and food. To this they consented, and there were paid to them twenty-four thousand pounds."

I

"In the Lent of this same year came the daughter of Duke Richard, Emma, into this land." Ethelred's first wife Elgiva was dead, and he found a second in the daughter of the Norman Duke Richard, Emma the "Jewel"" (Gemma) Normannorum." He is said to have gone to court her in person. She is reported to have been as beautiful as Helen of Troy, and her coming was as fatal, if not to the nation to which she came, yet certainly to the house into which she married. She was the first of the Norman invaders, and, by her influence, exercised in the first instance through her two husbands 2 and her son, she paved the way for the host which was to conquer England some sixty years later.

Ethelred now ventured on one of those great crimes which, however successful they may seem for the time, surely bring down a fearful punishment on those who commit them. 3 He ordered

I The money raised, either to furnish resistance to the invaders or to purchase their forbearance, was called "Dane-money" (Danegelt). It seems to have been a tax of two shillings on every hide (or 120 acres) of cultivated ground. The name is commonly said to have been first given in 991 (see p. 264). The tax remained, as taxes often do, long after the first occasion for it had passed away. William the Conqueror revived it in 1083, and it was not finally abolished till the reign of Henry II. It appears to have been one of the matters in dispute between that King and Thomas à Becket.

2 After Ethelred's death she married Canute. Her son was Edward the Confessor.

3 We may compare the fate of Mithradates, who in 88 B.C. ordered the massacre of all the Roman citizens then residing in Asia, and the disastrous results of the Sicilian vespers (A.D. 1282), when all the French in Sicily were simultaneously murdered.

ST. BRICE'S DAY.

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that all the Danes throughout England should be murdered, and his orders were carried out on St. Brice's day, November 13th.

It is very likely that Ethelred ventured on this summary way of ridding himself of his enemies on the strength of his alliance with the ruler of Normandy. It is certain that he must have had the feeling of his people with him, for otherwise his orders would not have been carried out so thoroughly as they seem to have been. The English must have been terribly irritated against the strangers. They were heathens; they had burnt the churches and monasteries, and carried fire and sword and ravage everywhere. Probably they behaved with insolence, even when they were not acting as enemies. The Chroniclers of later times speak of the jealousy of the English against the foreigners, who pleased the native women by their smart dress and cleanly habits.' One great provocation there certainly was in the heavy tax for which their presence had given occasion. Fifty thousand pounds had been paid to them in the course of eleven years, å bribe for a forbearance which after all they did not show; and fifty thousand pounds, which would be a very large sum if put into money of our time, must have been an oppressive burden on a nation that may be said to have had very little trade or manufactures.

It may be supposed that the King did not want a pretext for his act. He had had information, he declared, that the Danes had made a plot to slay

It was especially alleged against the Danes that they indulged in the strange habit of bathing.

him and all his nobles, so that they might take possession of his kingdom without any man resisting. We have no means of judging whether there was any truth in the charge. The number of victims is not known. Later writers embellished their accounts of the massacre with the description of horrible cruelties practised on women and children-women, for the most part, whom the Danes had taken to wife, and children who had been born of these marriages. The

original authority simply says: "This year the King ordered that all the Danes who were in England should be slain."

One woman, indeed, seems to have perished in the massacre, and this one brought about a speedy punishment of the crime. Gunhild, sister of King Sweyn of Denmark, had married the Pallig whose treachery to the King has been mentioned earlier in the chapter. She was now killed, declaring, it is

GUNHILD'S PROPHECY.

275

said, with her last breath, that her death would bring many wars upon England. The prophecy was soon fulfilled, for in the very next year Sweyn himself came back, declaring that he would revenge his sister and his countrymen

XXVI.

THE VENGEANCE FOR ST. BRICE'S DAY.

SWEYN was now the most powerful prince of the kingdoms of the Northmen. Olaf Tryggvason, first his ally and then his enemy, had perished three years before in battle with him, and he seems to have formed plans of conquest such as had not seemed possible to any of those who had gone before him. They had been content, first with the plunder of England, and then with a goodly share of its land. He resolved to be its king.

The murder of his sister gave said, a good pretext for action. was near Exeter. And here we

him, as has been

His first landing have the earliest

of the disasters that were to come from the Norman connections of the new Queen of England. "In this year Exeter was taken by the neglect of the Norman Count Hugh, whom the Queen had made reeve of it; and the Pagans utterly destroyed it, and carried away much booty." If Queen Emma was to blame for putting this unworthy favourite in a post that he was unfit to fill, it must have been the King that put the traitor Elfric1 in command of the English I See p. 204.