred, an Edward and an Athelstan,
but perhaps even with them physical hardly kept pace with mental
energy. Alfred the Great was a life-long sufferer from disease. If
he and his son completed each his half century of life, that was more
than was attained by most of their immediate descendants. Athelstan
lived but to the age of forty-six; Edred, a chronic invalid, died at
thirty; Edwy probably under twenty; even Edgar, whose reign seemed a
long one, at thirty-two. Edmund and Edward the Martyr died violent
deaths, and therefore they do not come into this calculation. Ethelred
himself, though he lived long enough to inflict untold misfortunes
on his country, died at the age of forty-eight. All this looks like
a decay of physical power in the house of Cerdic, which may in some
degree account for the fatal “redelessness” of Ethelred. It is true
that there was a revival of the old heroic energy in his son Edmund
Ironside, but even that is coupled with a very short life (we cannot
be sure that his death was due to foul play); and in his half-brother,
Edward the Confessor, though he lived to the age of sixty-two, there is
a sort of anæmic saintliness which marks him out as the fitting son,
intellectually though not morally, of his “redeless” father.
The story of the reign of Ethelred is given us in the Chronicle with
a minuteness of detail such as we have not found there since the days
of Alfred. It is evidently the work of a contemporary, of one who
saw and groaned over the calamities of his people, and who was moved
to passionate indignation by the mingled folly and wickedness of the
rulers of the land. This part of the Chronicle is then a document of
the highest value for the historian, and yet it is one which requires
to be used with some caution on account of the motive by which it is
unconsciously inspired. That motive is the strong tendency which always
leads a beaten army or a beaten nation to argue that the enemy did
not fight fairly, or that “the pass was sold” to them by some traitor
in the camp. It is quite possible that all the accusations brought by
the chronicler are true, especially that the inexplicable treasons
of Elfric and Edric were as monstrous as he describes them; but it
is also possible that they may have been magnified by a patriotic
scribe, looking round for some scapegoat to bear his people’s sins;
and in any event what we have to remember is that we are here reading
what are virtually the articles of an opposition journalist. It is
just possible, therefore, though hardly probable, that in some cases
Ethelred’s ministers and generals, or even Ethelred himself, if they
could be heard in their own defence, might somewhat mitigate the
severity of the sentence passed upon them. A few of these criticisms
are here inserted, but even these will hardly give a sufficient idea
of the tone of condemnation which pervades the whole long reign of
Ethelred in the pages of the Chronicle.[189]
998. “The Danes came to the mouth of the Frome and ravaged Dorset at
their will. The _fyrd_ was often gathered together against them, but
as soon as they should have all got together, then ever for some cause
was flight determined on, and so the Danes in the end always got the
victory. So they quartered themselves for the second time in the Isle
of Wight, drawing their provisions from Hampshire and Sussex.”
999. “The army again came round into the Thames and moved thence up
the Medway to Rochester. Then came the Kentish _fyrd_ against them and
there were they firmly locked in fight. But, alas! the Kentish men too
quickly gave way and fled, because they were not supported as they
ought to have been. Thus the Danes held the place of slaughter, and
took horse and rode far and wide as they chose, and ravaged well-nigh
the whole of West Kent. Then the king took counsel with his _witan_,
and decided that they must go against the enemy with ship-_fyrd_ and
also with land-_fyrd_. But when the ships were ready, then some one
delayed from day to day and harassed the poor folk who were on board
the ships, and ever, when things should have been forwarder they were
later, from one time to another, and so they let the army of their
enemies grow, and they were always retiring from the sea and the
Danes were ever following hard after them. Thus at the end the great
ship-_fyrd_ accomplished nothing but oppression of the people and waste
of money and the emboldening of their foes.”
1006. “The Danish fleet came to Sandwich, and the crews did as they had
ever done, harrying, burning, murdering wheresoever they went. Then the
king called out all the people of Wessex and Mercia, and they lay out
all the autumn, arrayed against the enemy, but all availed nothing as
so often before; for in spite of all this the Danish army marched just
where they pleased, and the _fyrd_ itself did the country folk every
harm, while neither the home army (_inn-here_) nor the foreign army
(_ut-here_) did them any good. As soon as the weather grew wintry, the
_fyrd_ went home, and the Danish army after Martinmas, November 11,
came to their resting-place in the Isle of Wight and helped themselves
to all that they wanted from every quarter. Then in mid-winter they
sallied forth through Hants and Berks to their comfortable quarters at
Reading, and there did as they pleased, kindling their beacons [blazing
villages] wherever they went. Thus fared they to Wallingford which they
burned down, and they then went along Ashdown to Cwichelms-law,[190]
and there abode, out of pure bravado, because it had been often said
that if once they got to Cwichelms-law they would never get back to the
sea. They then went home by another way. The _fyrd_ was assembled at
Cynete (?), and they there joined battle, but soon was that [English]
army put to flight, and afterwards they carried their booty down to
the sea. Then might the people of Winchester see the invading army,
insolent and fearless, marching past their gates to the sea; and they
spread over fifty miles from the sea, gathering food and treasure.”
It would be tedious to follow the chronicler’s example and relate in
detail all the events of these successive raids, which recur with
melancholy monotony through thirty years. The reader is therefore
referred to the accompanying table for the list of the districts
successively ravaged by the invaders.
Year.
982 Portland, by three ships’ crews landing in Dorsetshire.
(London burnt; possibly an accidental fire.)
988 Watchet in Somerset. Goda, a Devonshire thegn slain.
991 Ipswich ravaged. Battle of Maldon. Brihtnoth slain. First
payment of _gafol_ (tribute) to the Danes.
993 Bamburgh stormed. Great booty taken. Both banks of the Humber
ravaged.
994 Brave defence of London, attacked by Olaf and Sweyn. Essex,
Kent, Sussex, Hampshire. Second payment of _gafol_.
997 Cornwall, Devon, Wales, Watchet, Lydford, Tavistock.
998 Mouth of the Frome, Dorset, Isle of Wight. Sussex and Hants
forced to supply provisions.
999 Rochester: Kent.
1001 Battle at Alton in Hampshire. Devonshire. Taunton burnt.
Exmouth defended. Penhoe and Clist (in Devon). Bishops
Waltham in Hampshire burnt.
1002 Marriage of Ethelred with Emma of Normandy. Massacre of St.
Brice’s Day. Third payment of _gafol_.
1003 Exeter stormed and looted. Wilton, Sarum.
1004 Norwich, Thetford. Brave defence of Norfolk by Ulfkytel.
1005 Great famine throughout England.
1006 Sandwich, Isle of Wight, Reading, Wallingford, Cwichelms-law.
1007 Fourth payment of _gafol_.
1008 Ships ordered to be built all over England.
1009 Failure of the new navy. Canterbury, Isle of Wight, Sussex,
Hants, Berks, both banks of the Thames, Oxford. London vainly
attacked. Local payment of _gafol_ by East Kent.
1010 Ipswich, Thetford, Cambridge, Oxfordshire, Bucks, Bedford,
Tempsford (in Bedfordshire), Northampton, Canning Marsh (in
Somerset).
1011 Canterbury.
1012 Martyrdom of Archbishop Alphege. Fifth payment of _gafol_.
1013 Mouth of the Humber, Gainsborough. King Sweyn at Sandwich.
Northumbria and all the country north of Watling Street
submit to him. Oxford, Winchester, Wallingford, Bath, Devon
and London submit to Sweyn. Flight of Ethelred and his family
to Normandy.
1014 Death of Sweyn (Feb. 3), Ethelred recalled. Canute, son of
Sweyn, King of the Danes, occupies Lindsey. Mutilation of
Northumbrian hostages by Canute. Sixth payment of _gafol_.
1015 Dorset, Wilts, Somerset ravaged.
1016 Warwickshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire;
along the fens to Stamford. Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire,
York, submission of Northumbria, London repeatedly attacked.
Death of Ethelred (April 23). Edmund Ironside king. Battle
of Assandune. The kingdom divided between Canute and Edmund.
Death of Edmund Ironside (Nov. 30). Canute sole king.
Dreary and depressing as is the general course of the narrative of
these successive invasions, we have in the early years of the war, not
from the chronicler but from an unknown contemporary poet, a graphic
account of a battle in which the Northmen were valiantly met and all
but defeated. The hero of the battle was Brihtnoth, ealdorman of Essex,
brother-in-law of the half-king Athelstan, and champion of the monks
against Elfhere of Mercia. The scene was laid at Maldon in Essex,
where the dark stream of the Blackwater begins to discharge itself
into its broad tidal estuary. The date was 991, the thirteenth year of
Ethelred. The poet brings before us the ealdorman Brihtnoth arraying
his men-at-arms on the shore of the Blackwater. He rides up and down
their ranks, bidding them hold their shields with firm grasp and fear
naught. He alights from his horse and stands beside “his friends, his
own hearth-warriors,” of whose staunch service he has often made proof.
While he is standing on the bank a Viking herald shouts forth his
threatful message: “The bold sailors have sent me to thee to say that
thou must forthwith send to them a ransom of golden rings. It will be
for your profit by this payment to forego the flight of spears; and you
shall then have peace with the men of the sea.” At this Earl Brihtnoth
gripped tight his shield and shook his slender ashen spear and poured
forth his words of wrath: “The tribute we will give you is naught but
flying spears, the edge of deadly iron, the old and trusted sword. Go
back and tell the folk who sent thee, that here stands an earl with his
warriors who will defend this country, the land of noble Ethelred, to
the uttermost. Now that you have visited our land you shall not depart
all softly to your homes bearing no marks of battle on your bodies.
Rather shall point and edge settle our differences: grim will be the
sword-play ere we pay you tribute.”
After this interchange of defiances, the troops on either side were
drawn up in battle array, but it was some hours before they could close
in conflict. The estuary of the Blackwater was still filled by the
flowing tide, and one bridge over the narrower part of the stream, by
which the enemy might have crossed, was valiantly defended by three
Saxons. “Finding these bridge warders all too bitter,” the Northmen
moved up stream to find a ford. The earl, in the pride of his soul,
allowed many of the hateful people to come to land, shouting aloud:
“Listen, warriors! Free space is now granted you to come quickly to us.
Come as warriors to the war. God only knows who shall hold the field of
slaughter.” “The wolves of rapine” tramped through the water, holding
high their shields over their heads, and found, when they reached
the shore, Earl Brihtnoth waiting to receive them. He had bidden his
men “to weave the war-hedge with their shields” (that is to make the
shield-wall) and hold it firmly against the foe. Then rose high the war
of battle, the ravens gathered together at the sound, and with them
came the eagle, greedy for his prey.
With true Homeric fervour the poet describes the incidents of the
battle that followed. Brihtnoth was wounded early in the fight by the
spear of a Viking, but succeeded in giving his antagonist a death-wound
by his javelin.
Blithe was then the chieftain,
Laughed the moody man: “I thank Thee, Lord of heaven,
For this glorious day’s work Thou to me hast given”.
Soon, however, he received another more deadly wound from a Norse
arrow, and though for a little space he still fought on, ere long “to
earth fell the golden-hilted sword, nor might he longer hold the hard
knife or wield the well-loved weapon”. But still the hoary warrior bade
the youths fight on and show a bold front to the foe, and as he lay he
looked toward heaven and said:--
Thankful I remember, Lord of Nations,
All the joys I in this world have tasted.
Now this one thing do I crave in dying
From Thy hands, O merciful Creator!--
That Thy grace be on my parting spirit,
That my soul in peace to Thee may journey,
To Thy presence, O Thou Lord of Angels,
And that of the Hell-crew none may harm her.
Uttering these words he died, and his corpse was barbarously hacked
by the bands of the heathen. Soon were his two squires, Elfnoth and
Wulfmaer, lying dead beside him, having freely given their lives for
their lord. And now was seen the difference between the brave men and
the infamous (_nithings_). Now fled from the battle those who loved
it not. First in flight was Godric, to whom his good lord had in past
days given many a noble steed, but who now leapt on his master’s horse
and fled fast from the battle, spreading panic among the soldiers,
who thought when they saw the well-known steed that it was Brihtnoth
himself who was thus fleeing from the encounter. Offa, a thegn of
Brihtnoth, upon whom the command of the remnant of the army seems now
to have devolved, had said only the day before when they were holding
_gemot_ (whereat Godric had probably been speaking loud and boastful
words):--
Many speak valiant words in council hall,
Who in the time of need from honour fall.
And now Godric’s cowardice made vain his words. Then did a young
warrior named Elfwine, grandson of an ealdorman of Mercia, speak
heart-cheering words to his fellows, reminding them of all the brave
old times that they had shared together in Brihtnoth’s banquet-hall,
drinking mead and talking of hard-won victories.
Now shall not the brave thegns, my countrymen, upbraid me,
That I from this day’s fighting have shamefully departed,
And sought my home unwounded, when there my chieftain lieth,
Hacked by the hostile broadswords. That were my worst disaster.
Alas! that there my kinsman, my dead lord, lies before me.
Then many of the sailor host Offa laid low in battle,
But all too soon the chieftain brave himself received his
death-blow,
Redeeming thus the promise he to his lord had given,
“Either we twain to castle triumphant ride together
Safe to our homes, or elsewise we both in battle perish,
Sore wounded, life out-bleeding upon the field of slaughter”.
So lay the noble Offa all thegn-like by his master.
The poem both begins and ends abruptly, and is evidently a fragment,
but we know from the Chronicle that the valour of Brihtnoth’s henchmen
was vain to restore the battle, and that Maldon was a Northmen’s
victory. The chief interest of the poem lies in the fact that it so
vividly brings before us the devotion of the thegns to their “dear
lord” (_wine drihten_), reminding us forcibly of the words of Tacitus
concerning the ancestors of these men nine centuries before. “The man
is disgraced for the rest of his life who leaves the battle-field
having survived his chief. The chiefs fight for victory, the
‘companions’ for their chief.” Also, unfortunately, the poet reveals
to us the existence of treachery and cowardice in the Saxon host.
We shall soon come upon notorious instances of men who imitated the
panic-breeding flight of the base Godric rather than the noble stand of
Brihtnoth and his henchmen.
We may gather from the lay of Brihtnoth some notions of the manner
of fighting in use among the Saxons. The battle was evidently fought
on foot, horses being merely used to convey some of the warriors to
the field of battle. The chief weapon seems to be the spear (_gar_
or _franca_), and next to it the dart (_dareth_), though of course
the sword (_sweord_) and dagger or knife (_mece_) are also used. The
use of the bow and arrow (_boga_ and _flan_) seems still to be rather
exceptional, at any rate on the Saxon side. The chief arms of defence
are the _byrne_ or ringed coat of mail and the _bord_ or shield made
of linden wood. To “weave the war-hedge” (_wyrcan thone wighagan_)
with closely interlocked shields is the first duty of an army on the
defensive; to break the shield-wall (_brecan thone bordweall_) is the
highest act of assailant valour.
* * * * *
At the outset of the battle of Maldon we heard the messenger of “the
sea men” suggesting the terms on which they were ready to sell an
ignominious immunity from ravage. It was in 991, the very year of that
battle, that the first payment of what is generally called Danegeld
was made.[191] “And in that year,” says the chronicler, “it was first
decided that men should pay _gafol_ to the Danish men on account of the
many terrible things which they wrought on the sea coast. That was at
first 10,000 pounds. This was the counsel of Archbishop Siric” (Sigeric
of Canterbury, 990–94).[192] Of course this easy and ignominious remedy
for the miseries inflicted by the invaders was only a palliative, not a
cure, and the short breathing-time purchased by the payment not having
been utilised as it was by Alfred to put the country in a better state
of defence, when the importunate beggars came again, they had to be
bought off at a higher figure. The following table shows the dates and
amounts of the successive payments of _gafol_:--
991 | First payment | 10,000 pounds (of silver)
994 | Second „ | 16,000
1002 | Third „ | 24,000
1007 | Fourth „ | 36,000 (in two MSS. 30,000)
1009 | Local payment, East Kent | 3,000
1012 | Fifth „ | 48,000
1014 | Sixth „ | 21,000
|--------
| 158,000 pounds of silver.
|--------
This sum, if we take the pound weight of silver at fifty-four
shillings, would be equivalent in intrinsic value to £426,600 sterling,
or if we take the “purchasing power” of money in the tenth century at
twenty times its present amount, it would be equivalent to a drain of
£8,532,000 from a thinly peopled and exhausted country. Probably, as
the drain went on, the purchasing power of the silver that remained
would be enormously increased and the above estimate may therefore
be too small. The chronicler in most cases simply records the fact
that the king and his _witan_ promised _gafol_ to the army (sometimes
_gafol_ and food) on condition that they should cease from evil; but
under the year 1011, after enumerating the districts of England,
equivalent to sixteen of our present counties, all of which they had
ravaged in that one year, he adds: “All these misfortunes befel us
through evil counsel (_un-raed_) because people did not choose either
to pay them _gafol_ in time or else to fight with them; but when they
had done about as much evil as they could possibly do, then people made
truce and peace with them.... And nevertheless for all this truce and
peace and payment of _gafol_, they went everywhere in bands and harried
the country and captured and slew our poor people.”
In order to meet these terrible demands upon the treasury, Ethelred
imposed the tax called Danegeld, which was possibly the first tax paid
in money and not in kind. The amount of this tax in Saxon times does
not seem to be clearly stated. Abolished by Edward the Confessor in
1052, it was revived and made much more oppressive by the Conqueror
long after all fear of Danish invasion had ceased, and though its
discontinuance was frequently talked of, it does not finally disappear
from the treasury rolls till the year 1163.[193] So persistent is the
clutch of the tax-gatherer when he has once fastened his claws upon his
victim.
* * * * *
In 992 we have the first of the long series of “inexplicable
treasons”[194] of Elfric, ealdorman of Hampshire and Berkshire. The
king and all his _witan_ had decided that all the ships that were of
any value should be collected in London. The command of this naval
armament was entrusted to Ealdorman Elfric, with three colleagues,
two of whom were bishops, and they were ordered to intercept the
invading host while still upon the high seas. But Elfric gave private
warning to the Danish leaders, and on the evening before the day on
which the battle was to have been fought, he stole away by himself
from the _fyrd_, to his great disgrace. The result was that the Danish
fleet escaped, all save one ship, the crew of which was slain; and
the Danes in their turn caught the ships of East Anglia and London at
a disadvantage, and wrought a mighty slaughter among them, capturing
the very ship, all armed and equipped, in which Elfric had been. As
a punishment apparently either for this or for yet another treason,
his son Elfgar was next year blinded by order of the king. And yet
ten years later (1003), when a great _fyrd_ had been collected out of
Wiltshire and Hampshire, Ealdorman Elfric was again placed in command
of it. “But,” says the chronicler, “he was again at his old tricks. As
soon as the two armies were so near together that they could look into
one another’s faces, he feigned himself sick and began retching and
spewing, and called out that he was suddenly taken ill. Thus did he
betray the folk that he should have led to battle. For when the general
is cowardly, then is all the army terribly hindered.” This is the last
time that Elfric is mentioned as in command of an army; but we hear of
him (or another ealdorman of the same name) thirteen years later (1016)
falling at the battle of Assandune. We may, perhaps, doubt whether he
was really a deep-dyed traitor or only a man of weakly and nervous
constitution, unable to face “the flight of spears” and quite unfit to
be put in command of the smallest detachment of soldiers.
In 994 a united effort for the conquest of England was made by a
Norwegian and a Danish chieftain. The Norwegian was Olaf Tryggvason,
great grandson of Harold Fair-hair, hero of a hundred romantic stories,
“fairest and strongest of all men and in prowess surpassing all men
talked of by the Northmen”. He had already visited England as a foe and
had borne a chief part in the battle of Maldon. The Dane was Sweyn, son
of Harold Blue-tooth, whose early career has been already described.
In the autumn of 994 the two comrades with ninety-four ships sailed up
the Thames and fiercely attacked the city of London on September 8, the
Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, thinking to set it on fire.
“But there,” says the Chronicle, “God be thanked, they experienced
more harm and mischief than they ever thought that any citizens should
do unto them. For the holy mother of God showed her mild-heartedness
unto those burghers and delivered them from their enemies.” The
marauding bands then departed and “wrought the most ill that any man
could do in burnings and harryings and man-slayings by the sea coast
of Essex, in Kent, in Sussex and in Hampshire,” and after “they had
worked indescribable evil,” the king and his _witan_ decided to make
the second great _gafol_ payment of £16,000, and “the army” after
once mustering at Southampton, was billeted through the whole land of
Wessex while the silver was being collected. The terms of peace being
thus settled, Ethelred sent a solemn embassage to Olaf, consisting of
Elfheah and Ethelweard. Both these were in their different ways men
worthy of note. Elfheah or Alphege, who was at this time bishop of
Winchester, became twelve years later archbishop of Canterbury, and
as we shall see suffered cruel martyrdom at the hands of the Danes.
Ethelweard, an ealdorman of Wessex, seems to be clearly identified with
the chronicler generally known as Ethelweard, who was of royal blood
(being descended from Alfred’s elder brother, Ethelred I.), and whose
turgid and obscure narrative occasionally sheds a glimmer of light
on the dark places of Anglo-Saxon history. The English ambassadors
conducted Olaf to Andover; and there he was led “with much worship”
into the presence of Ethelred, who bestowed upon him kingly gifts and
received him from the bishop’s hands, when the baptismal rite had been
performed. Under the spell of these new religious influences, Olaf
promised that “he would never again come against the English race in
unfriendly guise,” a promise which, as the chronicler says, he well
fulfilled. Next year (995) he made himself master of the Norwegian
kingdom, and succeeded in inducing all the Norwegian chiefs, north and
south, to become converts to Christianity. After a reign of five years
full of romantic adventures,[195] the Norwegian hero fell in a great
sea-fight against the combined forces of his former ally, Sweyn of
Denmark, and his namesake, Olaf of Sweden. For fourteen years (1000–14)
Norway lay under the yoke of the confederate kings. The increase of
power thus obtained by Denmark may have had something to do with the
success of Sweyn’s schemes for the conquest of England.
* * * * *
Powerless as Ethelred was to defend our island from her foes, he could
at least imitate their ravages in that portion of it which was not
under his immediate rule. “In the year 1000 he marched into Cumberland
and harried very nearly the whole of it.” Even here, however, his
unrivalled genius for failure showed itself. His ships--the remnant
probably of those collected in the previous year--were to have met him
at Chester and co-operated in his campaign. This they failed to do, but
“they sailed to the Isle of Man and ravaged there”. These last words
throw a little light on what is otherwise not only an obscure but an
utterly purposeless proceeding. We know from other sources that Man was
an island stronghold of the Norse pirates, and there are, as we have
seen, indications that from thence a stream of Scandinavian settlers
passed into Cumberland towards the close of the tenth century. It is
true that Norse rather than Danish seems to have been the character of
the settlement in the Isle of Man, but as the Scandinavian sea-rovers
were still acting generally in concert against the English, this fact
need not prevent us from seeing in this Cumbrian raid an act of energy
on Ethelred’s part against the Danish invaders.
* * * * *
Two strangely contrasted events, a marriage and a massacre, fill up
the record for 1002. There had been apparently some desultory warfare
between Ethelred and Richard the Good, son of Richard the Fearless,
duke of Normandy. An expedition against the Cotentin, the western
horn of Normandy, had proved, like many of Ethelred’s undertakings,
unsuccessful, and now the English king, his first wife being dead,
in order to strengthen himself by a foreign alliance, sued for and
obtained the hand of Richard’s sister Emma in marriage. The bride was
brought over to England with much pomp in the spring of 1002 by the
magnates of the realm who had been sent to escort her. An attempt was
made to change her name to the Saxon Aelfgyfu (Elgiva), but the Norman
“Emma” is that by which she has ever been known in history. She bore
to Ethelred two sons, Alfred and Edward (the Confessor). Queen Emma,
who was known as the “_gemma Normannorum_,” was probably beautiful
after the fair type of her Scandinavian ancestors, but her character
is not an attractive one, and indirectly her connexion with the royal
family of Wessex wrought much harm to England. Henry of Huntingdon
(writing of course after the Norman conquest) makes the extraordinary
statement that “from this union of an English king with the daughter
of a Norman duke, the Normans justly, according to the law of nations,
challenged and obtained possession of the English land”. He goes on to
say, however, that a certain man of God had prophesied that because
of the enormous crimes of the English people, their addiction to
murder, treason, drunkenness, and neglect of the house of the Lord, “an
unlooked-for dominion should come upon them from France, and even the
nation of the Scots, whom they held most vile, should also rule over
them to their deserved confusion”.
After narrating the payment of the third _gafol_ to the Danes (24,000
pounds), the chronicler proceeds: “In that year the king ordered all
the Danish men who were in England to be slain on St. Bricius’ Day,
November 13, because the king was informed that they wished to plot
against his life and afterwards against the lives of all his _witan_,
and so to have the kingdom easily for themselves”. A most extraordinary
statement is this, describing an event even more unintelligible than
the other events in this inexplicable reign. The alleged murder of
all Danish men reminds us of the Sicilian Vespers, but the historical
parallel may be deceptive. The Chronicle speaks only of the murder of
“Danish men”; the statements of later Chronicles extending the massacre
to women and children are probably oratorical amplifications. Henry of
Huntingdon gives us an interesting personal touch when he says: “In
our boyhood we heard from some very ancient men that the aforesaid
king sent letters to each city, according to which the English on the
same day and hour, either hewed down the unsuspecting Danes with their
swords or, having suddenly arrested them, burned them with fire”.
Notwithstanding statements like this, it may be safely asserted that
all the thousands of Danish men who were scattered over England, in
the Danelaw and elsewhere, did _not_ perish on St. Brice’s Day. Nor is
this probably the Chronicle’s meaning. We learn from another version
of the Chronicle that in the previous year (1001) Pallig, whom we
know to have been a Danish jarl and brother-in-law of King Sweyn,
“fell off from Ethelred, contrary to all the assurances that he had
given him, although the king had well gifted him with villages and
gold and silver”; and that he had joined the Danes who were invading
Devonshire. On the somewhat doubtful authority of William of Malmesbury
we are assured that this Pallig, his wife and child were killed in
the massacre. This may suggest to us that the real character of the
event of St. Brice’s Day was a kind of _coup d’état_; the summary and
treacherous execution of all the Danes who of recent years had flocked
into Wessex and taken service in the court and camp of Ethelred. Even
so, the deed was sufficiently atrocious, but not impossible, as the
murder of all the Danes on English soil would certainly have been.
* * * * *
Passing over some important events, among them the brave defence of
East Anglia by its ealdorman Ulfcytel (“No worse hand-play did the
Danes ever meet with from Englishmen than that which Ulfcytel gave
them”), we come to the year 1008, for which the Chronicle gives us
the following important but perplexing entry: “Now the king bade that
through all England men should regularly build ships, that is for 300
hides ... and for 10 hides a skiff, and for 8 hides a helmet and coat
of mail”.
There is evidently something omitted in this sentence, and it is
generally agreed that the “Worcester” version of the Chronicle
which fills up the lacuna with the words “one great ship” has much
to recommend it, though the scribe himself may not have understood
correctly the meaning of the passage. We may perhaps draw from it this
conclusion, that in each county every unit of three hundred hides was
called upon to furnish one large warship; the owner of ten hides (1,200
acres?) a light skiff not much bigger than a boat, the owner of eight
hides (960 acres?) a helmet and a coat of mail. Whatever difficulty
there may be in this obscure passage, it is interesting to note that
we have here the origin of “ship-money”. The great case of Rex _v._
Hampden in the Exchequer Chamber was connected by a distinct chain of
causation with the Danish sea-rovers’ movements in the early years
of the eleventh century. As usual, these large preparations came to
nothing, although (says the chronicler) “as the books tell us, never in
no king’s day were so many ships seen in England as were now gathered
together at Sandwich”. But domestic dissension and one man’s treachery
ruined all (1009).
The new traitor who now emerges from obscurity, and for the next ten
years exercises a malign influence on England’s fortunes, is Edric
Streona, who was in 1007 set over Mercia as ealdorman. Florence
of Worcester ascribes to him the murder of Elfhelm, ealdorman of
Northumbria, in a forest near Shrewsbury, and thus draws his general
character: “The aforesaid Edric, son of Ethelric, was a man of low
origin, whose tongue had procured for him riches and rank, clever in
wit, pleasant in speech, but one who surpassed all the men of his time
in envy, faithlessness and cruelty”. We have here a more dangerous type
of man than his predecessor Elfric; a man who will not be afraid to
lead armies to battle, though it may be to their deliberately planned
ruin; a man who will have the courage to plot and execute crimes which
would have been too much for the delicate digestion of Elfric. Edric
had a large band of brothers, who no doubt shared the profits and
the enmities which attended his sudden elevation. One of these named
Brihtric accused a nobleman named Child Wulfnoth to the king, evidently
hoping to profit by the forfeiture of his estates. Thus driven into
rebellion, Wulfnoth took to piracy, persuaded twenty ships’ crews out
of the king’s fleet to join him, and ravaged the southern coast like a
Dane. Brihtric with eighty ships went forth against him, boasting that
he would bring back Wulfnoth, alive or dead, but he was overtaken by a
terrible storm which battered and thrashed the ships and drove many of
them on shore. These Brihtric burned; the others were with difficulty
conveyed up the Thames to London. Thus, through the intrigues of one
man, Edric’s brother, did the great naval force waste its energies on
an inglorious civil war, “and we had not,” says the chronicler, “the
happiness nor the honour that we hoped to derive from an efficient navy
any more than in previous years”. Of course now, when “the immense
hostile army came to Sandwich, there were no ships to meet it”. The
Danes landed in Kent, besieged Canterbury, were bought off by a
special local _gafol_ of 3,000 pounds, and marched on into Berkshire,
harrying and burning. For once Ethelred showed some energy, made a
levy _en masse_ of his people, outmarched the Danes and was on the
point of cutting off their retreat to their ships. The English peasant
soldiers of the _fyrd_ were keen to attack them and avenge the burning
of their homesteads and the slaughter of their brethren, “but it was
all hindered, now as ever, by Edric the ealdorman”. In November the
invaders took up their winter quarters in Kent, drawing their supplies
from the counties on both sides of the Thames, “and many a time they
attacked the town of London. But God be thanked, she yet stands sound
and well, and they have ever fared ill before her walls.”
* * * * *
The years 1011 and 1012 were made sadly memorable by the successful
siege of Canterbury and the murder of its archbishop. The siege lasted
from September 8 to 29, and it is hinted that it would not so soon have
ended but for the treason of Elfmaer, Abbot of St. Augustine’s, whose
life had once been saved by the archbishop whom he now betrayed. This
archbishop was Elfheah or Alphege, whom we met with seventeen years
before when he was sent, as bishop of Winchester, to negotiate with
Olaf Tryggvason. He had been for six years archbishop of Canterbury,
when he had to witness the capture of the hitherto inviolate city
of St. Augustine by the pagans. Besides the archbishop, other great
persons, a king’s reeve, a bishop and an abbess were taken prisoners,
but these latter seem to have been allowed to ransom themselves. “Abbot
Elfmaer”--significant entry--“was suffered to depart.” The Danes
searched the city through and through; and the spoil collected and the
ransoms paid doubtless made this raid one of the most profitable of
their speculations. The archbishop, however, was a perplexing prize.
His captors had formed extravagant ideas of what an archbishop’s ransom
ought to be, and when they named their price, the archbishop would
not hear of his flock being subjected for his sake to such a terrible
exaction; and not only would do nothing himself, but positively forbade
all the faithful to take any steps towards procuring his ransom.
Seven months was the venerable captive kept in the Danish camp, while
the fruitless negotiations went on. At last on April 19, 1012, when
the Danes were all excited by the arrival of the largest _gafol_ that
Ethelred had yet paid them, a _gafol_ amounting to 48,000 pounds weight
of silver; and when their hearts were also merry with wine brought from
the shores of the Mediterranean, the archbishop was brought forth from
his prison. The rude tribunal before which he was brought bore a name
long afterwards well known in England: it was called “the hustings”.
The time was Saturday evening, the eve of the first Sunday after
Easter; the scene strangely dissonant with the many peaceful vespers
of the archbishop’s past. The drunken barbarians, singing perchance
some of their fathers’ rude war-songs, began to pelt the aged prisoner
with the bones left over from their banquet, with the skulls of the
oxen which they had slaughtered. Even so in Valhalla, according to
the Viking mythology, had the gods amused themselves by pelting the
invulnerable Balder with stones and other missiles, until the blind
Hoder, inspired by mischief-working Loki, hurled the fatal mistletoe,
which alone had power to deprive him of life. The brutal game went on
and the air was filled with the drunken laughter of the barbarians at
the old man’s misery. At last one of their number named Thrum, who had
been confirmed by the archbishop only the day before, with kind cruelty
clave his head with a battle-axe. “He fell down dead with the blow and
his holy blood was spilled upon the earth, but his saintly soul went
forth into God’s kingdom.” The martyrdom, for such in truth it was,
took place at Greenwich. Next day the barbarians suffered the saint’s
body to be removed to London, where it was received with all reverence
by the bishop and burghers of the city, as well as by the bishop of
Dorchester, and by them deposited in St. Paul’s cathedral. “And
there,” says the Chronicle, “does God now show forth the wonder-working
power of the holy martyr.” The translation of the remains to Canterbury
will be described in a future chapter. Under the altered form of
Saint Alphege, the name of the murdered archbishop still appears in
the calendar of the English Church, which commemorates the day of his
martyrdom, April the 19th.
* * * * *
Up to this point the Danish invasions of this period have been mere
plundering and blackmailing raids, apparently with no thought of
permanent conquest. Had that been the aim of the sea-rovers, all this
cruel burning and slaughtering would have been beside the mark: for why
should a conqueror utterly ruin a land which he meant to rule? In 1013,
however, a change came over the character of the invasions. They became
part of a regular scheme of conquest; and the old Danish king who
brought with him Canute,[196] his son, determined to make the country
his own. Sweyn landed in the estuary of the Humber: Northumbria,
Lindsey and the Five Boroughs submitted to him and gave him hostages,
whom he sent to the ships to be kept under his son’s guardianship. He
ordered the inhabitants to feed and mount his soldiers; he restored the
full Danish dominion over all the country beyond the Watling Street as
it existed in the darkest years of the ninth century. He then crossed
the Watling Street, harrying the midland counties. Oxford submitted,
so did Winchester. He marched against London, losing many of his
foolhardy soldiers in crossing the Thames. London as usual made a brave
defence. Ethelred was there, and with Ethelred a strange ally, none
other than Thurkill the Dane who had commanded the invading army in
1009. It was Thurkill’s men who had captured Canterbury and murderously
pelted the holy Elfheah; but according to one contemporary authority
Thurkill himself had tried to save him, offering the murderers all his
treasures, “except only his ship,” if they would but be merciful.
Possibly the remembrance of that scene, or some lessons in Christianity
which he may have learned from the captive archbishop, induced him now
to lower the Raven-banner and take service under Ethelred. Possibly,
too, it was this notable defection which caused Sweyn to come over in
person and pluck the ripe fruit, lest it should fall into the hands of
one of his subjects.
The Danish king next moved westward to Bath, and received the
submission of that ancient city and of all the western thegns, each
one of whom had to give hostages, who were sent like the others to the
Humber to be kept under Canute’s guardianship. Even the brave citizens
of London saw that it was useless further to prolong the contest.
They submitted, gave hostages and joined with the rest of England in
acknowledging Sweyn as “full king”. There are indications that this
great revolution was prompted not merely by the desire to end in any
manner the dreadful period of Danish ravagings, but also by utter
disgust at the character of Ethelred, who seems to have been not merely
incapable but also lustful and cruel. In the years which we have been
traversing, there are some strange entries in the Chronicle recording
executions, blindings, confiscations, no doubt inflicted at the command
of Ethelred; and William of Malmesbury, in quoting a letter from
Thurkill to Sweyn, makes him thus describe the condition of England and
her king. “The land is a fair land and a rich, but the king snores.
Devoted to women and wine, he thinks of everything rather than war, and
this makes him hateful to his subjects and ridiculous to foreigners.
The generals are all jealous of one another: the country-folk are weak,
and fly from the field at the first crash of battle.” This letter is
probably not authentic, but its words show what was the traditional
character of “the redeless king”.
Recognising that his sceptre was broken, Ethelred sent the Lady Emma
and her two sons across the sea to her brother in Normandy. He himself
lingered for a while, first on shipboard in the Thames; then in the
Isle of Wight, where he seems to have spent his Christmas; and then
he too escaped to “Richard’s Land,” as the chroniclers call the duchy
of Normandy. Thus then had Sweyn, the heathen and the parricide, king
of Denmark by inheritance and of England by conquest, reached the
summit of his earthly ambition: and having reached it, he was speedily
removed by death. According to the legend related by Symeon of Durham,
his death was a punishment for his contemptuous behaviour towards St.
Edmund of East Anglia. Often had he spoken in a disrespectful manner
of this martyred king, declaring that his saintship was an idle tale;
and, what was more serious, he had announced to the monks of St.
Edmundsbury that unless by a certain day a heavy tax which he had laid
upon their monastery was paid, he would march thither with his men,
give the sanctuary to the flames and put its inmates to death with a
variety of torments. On the very day before his threatened expedition
he was sitting on his horse at Gainsborough surrounded by the armed
assembly of his warriors. Suddenly he cried out, “Help me, comrades!
help! yonder is Saint Edmund who is coming to slay me”. While he was
thus speaking, an unseen hand transfixed him with a spear: he fell
from his war-horse and died at nightfall in great agony. Such is the
legend. The Chronicle records only the simple fact that “at Candlemas
on February 3, 1014, Sweyn ended his days, and all the fleet chose Cnut
for their king”. The dead monarch seems to have reigned as “full king”
over England for barely a month after the flight of Ethelred. His death
led to a sudden shifting of the scene.
* * * * *
“Then all the _witan_, lay and clerical, resolved that they would send
for King Ethelred, and they said that no lord should be dearer to them
than their natural born lord, if only he would govern more righteously
than he had done aforetime. Then the king sent hither his son Edward
with his messengers, and bade greeting to all his people, and said that
he would be to them a gracious lord and would amend all the things of
which they complained, and that everything which they had done or said
against him should be forgiven, on condition that they would all firmly
and loyally adhere to him. Thus was full friendship made fast between
them with word and pledge on either side; and they pronounced every
Danish king outlawed from England for ever. Then came King Ethelred in
spring-tide home to his own people, and gladly was he received by all
of them.”
It was an easy matter for the _witan_ to declare every Danish king an
outlaw; to expel the young and vigorous Canute from the kingdom was a
very different affair. At this time the Dane’s strongest position was
in Lincolnshire, his naval base of operations being still doubtless
the estuary of the Humber. The men of Lindsey had resorted to him at
Gainsborough, and had undertaken to supply him with horses and to go
forth together with him and harry. But now when Ethelred with “a full
fyrd” appeared in Lincolnshire, Canute who was not ready for fight,
stole away to his ships and sailed forth from the Humber, leaving “the
poor folk whom he had deceived” to their king’s vengeance. Ethelred
then “harried and burned and slew every man who could be got at”.
Evidently the long years of war had thoroughly brutalised both the
combatants. Canute, enraged probably by the proceedings of the _witan_,
sailed round to Sandwich, and there landed the luckless hostages who
had been delivered to his father by the northern shires in 1013. He
chopped off their hands and noses and then, apparently, let them
return to their homes. This savage mutilation is the greatest piece of
barbarity that stands recorded against him. Meanwhile the portion of
the fleet which Thurkill commanded lay at Greenwich, and from thence,
though professing to support the cause of Ethelred, ravaged the country
as much as they pleased. Thus for the unhappy peasants there was little
to choose between Thurkill and Canute.
In the following year, 1015, there was a great meeting of the _witan_
at Oxford, and here Edric, of whose treasons we have lately heard but
little, distinguished himself by a characteristic piece of villainy.
There were two thegns, probably brothers, named Sigeferth and Morcar,
men with large estates and holding highest rank in the Five, or as they
were now called, the Seven Boroughs (York and Chester were perhaps
the two new additions to the old group). These men Edric, when he
met them at the _witenagemot_, invited into his chamber and there he
treacherously slew them. According to the somewhat doubtful story of
William of Malmesbury, he had first made their henchmen drunk, and then
when they, too late, sought to avenge their lords, Edric’s followers
overpowered them, chased them into the church of St. Frideswide and
slew them there. The king was evidently consenting to the death of
these men, and purposed to bestow their broad lands on their murderer.
But now came a strange overturn. Sigeferth’s widow had been by royal
order conveyed to Malmesbury, probably with the intention of immuring
her in the convent. Thither also, after a short interval, went the
king’s son, the Etheling Edmund Ironside, whom we now hear of for the
first time, but who was to be the protagonist in the next two years’
combat. He wooed the widow of Sigeferth; he perhaps promised to take
vengeance on her husband’s murderers; he married her, contrary to the
king’s command, and then early in September he marched to the Seven
Boroughs, presented himself as the avenger of the murdered thegns and
the heir of one of them, made himself master of all their domains and
received the submission of their people.
The king was now lying at Cosham,[197] stricken with mortal sickness,
and could exercise little influence on the course of events. The hopes
of the nation must have all rested on Edmund, who certainly showed in
these two years courage and activity, though he may have inherited some
of his father’s incapacity for reading the characters of men. Thus,
notwithstanding the breach between them, which he should have known to
be deadly, he accepted the offered help of Edric Streona who repaired
to his standard in the north, only to exercise his usual paralysing
influence on the army, and then deserted to Canute, inducing the crews
of the forty ships at Greenwich to follow his example.
England was now, in 1016, divided in a fashion not seen before. All
Wessex was submissive to Canute and gave him horses and hostages,
while the district of the Seven Boroughs and probably the whole of
Northumbria went with Edmund, heir by marriage of the influence of
Sigeferth. He summoned the Mercian _fyrd_ to his standard, but the
men replied, curiously enough, that “it did not please them to go
forth, unless the king were with them, and they had the support of the
burgesses of London”. Apparently the Etheling Edmund was more than
half suspected of being a rebel against his father, and in the strange
confusion of the strife the approval of the brave citizens of London
was the only irrefragable sign and seal of rightful lordship. With some
difficulty the sick king was brought from London, where he then abode,
to the northern _fyrd_, but being alarmed by rumours of a conspiracy
against his life, he quitted the camp and returned to London. “Thus
the summoning of the _fyrd_ availed nothing more than it had ever done
before.”
The junction of Edmund’s forces with those of Uhtred, earl of
Northumbria, might seem to promise more effectual resistance to the
foreigner. Practically, however, it resulted in nothing more than a
series of harryings in Shropshire, Staffordshire and Cheshire, from
which Uhtred was suddenly recalled by the tidings that Canute had
marched northwards and was already nearing York. Uhtred abandoned his
harrying and hastened to meet the enemy, but in presence of Canute’s
superior force was obliged to submit, acknowledge the Dane as his
king, and give hostages. The submission availed him naught. After this
surrender he and another powerful Northumbrian named Thurcytel were
put to death by Canute. This crime also was attributed to the malign
influence of Edric Streona. The struggle now centred round London.
There was the sick king; thither his son Edmund went to meet him.
Thither was Canute sailing with his ships, but ere he arrived, an enemy
stronger than he had found entrance. On April 23, 1016, King Ethelred
died, and this dreariest of all English reigns came to an end. Old
as Ethelred seems to us by reason of the evils which he had so long
inflicted on his country, he was still only in the forty-ninth year of
his age.
* * * * *
“After the death of Ethelred, all the _witan_ that were in London and
the citizens chose EDMUND for king, and he boldly defended his kingdom
while his time was,” which was only for seven months. Canute, who was
obstinately set on the conquest of London, made a canal on the south
side of the Thames and passed his ships through it, so as to bring them
into the main stream above the strongly defended bridge. After two
battles in Somerset and Wilts the English king came to the help of the
citizens and defeated the Danes at Brentford. His army, however, was
somewhat lacking in discipline, for “many English folk were drowned in
the river through their own carelessness, pushing on beyond the main
body of the _fyrd_ in the hope of taking booty”. In the battles which
followed on the Orwell, in Mercia, in the island of Sheppey, Edmund
was generally victorious; but all such success was counterbalanced by
the disastrous return of Edric to the English army and by Edmund’s
acceptance of his help. “Never was worse counsel adopted than that.”
The last and greatest of the long series of battles was fought at
Assandune, in the flats of Essex between the Thames and the estuary
of the Crouch. Here, after a long and fierce encounter, victory fell
to the Danes, it is said through the treachery of Edric, who was the
first to take flight and who spread panic through the English ranks
by displaying a severed head, which, he shouted, was the head of
Edmund Ironside. In this battle fell the old traitor Elfric and a very
different man, the brave East Anglian Ulfcytel, besides many other
thegns. There, in fact, fell the flower of the English manhood.
It seemed clear that neither of the opposing forces could utterly crush
the other. By the mediation of Edric a meeting was arranged between the
two kings at Olney, an island in the Severn not far from Gloucester. A
payment, we are not told of what amount, was made to the Danish army,
and the kingdom was divided between the combatants, Wessex to Edmund,
Mercia and Northumbria to Canute. London, faithfully following the
house of Cerdic, was included in the peace, and the now reconciled
Danish mariners were allowed to take up their winter quarters in the
city by the Thames. A peculiar relation, somewhat embellished by the
fancy of later historians, seems to have been established between the
two young partners in the kingdom. Brotherhood in arms was perhaps
sworn to between them; it is alleged that the survivor of the twain
was assured of the inheritance of his partner. Whatever may have been
the precise nature of the tie, it was soon dissolved. On November 30,
1016, Edmund Ironside “fared forth,” and was buried by the side of his
grandfather, Edgar, at Glastonbury. He was only about twenty-three
years of age. A death so opportune for the purposes of Canute and
his followers naturally arouses suspicion. Later historians had no
hesitation in making Edric the murderer. There is also something in
the after-life of Canute which looks like remorse for some great
crime committed against his brother-king. On the other hand it is but
justice to say that there is no hint of foul play in any contemporary
authority; and the death of the young king may perhaps be accounted for
by the fearful labours and anxieties of his last two years of warring
and reigning.
The period which we have lately traversed is one of those dreary times
which a patriotic historian would gladly blot out from the annals of
England, and one is half inclined to resent the exceptional fulness of
detail with which it is treated in the Saxon Chronicle. Yet it is a
time which the student of our social history cannot afford to overlook.
If the thirty years’ war in the seventeenth century left deep scars
on the face of Germany, which were still visible after the lapse of
two hundred years, we must surely believe that the wounds inflicted by
the incessant ravages and harryings of the Danes for more than thirty
years were also deep and long lasting. The utter demoralisation of king
and people, the apparent rottenness of the body politic, as manifested
in the course of the struggle, abate much of our first feeling of
patriotic regret for the Norman conquest, suggesting as they do the
reflection that these Saxons, if left to themselves, would never have
made a strong and stable nation. Much as we condemn the conduct of
Ethelred, we may be inclined to conjecture that all the mischief was
not wrought in his reign. We should perhaps do wisely in mistrusting
a good deal that is told us about the glory and the greatness of the
reign of Edgar. After all, it was in that king’s days that traitors
such as Elfric and Edric were growing up into maturity. Had Edgar left
the country a really strong, well-organised state, it could hardly have
gone down so speedily before the assaults of the sea-rovers. Probably
the new and nobler life breathed into the Saxon people by the great
Alfred lasted during the reigns of Edward and Athelstan and not much
longer.