shallow cleverness that he seized this moment of CHAP. VIII. national peril to open his real reign by a blow at the The great houses that had till now held him down.'

Danish Conquest.

The death of Brihtnoth, with that of Ethelwine 988-1016. in the following year, no sooner left Ethelred's His policy. hands free than change followed change. The Northumbrian earldom was made less formidable by its division between Ælfhelm and Waltheof, the

The charters enable us to follow the course of the great ealdormen under Eadward the Martyr. Ælfhere of Mercia, Æthelwine of East Anglia, and Brihtnoth of Essex still sign first as before; but Æthelmær becomes “ dux,” and in 98I an “Eadwine dux” is added. We know from the chronicle in 982 that Æthelmar was ealdorman in Hampshire (i. e. of the “ Wentanienses provinciae ") and Eadwine in Sussex. Both these died in 982; but Ethelweard, who had been a minister under Eadgar, and was also made dux by Eadward (Cod. Dip. 611), that is, Ealdorman of the Western Provinces (cf. Cod. Dip. 698), was destined to larger and higher fortunes. In a charter assigned to 983, but which, if so, must be early in that year, we find two new names, Thored and Elfric, among the duces (Cod. Dip. 636), Ælfric having taken the place of the dead Æthelmær as "dux Wentaniensium Provinciarum" (cf. Cod. Dip. 698 and 642). We see, however, another Ælfric signing among the "ministri," who must have been son of the great Ealdorman of the Mercians; for on Elfhere's death in the same year, 983, his name disappears from the charters, and we find two Elfrics signing as duces, one no doubt the Ealdorman of Central Wessex, the other Ælfhere's successor in his ealdormanry. Æthelwine, however, succeeds to Ælfhere's position at the head of the duces; while the Mercian Ælfric signs after all but Thored (Cod. Dip. 1279). Both Ælfrics still sign in 984; but in 985 one of them disappears from the charters (Cod. Dip. 1283), and the chronicle tells us that the Mercian ealdorman was banished in that year. Ælfric of Hampshire, on the other hand, goes on signing with Ethelwine, Brihtnoth, and Æthelweard through the next four years; and when Brihtnoth dies in 991 and Ethelwine in 992, we find the two West-Saxon ealdormen, Ethelweard and Ælfric, signing at the head of the duces in 994 (Cod. Dip. 687). With them are Leofwine, Ealdorman of the Hwiccas, Leofsige, Ealdorman of the 'East Saxons" (Cod. Dip. 698), and Ælfhelm "of the Northumbrian provinces," with a certain NorthEng. Chron. a. 992.

man.

2

The Danish

988-1016.

CHAP. VIII. One earl of Deira, the other of Bernicia, to whose older stock he belonged.' The Mercian ealdormen Conquest. had ceased with the exile of Ælfric in 985, and in this year at latest the king set about breaking up this vast power by creating an ealdorman of the Hwiccas in Leofwine. Æthelred next secured the dependence of Essex by the appointment of Leofsige as its ealdorman. Leofsige, as the king himself tells us, was a new thegn of the royal court, who owed his elevation to the royal favor. Æthelred's attitude was naturally one of standing opposition to the great ealdormen who had overawed the Crown, and Leofsige was the first of the new series of royal favorites, of ministers trained in the royal court, through whom the king sought to counteract the pressure of the great nobles. The favorites whom he chose, indeed, so far as we can trace them, seem by their ability to have justified the king's choice. It was no doubt under Ethelred's own guidance that Leofsige, with the West - Saxon ealdormen, Æthelweard and Ælfric, took from this time the main part in the conduct of affairs. But the revolution had only helped to shatter what force remained of national resistance, and the first act of these counsellors shows their sense of the weakness of the realm.

Outer diffi culties.

Many of the difficulties which Æthelred had to face were not of his own making. The long minor

1 They first sign in 994.—Cod. Dip. 687.

2 His first signature is in 994.—Cod. Dip. 687. For his ealdormanry see Cod. Dip. 698.

* Leofsige signs as "dux Orientalium Saxonum."-Cod. Dip. 698. "Quem de satrapis nomine tuli ad celsioris apicem dignitatis dignum duxi promoveri ducem constituendo."-Cod. Dip. 719.

Danish

Conquest.

ity, the rule of Ethelwine, had fatally weakened his CHAP. VIII. cause before he really stood out as king. It must The have been during these years that Eadgar's fleet disappeared; and it was the loss of the rule of the seas 988-1016. which told so hardly against England afterwards. Not only was a storm gathering in the east, but dangers were thickening to the south and to the west. The descents of Danish marauders and fleets ought to have warned England to gird itself to meet a far greater peril; they were but advance-guards, but signs of the new restlessness which was gathering hosts such as England had never seen for the expedition under Swein and Olaf, three years later. To the southward lay the land of the Normans, now to play a part in English history which was never to cease till the Norman duke was hailed as English king. Westward a new power was growing up in Wales. Utterly unable to unite into a permanent State, the Welsh drew together from time to time under chieftains who won a brief supremacy; and in these years of peace Meredydd, the son of Owen, had succeeded in making himself master of nearly the whole of what is now called Wales. Silently the clouds drew together. In the very year of the victory of the Norwegians in East Anglia, Meredydd was not only at war with the English, but had formed an alliance with the Northmen; and that this union was a real danger we see from the treaty of subsidy which was now negotiated with the enemy by the king's counsellors.

treaties.

Already, indeed, their hope lay less in any resist- The two ance on the part of England itself than in the divisions of its foes. The Norwegian force which

Danish

988-1016.

CHAP. VIII. had slain Brihtnoth was still on English soil, but The instead of attacking it the king's advisers found a Conquest. Sum equal to a fourth of the annual revenues of the Crown, ten thousand pounds, to buy off its hostility.' The treaty was not one of withdrawal; it was a buying of frith. The Norwegians swore to help Æthelred against any foes who might attack England; neither party was to receive the enemies of the other. The other provisions of the peace are inconsistent with any notion of the fleet sailing away. It may, in fact, have been the policy of Sigeric and the two ealdormen to hold the Norwegian force to aid against Swein's expected descent, a policy of division which was continued by Bishop Ælfheah of Winchester when the descent actually came three years later. Their next step was to detach Normandy from their Scandinavian assailants. Trouble had for some time been growing up between the Norman and the English courts, perhaps owing to the aid given by Normans to the earlier predatory descents on the English coasts, and if we trust the one account we have of these transactions, war was only averted by the mediation of the Pope. However this may be, an English embassy appeared at Rouen and concluded a treaty with Duke Richard, the first recorded diplomatic transaction between the two powers, on terms that

The treaty of subsidy was negotiated by Archbishop Sigeric, and the ealdormen, Æthelweard of the Western Provinces and Elfric of Central Wessex. See Thorpe's Anc. Laws and Institutes, i. 284.

2 44

'And that neither they nor we harbor the other's Wealh, nor the other's thief, nor the other's foe."-Ibid. 289.

neither Ethelred nor the duke should receive the CHAP. VIII. other's foes.'

The

Danish

Had the two treaties been backed by energetic conquest. measures of resistance within the realm itself, they 988-1016. would have rendered the enterprise which Swein Outbreak

now plotting an all but hopeless one; for of war. with the Norman ports closed against him, and the Norwegian host hanging on his flank, the Danish king could hardly have faced a united England. But it was just this national union that every day made more impossible. The pirate force still clung to the English coast; and in 992 Æthelred gathered a fleet at London of ships furnished by that city and East Anglia, while the fyrd, drawn probably mainly from Hampshire and the surrounding shires, was intrusted to the leading of Ealdorman Ælfric of Central Wessex and Earl Thored. The joint force was to "betrap" the Norwegians; the fyrd, as we may suppose, holding them in play on land till the fleet had cut off their retreat by sea. The plan, however, was foiled by the English leader. Ælfric had now been ealdorman for nearly ten years, and since the deaths of Byrhtnoth and Ethelwine he had stood second in rank and importance only to

This Norman "frith" rests wholly on the authority of William of Malmesbury (Gest. Reg. [Hardy], i. 270). Mr. Freeman accepts it as true. This treaty implies that both sides had already received the foes of the other. The Northmen were doubtless the foes of Æthelred, but who were Richard's? It is possible that Dunstan's connection with Flanders, and his policy of drawing England closer to it a step which so greatly influenced the after-relations of England—was meant by him as a provision against Normandy, and so was understood by the Norman dukes. The treaties with the Norwegians and with Normandy were no doubt accompanied by some arrangement with Wales.