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CHAP. VIII.

Conquest.

9881016.

at this moment by the king. Ethelred had now reached manhood; he was indeed already father of The Danish two boys, the younger of whom was to be known. as Eadmund Ironside. He was handsome and pleasant of address, and though he was taunted by his opponents with having the temper of a monk rather than of a warrior, there were none who denied his capacity or activity.' But behind, and absorbing all, was a haughty pride in his own kingship. The imperial titles which had been but sparsely used by his predecessors are employed profusely in his charters; nor was his faith in these lofty pretensions ever shaken even at the time of his greatest misfortunes. His attitude was thus one of stubborn opposition throughout his reign to the efforts of the great ealdormen to control the Crown; it was in fact his revolt from this control, and his persistence in setting aside the rede or counsel in which it embodied itself, that earned him the title of "Unrædig," or the counsellacking king, which a later blunder changed into the title of the Unready. Unready, shiftless, without resource, Ethelred never was. His difficulties, indeed, sprang in no small degree from the quickness and ingenuity with which he met one danger by measures that created another. A man of expedients rather than wisdom, he devised administrative and financial plans which, though they were to

1 William of Malmesbury ("Gest. Reg." (Hardy), i. 268) "wonders, Cur homo ut a majoribus nos accepimus neque multum fatuus neque nimis ignavus in tam tristi pallore tot calamitatum vitam consumpserit." The cause he sees for this is, "Ducum defectionem ex superbia regis prodeuntem," and this statement is no doubt mainly true.

CHAP. VIII.

Conquest.

988

1016.

serve as moulds for our later policy, he had himself The Danish neither the strength nor the patience to carry out to He was capable of brave any profitable issue. fighting, when driven hard. But impulsive, fitful in temper, changeful and ready to fling away the fruits of one course of policy by sudden transition to another, he was filled with a restless energy which never ceased to dash itself against the forces round it. He sought safety in skilful negotiations with the foreigner when it was only to be attained by a firm and consistent government at home. It was with the same quick but shallow cleverness that he seized this moment of national peril to open his real reign by a blow at the great houses that had till now held him down.1

1 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 Ethelmær becomes "dux," and in 981 an "Eadwine dux" is added. We know from the chronicle in 982 that Æthelmar was ealdorman in Hampshire (i.e. of the "Wentanienses provinciæ ") and Eadwine in Sussex. Both these died in 982; but Æthelweard, 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 Ælfric, 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 Ælfrics signing as duces, one no doubt the Ealdorman of Central-Wessex, the other Ælfhere's successor in his ealdormanry. Ethelwine however succeeds to

1

CHAP. VIII.

Conquest.

9881016.

His policy.

The death of Brihtnoth, with that of Æthelwine in the following year, no sooner left Æthel- The Danish red's hands free than change followed change. The Northumbrian earldom was made less formidable by its division between Elfhelm and Waltheof, the one earl of Deira, the other of Bernicia, to whose older stock he belonged.2 The Mercian ealdormen had ceased with the exile of Elfric 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.3 Ethelred 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 favour.5 Æthelred's attitude was naturally one of standing

Elfhere'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. Alfric of Hamp-
shire on the other hand, goes on signing with Æthelwine, Briht-
noth, 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 Elfric, 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 Elfhelm "of the
Northumbrian provinces," with a certain northman.

1 Eng. Chron. a. 992. 2 They first sign in 994. Cod. Dip. 687. 3 His first signature is in 994. Cod. Dip. 687. For his ealdormanry see Cod. Dip. 698.

4 Leofsige signs as "dux Orientalium Saxonum." Cod. Dip. 698. 5 "Quem de satrapis nomine tuli ad celsioris apicem dignitatis dignum duxi promoveri ducem constituendo." Cod. Dip. 719.

The Danish
Conquest.

9881016.

sought to counteract The favourites whom can trace them, seem

CHAP. VIII. opposition to the great ealdormen who had overawed the Crown, and Leofsige was the first of the new series of royal favourites, of ministers trained in the royal court, through whom the king the pressure of the great nobles. he chose indeed, so far as we by their ability to have justified the king's choice. It was, no doubt, under Æthelred'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 difficulties.

Many of the difficulties which Ethelred had to face were not of his own making. The long minority, the rule of Ethelwine, had fatally weakened his cause before he really stood out as king. It must have been during these years that Eadgar's fleet disappeared-and it was the loss of the rule of the seas which told so hardly against England afterwards. Not only was а 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.

Already indeed their hope lay less in any resistance on the part of England itself than in the divisions of its foes. The Norwegian force which had slain Brihtnoth was still on English soil, but instead of attacking it the king's advisers found a 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 Ethelred 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

2

1 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 "And that neither they nor we harbour the other's Wealh, nor the other's thief, nor the other's foe." Ib. P. 289.

CHAP. VIII.

The Danish
Conquest.

988

1016.

The two

treaties.

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