CHAP. VIII. Conquest. 9881016. while in both king and people the dread of Swein's The Danish invasion broke out in whispers that these strangers were plotting the murder of the king and his Witan, and the seizure of the land; and in November, 1002, the panic spread to Ethelred himself. An order of the king which was welcomed everywhere brought about a general massacre of the Danes on St. Brice's Day,1 and those who were not slain by the sword were burned in their houses. Swein's attack. 2 The whole plan of defence was thus thrown into confusion, when Swein's fleet reached England in the spring of 1003. It steered for Exeter, the dowry town of Emma, and the surrender of the city by Hugh, a Norman follower of the queen whom she had appointed its reeve, at once proclaimed the ruin of Ethelred's hopes from his alliance with the Normans, while it gave a new character to the war. During the previous fifteen years the Danish attacks had been mere plunder-raids; but the fall of Exeter gave Swein a base of operations from which he could advance into the heart of the country. He had marched into Wiltshire before any force could be gathered to oppose him, but here he was met by the fyrd of Wiltshire and Hampshire under the command of their own ealdorman, Elfric. For the last few years Elfric had stood at the head of the royal counsellors; but he was now prostrated with sickness, and his camp torn with strife which 1 November 13. Eng. Chron. a. 1002. 2 Eng. Chron. a. 1003. The attack on Exeter looks as if Swein came from Normandy, which would explain the betrayal of the city by the Norman Hugh. The Danish 988- in the end left Swein master of the field. The CHAP. VIII. fyrd in fact broke up without fighting, and Swein marched by Wilton and Old Sarum to the sea unhindered. But the war was now to take a wider range. With the exception of a few raids it had been limited for fifteen years, from 988 to 1003, to Wessex. But Wessex must now have been harried till little booty was left. In the next year, 1004, his fleet appeared "unawares" on the coast of East-Anglia, seized and harried Norwich, a town which had grown up at the junction of the Wensum with the Yare, and which was now the chief port on the eastern coast. Ulfeytel, whose name tells of northern blood, was ruler in East-Anglia: and though he bore but the title of thegn, his position seems to have been one of as great independence as that of the earlier ealdormen. The Danes knew the land as Ulfeytel's land," and now that Swein appeared off the coast the thegn and his Witan made their own treaties and fought their own fights as if East-Anglia were again a separate kingdom. The Witan saw at first no course left save to buy off the invaders; but while the truce for this purpose went on, the Danes suddenly marched inland and plundered Thetford. Ulfeytel summoned the fyrd in haste, and thin as were his ranks, the Danes themselves owned that "never worse hand 66 1 Elfric's sickness, which the Chronicle brands as mere treachery, was probably real enough. The strife within the camp had more to do with the breakdown of the fyrd than the sickness of the general. "Hi anræde næron." 2 "To the sea again, where he knew that his sea-horses were," Eng. Chron. 1003. 1 CHAP. VIII. play met they among Englishmen." But the day The Danish still went for the northmen. The East-Anglian fyrd Conquest. broke with the loss of its noblest warriors, and no hindrance lay in the way of Swein's march into the heart of Britain. 9881016. Internal troubles. Again however the doom of the country was delayed. We do not know whether dangers at home drew Swein from his enterprise, or whether his force was insufficient for a more serious campaign; but from East-Anglia his fleet sailed back again to Denmark, and for a year at least the country had a respite from Danish attack. But it had no respite from the more fatal troubles within. Æfic's place at court was filled by a new high reeve, Wulfgeat, who probably directed the king's policy in the short interval of peace that followed Swein's departure at the end of 1004. But only two years later, in 1006, the new minister was displaced by a revolution which seems to have been accompanied by deeds of violence like those which had accompanied the fall of Æfic.2 The murder of the Deiran ealdorman Elfhelm in the course of this revolution brought about a change of 1 Eng. Chron. a. 1004. 2 The Chronicle says: "Wulfgeat was deprived of all his goods, Wulfeah and Ufegeat were blinded, and Ealdorman Ælfhelm (of Deira) was slain." This short entry is expanded by Florence, in the twelfth century, into an ambush and murder of Ælfhelm at Shrewsbury by Eadric, and a blinding of "his sons," Wulfeah and Ufegeat, by Ethelred. The story is legen. dary in form, evidently looks on Eadric as already ealdorman of Mercia in 1006, a year before his appointment, and is of no contemporary value. government in the north, for Ethelred saw himself forced to undo the policy of Dunstan and Eadgar, to mass together Deira and Bernicia into a single earldom, and to place it in the hands of Uhtred, whose father Waltheof had, as we have seen, been earl of the Bernicians. Uhtred showed his strength by a victory which he gained at Durham over the Scot king, Malcolm, who made at this time an inroad into the north, and Ethelred was glad to bind him to his cause by a marriage with his daughter Ælfgifu.1 The The fate of Æfic and of Wulfgeat was far from turning Ethelred from his ministerial schemes. The number of the great ealdormen and their influence at court had gone on steadily diminishing. places of those that died do not seem to have been commonly filled up; and after the death of Elfhelm only Elfric and Leofwine remained to sign the royal charters. Uhtred and Ulfcytel existed as provincial rulers, but can have hardly swayed the policy of a court in which they seldom appear. That policy was now Ethelred's own, or rather that of a new high reeve, Eadric, for whom the disgrace of Wulfgeat seems to have made room. While later tradition charged the new minister, as political faction has 1 Simeon of Durham (Twysden), p. 80. Mr. Freeman seems to have rightly consigned the Scot invasion to this year, though Simeon dates it earlier. It may have been connected with Elfhelm's murder, which, if we set aside the story in Florence, would seem rather to form part of a struggle which had been going on during this period between the Deiran and Bernician earls, and which, in spite of Waltheof's displacement by the Witan, ended eventually in the triumph of the latter. CHAP. VIII. Conquest. 9881016. Eadric. CHAP. VIII Conquest, 988. 1016. always charged its opponents, with faithlessness, The Danish haughtiness, and pride, it owned his intelligence and his eloquent tongue. What is most notable in the charges brought against him is that of low birth. The tendency of the time, as the growing feudalism of the Continent proves, lay the other way; but while rulers like the Norman dukes would not suffer any but men of noble blood at their court, it marked a larger temper in Æthelred when he raised into power this low-born ceorl solely for his wise head and skill of speech. Eadric may thus have been the predecessor, not only of the obscurely-born Godwine before the Conquest, but of the new men whom our Norman kings, in spite of their nobles, called to the council-board after it. From the outset of his administration we feel a firmer hand in the management of affairs. Though the Danes reappeared on the southern coast, Ethelred himself seems to have met them with the land-fyrd; and while avoiding an engagement, to have held them in check through the autumn. On their apparent withdrawal into winter-quarters in the Isle of Wight, the king marched westward to Shrewsbury, and took post on the Severn, no doubt to check the growing turbulence of the Welsh. But the pirates no sooner saw the land clear than they again made a raid as far inland as Berkshire, lighting their war-beacons as they went, and marching along Ashdown as far as the mound of Cuckamsly, as though to 1 Eadric was known in after-times as "Edricus Streona " (Flor. Worc. (ed. Thorpe), vol. i. p. 158), or "acquisitor" (Orderic, Duchesne, "Hist. Norm. Script." p. 506, B). The nickname evidently alludes to his great accumulations of property. |