CHAP. VIII. The Danish 9881016. Flight of Resistance was in fact impossible. Master without a blow of Northern and Midland Britain, Swein horsed his host, and gathering the fyrd of the shires which adhered to him, marched southward. "After they came over Watling Street they wrought the most Ethelred. evil that any host might do." By Oxford he passed into the heart of Wessex, where Winchester submitted to his arms. From Winchester he turned upon London, into which Æthelred and Thurkill had thrown themselves. But the town made a vigorous defence, and Swein was forced to fall back to Wallingford for a passage over the Thames to Bath, to complete his work by the reduction of Wessex. The submission of Winchester had carried with it that of the Central Provinces, whose ealdorman, Elfric, still clung to the But the Western Provinces, the Wessex beyond Selwood where Elfred had rallied his men at the last moment of the fight with Guthrum, remained unconquered under Æthelmær, who a few years back had succeeded Ethelweard as ealdorman.2 But even in this heart of West-Saxon life provincial was stronger than national feeling. At Bath Swein was met by Æthelmar and the western thegns; and their submission left him lord of all England. London itself, left alone in its resistance, sent hostages to the Danish king, while Ethelred after sending Emma and her two boys to their uncle, Duke Richard, took refuge in Thurkill's squadron, and after hovering through the early winter off the coast 1 Eng. Chron. a. 1013. court. 2 Ibid. a. 1013. Ethelweard disappears from the charters in 999. CHAP. VIII. sailed in despair at Christmas-tide to join them in Normandy. The Danish Conquest. 9881016. Its results. Death of Swein. With the flight of the king ended the long effort of Wessex to maintain her supremacy over Britain. It had indeed other issues little foreseen at the moment, for it was the Norman influences which from this time surrounded the English royal house that prepared the way for the presence of the Norman in England itself. Æthelred's two boys were from this time dwellers not on English but on Norman soil. From childhood to manhood they grew up as Normans among their Norman kinsfolk. Elfred, the elder of them, was to return to England with Norman soldiers to claim his father's realm, to perish on the ground he claimed, and to leave a heritage of revenge amongst the Normans against Englishmen which only slaked itself in the bloodshed of Senlac. The fortunes of his brother Eadward were destined to be yet more fatal to England. Bred and sheltered in the Norman land till its temper and language became his own, he came as a Norman to the English throne, and the reign of the Normanized Confessor brought with it as an inevitable necessity the Norman conquest of England. Had Æthelred delayed his flight but for a month the scene would suddenly have changed. At the opening of February, 1014, Swein died suddenly at Gainsborough, and his death at once broke the spell of terror which had fallen on the land. The Witan gathered to send letters over sea to Æthelred bidding him know that "no lord was more dear to them than their own lord, if he would hold them in rightlier wise than he did aforetime." The terms were accepted. Æthelred sent Eadmund with pledges that he would be a faithful lord to them and amend all they hated; they then established full friendship by word and pledge on either half, and declared every Danish king an outlaw from England for ever." Leaving Emma and her two children at Richard's court, the king at once put to sea, to receive a joyous welcome in London, and hastily gathering troops marched upon Gainsborough, where the Danish host had chosen Cnut, Swein's young son, for king. Cnut was in fact already bargaining with the men of Lindsey for aid in a joint raid on the south, but before Ethelred's vigorous attack he forsook Britain and sailed away to his northern home. It may be doubted, indeed, whether his return to the north was due as much to the attack of Æthelred as to the news that another son of Swein, Harald, had already mounted the Danish throne. It is said that an arrangement was made between the brothers by the wisdom of Thurkill, who proposed that Harald should rule in Denmark while Cnut returned to conquer England. However this may have been, it is certain Thurkill quitted Ethelred-it may be this was in itself a part of the bargain between the king and his subjects-and in the coming struggle fought side by side with his own northern folk. Cnut's ambition can have needed little urging to the winning of a land twice the size of his own Denmark, and vastly greater in wealth and population. His vigour showed itself in the rapidity with which a fleet even more numerous and splendid than his father's gathered in 1015 for a fresh attack on Britain. CHAP. VIII. The Danish 988 1016. Cnut's invasion. The Danish Conquest. 988 1016. CHAP. VII. Fortune already favoured his cause. The loss of Thurkill's military force was not made up by national vigour. The union which had been sealed by solemn pact between Æthelred and his Witan was already at an end; the English court was again torn with strife; and though the king himself, who was drawing fast to the death which followed in the coming year, could take little part in the struggle, the fight he had fought against the great nobles was taken up fiercely by his son. The contest between Eadmund and ealdorman Eadric proved more fatal to England than any of its predecessors. Of the origin or real nature of the quarrel we know nothing, but Eadmund seems to have revolted against the power which Eadric exercised over the king. Its first outbreak was at the Witenagemot at Oxford, where Eadric is said to have drawn two "chief thegns of the Seven Boroughs" into his chamber and to have slain them. The thegns may have been supporters of Eadmund, for after a short while Eadmund, against his father's will, took the widow of one of them to wife, seized their lands, and made himself head of their people.' Dissensions in The quarrel had just broken out when Cnut appeared England. ravaging the Wessex coast, and its results at once showed themselves in the old fatal discord in the face of the national enemy. The host gathered to meet Cnut under Eadric, but no sooner had Eadmund joined it with forces from the North than charges of treachery parted the two leaders, and the English army broke 1 Eng. Chron. a. 1015. As these lands were in Elfric's ealdormanry this may have been an effort to break up the ealdorman's power at home, but we have no means of deciding the matter. CHAP. VIII. Conquest. 988 1016. up without any fight. A yet more fatal issue followed. Ethelred must now have been dying, and Eadric, The Danish conscious that his death would leave him in the hands of a king who was his avowed enemy, saw no resource save one. He joined Cnut with forty ships, and the balance of the war turned at once in favour of the Dane. The men of Wessex submitted to him, and with the opening of the year 1016 his host advanced across the Thames, ravaging at its will. It was in vain that Eadmund gathered forces to oppose Cnut and Eadric, for the army was no sooner assembled than it refused to march without the king; and when Ethelred joined his son, and a more stringent summons called men to the royal standard, the general distrust still paralyzed action. "It was made known to the king that men would betray him ;" and Æthelred sailed again in terror to London, while his son fell back on Northumbria and sought aid from his brother-in-law, Earl Uhtred. Their joint army however broke up as soon as Cnut, who had been wasting eastern Mercia unopposed, advanced by Lincoln upon York, and while Uhtred and the Northumbrians submitted to the conqueror, Eadmund fled to join his father in London. It was at this moment that London first took the leading part in English history which it has maintained ever since. The city stood alone in its loyalty to the house of Cerdic, for almost all England from the Channel to the Forth had now bowed to the Dane. But the spirit of its burghers remained unbroken. As Cnut and Eadric advanced from the north to complete their work by a siege of the town, Ethelred died Eadmund |