The vespers of Saint Brice were not only a crime but a blunder. From this time forth the Danish invasions become far more constant, far more systematic, and they |Invasion by Swegen in person. 1003.| affect a far larger portion of the kingdom. The next year King Swegen came again in person.^[607] He now had a real injury; the blood of his sister and his countrymen might have called for vengeance at the hands of a gentler and more forgiving prince. He did not land in any of those parts of the island where we should have most naturally looked for the opening of a campaign; he began his attack in the region which had been the chief seat of warfare for years before. Most likely he knew well where the |Exeter betrayed to Swegen by Hugh the Frenchman.| weakness of England lay. The Danish King sailed to Exeter, the city whose burghers had so gallantly repelled the former attack. But the state of things within the walls of the western capital was now sadly changed for the worse. The royal rights over Exeter had been granted to the Norman Lady as part of her morning-gift. Hugh, a Frenchman, whether earl or churl^[608] matters not, was now the royal reeve in Exeter, the first of a long line of foreigners who, under Emma, her son, and her great-nephew, were to fatten on English estates and honours. Hugh was either a coward or a traitor, most likely both. Exeter was stormed and plundered; the noble walls of King Æthelstan were broken down from the east gate to the |Swegen ravages Wiltshire.| west, and the city was left defenceless.^[609] Swegen returned to his ships with a vast plunder, and then went on to the |A battle hindered by Ælfric, again in command of the English.| harrying of Wiltshire. The men of that shire and their neighbours of Hampshire were gathered together, ready and eager to meet the enemy in battle. The people were as sound at heart as they had been three years before, but they had no longer the same valiant leaders. The battle of Æthelingadene seems to have fallen with special severity on the chief men, and we now find the force of these two shires in the last hands in which we should have looked to find them. The old traitor Ælfric,^[610] who had done his best, eleven years before,^[611] to betray London to the enemy, who had himself been driven from the land, and whose innocent son had paid a cruel penalty for his offence, was now, through some unrecorded and inexplicable intrigue, again in royal favour, again in command of an English army, again trusted to oppose the very enemy with whom he had before traitorously leagued himself. But, as our Chronicles tell us with a vigorous simplicity, he was again at his old tricks; as soon as the armies were so near that they could look on one another, the English commander pretended to be taken suddenly ill;^[612] retchings and spittings followed as a proof of his sickness; in such a case a battle could not possibly be thought of. One wonders that some brave man, however unauthorized, did not seize the command by common consent;^[613] but the paltry trick was successful; the spirits of the English were broken, and they went away in |Fluctuation of spirits among non-professional soldiers.| sadness without a battle.^[614] In all this history, just as in old Greek history,^[615] we are often surprised at the mere accidents on which the fate of battles depends, how much one man’s valour or cowardice or treason can bring about, how much turns on the mood in which the soldiers find themselves at the moment of action. In this case the English are described as having come together with the utmost good will, and as being thoroughly eager to do their duty. Yet a transparent artifice at once paralyses them, and they become wholly incapable of action. We must remember that here, just as in Greece, we are dealing, not with professional soldiers, but with citizen soldiers; we are dealing with times when every man was sometimes a soldier, and when none but professed pirates were soldiers always. Such soldiers are not mere machines in the hand of a master of the game; they do not simply do their professional duty in blind obedience; they have a real part and interest in what is going on; they are therefore liable to be affected by the ordinary feelings of men in a way in which professional soldiers are much less strongly affected. Such men are specially liable to fluctuations of the spirits; they are easily encouraged and easily disheartened; men who fight like heroes one day may be overcome by a sudden panic the next. Hence the extraordinary importance which, with troops of this kind, attaches to the personal exhortation and personal example of the general; a chief who simply stands aloof and gives orders can never win a victory. The particular speech put into the mouth of a general before battle is no doubt commonly the invention of the historian; but that generals found it needful to make such speeches, and that such speeches had a most important effect on the spirit and conduct of their armies, is clear in every history of this kind of warfare. No doubt even professional soldiers still remain men, and are liable to be in some degree affected in the same way; still habit and discipline make a great change; an army in which each man is really fighting for his hearth and home is liable to these influences in a tenfold degree. Before long we shall see England possessed of an army combining the merits of both systems, an army uniting discipline and patriotism; but as yet the country had no standing force, and had to depend solely on the enthusiasm and the sense of duty of the general levies of each particular district. In this case, the spirit of the men of Wiltshire and Hampshire was all that a leader could wish for; if some brave man had stepped forward, had cut down the traitor Ælfric, and had called on the English to follow him against the enemy, a battle would have been certain and a victory probable. But no man had the energy to do this; therefore the base trick thoroughly succeeded, the spirit of the troops was damped, and the English host went away without striking a blow. But even in retreat it must have been formidable, as it seems to have been left quite unmolested by the enemy. Still the whole shire was left defenceless. The town of Wilton was sacked and burned. |Swegen sacks and burns Wilton and Salisbury.| Swegen then marched to Salisbury. The Salisbury of |Old Sarum.| those days was not the modern city in the plain, which circles, with but little of beauty or interest in itself, around the most graceful of West-Saxon minsters. The object of Swegen’s march was still the old hill-fortress,^[616] where the Briton and the Roman had entrenched |552.| themselves, and at whose foot Cynric had won one of those great battles which mark the western stages of the Teutonic invasion. After the days of Swegen a Norman castle and a Norman minster rose and fell on that historic spot, and the chosen stronghold of so many races lived to become one of the bye-words of modern political discussion. Like Exeter, Salisbury was not yet a Bishop’s see; the prelate of Wiltshire had his lowly cathedral church in the obscure Ramsbury; but the choice of Salisbury at the end of the century as the seat of the united sees of Wiltshire and Dorset shows that it must already have been a place of importance according to the standard of the time. Yet one would think that its importance must always have been mainly that of a military post; one can hardly conceive Old Sarum being at any time a place of trade or the home of any considerable population. Whatever the place consisted of at this time, Swegen sacked and burned it, and returned to his ships with great spoil.^[617]

The events of the next year form the exact converse of the tale which I have just told. We have seen the spirit of a gallant army foully damped by the malice of a single traitor. We shall now see the efforts of a single hero, boldly struggling against every difficulty, feebly backed by those who should have supported him, and winning, in a succession of defeats, a glory as pure as that of the most triumphant of conquerors. This man was Ulfcytel, who is said to have been a son-in-law of the King, and who was at this time Earl, or at least military commander, of the East-Angles.^[618] His name proclaims his Danish origin, but it was in him that England now found her stoutest champion in her hour of need. This next summer Swegen took his course towards a part of England which was largely peopled by men of his own race, to the old kingdom of |Swegen surprises and burns Norwich.| Guthrum. His coming was sudden; he sailed to the mouth of the Yare; he pushed his way up the stream, and stormed and burned the town which had arisen near the point of its junction with the Wensum, and which, at least in later times, has spread itself on both sides of the smaller |History of the city.| river. Norwich was in East-Anglia what Exeter was in the Western shires. But the city itself could not boast of the same antiquity as the Damnonian Isca. The changes of the waters in that region had caused the British and Roman site to be forsaken; the Icenian Venta survived only in the vague description of Caistor, a description common to it with many other Roman towns whose distinctive names have been forgotten. At some distance from the Roman site, where the hills slope down to the right bank of the Wensum, the East-Anglian Kings had reared one of those vast mounds which form so marked a feature in the Old-English system of defence, and had crowned it doubtless with a fortified dwelling. This home of native kingship was to be the forerunner of one of the |Norwich Castle.| stateliest of Norman castles, one which immediately suggests a name than which few in our history are more illustrious. The castle of Norwich became the stronghold of the earls of the house of Bigod, one of whom lived to |1297.| wrest the final confirmation of the liberties of England from the hands of the great Edward himself. As at Exeter, as at Salisbury, the Norman castle had already a rude forerunner, |Norwich not yet a Bishop’s See.| but the Norman minster had none. The Bishop of the East-Angles still had his seat at Elmham. A twofold translation of the see towards the end of the century, first to Thetford and then to Norwich, points out those two towns as being at this time the most considerable in the district, and we accordingly find them the principal objects |Importance of the town.| of hostile attack. Norwich was now one of the greatest seats of commerce in England; the city had been greatly favoured by several successive Kings, and it |Norwich burned by Swegen.| enjoyed the privilege of a mint. A place thus rich and flourishing was naturally marked as a prey by the invaders, who harried and burned it, seemingly without resistance. The blow was so sudden that even a guardian |Ulfcytel and the Witan of East-Anglia make peace with the Danes.| like Ulfcytel was unprepared. He now gathered together the provincial council, the Witan of East-Anglia,^[619] whose mention shows how much of independence the ancient kingdom still retained. Peace was patched up with the invaders, who seemingly returned to their ships. But, |The Danes break the peace and march on Thetford.| three weeks afterwards, the Danes broke the peace, and marched secretly to Thetford, the town in the district next in importance to Norwich. This march seems to have led them to a greater distance from the coast than any Danish army had ventured since the old invasions in Ælfred’s time. Their movement did not escape the watchful eye |Plans of Ulfcytel.| of Ulfcytel,^[620] and the plan which he formed, though not wholly successful, seems to vouch for his generalship. He at once gathered his forces together as secretly as he could, and sent a detachment to the coast to destroy the ships of the invaders. In this latter part of his scheme he wholly failed; those whom he sent on that errand proved |Thetford plundered and burned.| either cowardly or unfaithful. And, even with the force under his own command, he was unable to save Thetford. The town was entered by the Danes, who plundered it, stayed there one night, and in the morning set fire to it |Drawn battle between Swegen and Ulfcytel.| and marched away towards their ships. But they were hardly clear of the burning town when Ulfcytel came upon them with his army. That army was comparatively small; had the whole force of East-Anglia been there, so our authors tell us, never would the heathen men have got back to their ships. As it was, the Danes themselves said that they never met in all England with worse handplay than Ulfcytel brought upon them.^[621] It seems to have been a drawn battle. The Danes so far succeeded that they were able to accomplish their object of reaching their ships; but the fighting was hard, and the slaughter great on both sides, and we do not hear of either side |Severe loss among the English leaders.| keeping the field. As at Maldon, as at Æthelingadene, the slaughter on the English side fell most heavily on those who were high in rank or command.^[622] No doubt, in all these battles, just as in the battles of Homer, the chief stress of the fight fell on the thegns of the King or Earl in command, especially on the high-born youths who were personally attached to him and his service. We have seen that it was so at Maldon, where we know the details; it is equally clear that it was so at Thetford, where we |Illustrations supplied by Ulfcytel’s campaign.| know only the general result. This East-Anglian campaign is also a good illustration of the general conditions of warfare at the time. It shows the difficulty with which the force either of the whole kingdom or of a single earldom could be got together, and how much was lost through mere slowness of operations. Even with a vigorous chief at the head, the two chief towns of the earldom were surprised and burned. But the story shows no less plainly how much a single faithful and valiant leader could do to struggle with these difficulties. A shire under the government of Ulfcytel was in a very different case from a shire under the government of Ælfric. Nay, could Ulfcytel, instead of holding a mere local command, have changed places with the boastful Emperor of all Britain, we can well believe that the whole story of the Danish wars would have had a very different ending.

The resistance of Ulfcytel, though not wholly successful, seems to have had at least a share in winning for England a momentary respite. We hear of no further ravages after the battle of Thetford, and in the next year King Swegen, instead of attacking any part of England, sailed home again to Denmark. A famine, the most fearful ever remembered in England, was most likely the result of his ravages, but it no doubt also helped to send him away for a while from the wasted land. The Witan met in the course of the year, but we have no record of any proceedings more important than the usual grants to monasteries |Events of the year 1006.| and to the King’s thegns.^[623] But the next year is crowded with events of all kinds. We now come to the rise of a man who was to be even more completely the evil genius of the later years of this unhappy reign than Ælfric had |Rise and character of Eadric.| been the evil genius of its earlier years. This was Eadric, the son of Æthelric,^[624] surnamed Streona, who is described as a man of low birth, of a shrewd intellect—which he used only to devise selfish and baleful schemes—of an eloquent tongue—which he used only to persuade men to mischief—as proud, cruel, envious, and faithless. From elaborate pictures of this sort we instinctively make some deductions; still the character of Eadric is written plainly enough in his recorded crimes. That such a man should rise to power was the greatest of evils for the nation; still his rise illustrates one good side of English society at the time. |Illustrations supplied by his advancement.| In England the poor and ignoble still could rise; on the continent they had nearly lost all chance. Eadric rose to rank and wealth by his personal talents, talents which no writer denies, though they all paint in strong colours the evil use which he made of them. And he really rose; he did not merely, like many low-born favourites of other princes, exercise a secret influence over a weak master. He was advanced to the highest dignities of the realm; he stood forth in the great council of the nation among the foremost of its chiefs; he commanded the armies of his sovereign; and, what would most of all shock modern prejudices, he was allowed to mingle his blood with that of kings. Now, if a bad man could thus rise by evil arts, it clearly was not impossible that a good man might also rise in a worthier way. Instances of either kind were doubtless unusual; the general feeling of the time was strongly aristocratic; still there was no legal or even social hindrance to keep a man from rising out of utter obscurity to the highest places short of kingship. Eadric, like most favourites, seems to have made his way to power through the ruin of an earlier favourite. A man named Wulfgeat had been for some years the chief adviser of Æthelred. It |Fall of Wulfgeat.| is not clear whether he had ever risen above thegn’s rank. But he clearly exercised some functions which clothed him with a good deal of power, for, among his other offences, unjust judgements are spoken of.^[625] Wulfgeat was now, doubtless through the influence of Eadric, deprived of all his offices, and his property was confiscated, a sentence which would seem to imply the authority of a Witenagemót. The sentence may have been a righteous one; but at all events the degradation of Wulfgeat opened the way for the elevation of a worse man than himself. Wulfgeat is at least not described as an open traitor and murderer. |Eadric the chief favourite.| Eadric, who had probably been rising in position for some years, now appears as the reigning favourite and as the |Earl Ælfhelm murdered at Shrewsbury.| director of all the crimes and treasons of the court. A monstrous crime was now committed. Ælfhelm, a nobleman who had been for some years Earl of a part of Northumberland, probably of Deira,^[626] was present, seemingly at the court or at some Gemót, at Shrewsbury. There Eadric received him as a familiar friend, entertained him for some days, and on the third or fourth day took him out to a hunting-party. While others were intent on the sport, the executioner of the town, one Godwine, surnamed Porthund,^[627] whom Eadric had won over by large gifts and promises, started forth from an ambush at a favourable moment and put the Earl to death.^[628] The sons of Ælfhelm, Wulfheah and Ufegeat, were soon after blinded by the King’s order at Cookham, a royal seat in Buckinghamshire. |Ælfheah Archbishop of Canterbury. 1006.| Amidst all these crimes, Archbishop Ælfric died, and Ælfheah of Winchester, who was before long to take his place beside Dunstan as a canonized saint, succeeded to the metropolitan throne.

These events seem to have taken up the earlier part of the year. In the summer a new Danish invasion began, and there seems reason to believe that it took place at the same time as a Scottish inroad, which was perhaps planned in concert.^[629] It is now a long time since we have heard |Death of Kenneth. 994.| of any disturbances on the part of Scotland proper. King Kenneth, the faithful vassal of Eadgar, had died in |Accession of Malcolm. 1004.| the year of the great invasion of Olaf and Swegen. But his son Malcolm did not obtain quiet possession of the Scottish crown till ten years later. He was now, it would seem, determined to revenge the wrong which he had |[1000.]| suffered at the hands of Æthelred in the devastation of |Malcolm besieges Durham.| Cumberland. He is said to have invaded Northumberland and to have laid siege to Durham. The new seat of the Bernician bishopric^[630] was growing into an important city, and it had already become an important military post. But the government of the country was in feeble hands. |Cowardice of Earl Waltheof.| Waltheof,^[631] the reigning Earl, was old and dispirited, and, instead of meeting the invaders, he shut himself up in |Victory of his son Uhtred.| King Ida’s castle at Bamburgh. But he had a son, Uhtred, whose name we shall often meet in the history of the time, and whose career is a strangely chequered one. When his father failed in his duty, he supplied his place, he gathered an army, rescued Durham, and gained a signal victory over the Scots.^[632] Towards the city which he thus saved Uhtred stood in a relation which we should have looked for rather in the eighteenth than in the tenth century. He was married to a daughter of Ealdhun, the Bishop who had just removed his see to Durham, and in the character of episcopal son-in-law he held large grants of episcopal |He unites both the Northumbrian Earldoms.| lands. Uhtred’s behaviour gained him the special favour of Æthelred, who—doubtless by the authority of one of the Gemóts of this year—deposed Waltheof from his earldom, bestowed it on his son, and also added the earldom of Deira, now vacant by the murder of Ælfhelm.^[633] |His marriages.| Uhtred, thus exalted, seems to have had no further need of episcopal leases; for he sent the Bishop’s daughter back to her father, honestly returning the estates which he had received with her. He then married the daughter of a rich citizen, whom he held by quite another tenure, that of killing her father’s bitter enemy Thurbrand. This he, unluckily for himself, failed to do, and this failure would seem to have set aside the second marriage also, as we presently find him receiving the hand of King Æthelred’s daughter Ælfgifu.^[634] If all this is true—and the genealogical and local detail with which it is given seems to stamp it as true—the ties of marriage must have sat quite as lightly on a Northumbrian Earl as ever they did on a Norman Duke. The tale indeed suggests that even the daughters of Bishops, a class whom we should hardly have expected to find so familiarly spoken of after Dunstan’s reforms, may have been sometimes married Danish fashion. But the fact that an Earl did not disdain the daughter of a rich citizen at once shows the importance which some even of the northern English cities—for either York or Durham must be meant—had already reached, and it also shows that no very broad line as yet separated the different classes of society in such matters. The story again marks the ferocious habits of the Danish parts of England. It seems the most natural thing in the world for a man on his marriage to undertake to kill his father-in-law’s enemy. We shall find that this engagement of Uhtred to kill Thurbrand was the beginning of a long series of crimes, of an hereditary deadly feud, which went on till after the Norman Conquest.

Such was the Scottish inroad and its results. It is wrongly placed, and some of the details may be suspected, but the outline of the story may, I think, be admitted. |Danish invasion of the year 1006.| But of the Danish invasion there is no doubt at all. In the month of July a vast fleet appeared off Sandwich, and Kent and Sussex were ravaged without mercy. Æthelred for once seems to have seriously thought of personal action against the enemy.^[635] He gathered together an army from |An English army raised, but in vain.| Mercia and Wessex, which was kept throughout the whole autumn in readiness for an engagement. But nothing came of this unusual piece of energy. The old causes were still at work, and the enemy, perhaps remembering the reception which they had met with at the hands of Ulfcytel, seem now to have avoided a battle.^[636] They plundered here and there, and went backwards and forwards to their ships, till, as winter approached, the English army dispersed, and the King returned to his old quarters at Shrewsbury. There is a vein of bitter sarcasm in the way in which the tale is told in the Chronicles. The writers keenly felt the incapacity of their rulers, and the degradation of their |The Danes go back to Wight. November, 1006.| country. The Danes went back to their “frith-stool”^[637]—their safe asylum, their inviolable sanctuary—in the Isle of Wight. Presently, at Christmas, when no resistance was likely, they went forth to their “ready farm,” to the quarters which stood awaiting them, as it were to gather in their crops and to enjoy the fat of their own land.^[638] |Great plundering expedition in the winter of 1006–7.| That is to say, they went on a plundering expedition which carried them further from their own element than they had ever yet ventured. They marched across Hampshire to Reading, and thence up the valley of the Thames, “doing according to their wont and kindling their beacons”—that is, no doubt, wasting and burning the whole country. They thus dealt with Reading, with Wallingford, with Cholsey. They were now in the midst of a land where almost every step is ennobled by memories of Ælfred. Out of mere bravado, it would seem, they climbed the neighbouring height, the long ridge of Æscesdún, which looks down on the spot where, |871.| in the great King’s first campaign, victory had for a moment shone on the West-Saxon banners. They marched along the ridge till they reached the vast barrow which, under the corrupted form of Cuckamsley,^[639] still preserves the name of Cwichelm, one of the two West-Saxon |636.| Kings who first submitted to baptism. This was a spot where, in times of peace, the people of that inland shire had held their local assemblies, and some unknown seer had risked the prediction that, if the Danes ever got so far from the sea, they would never see their ships again. The falsehood of the prophecy was now shown. The Danes crossed the range of hills; they marched down on the other side, and went on to the south. At Kennet, now Marlborough, an English force at last met them, but it was speedily put to flight. The Danes then turned homewards. They passed close by the gates of the royal city of Winchester, displaying in triumph to its inhabitants the spoils of the inland shires of Wessex, now become the defenceless prey of the sea-rovers.^[640]

This was the most fearful inroad which England had yet seen, one which showed that the parts furthest from the sea were now no more safe from Danish ravages than the exposed coasts of Kent and Sussex. The King kept |Witenagemót of Shrewsbury. 1006–7.| his Christmas at Shrewsbury, and there the Witan met. All heart and hope seemed to be gone; no one could devise any means of withstanding the force which had now harried every shire in Wessex. Nothing could be thought of but the old device; the broken reed was again to be leaned upon; ambassadors were sent, once more offering |Tribute again paid to the Danes. 1007.| money as the price of the cessation of the ravages. The offer was accepted; but the price was of course again raised; thirty-six thousand pounds was to be paid, and the Danish army was to receive provisions. They were fed during the whole winter at the general cost of England, and early in the next year the sum of money demanded was paid.

We can never speak or think of these wretched attempts to buy peace without a feeling of shame, and yet, in this case at least, the payment may not have been such utter madness as it appears at first sight. Of course nothing more than a respite was ever gained; when the Danes had spent the money, they came again for more. And it would seem, from the example of Ulfcytel, that a respite could be as easily won by a manful, even if not perfectly successful, resistance. Still this payment did gain for the country a breathing-space at a time when a breathing-space was absolutely needed. We hear nothing of any more invasions for two years, and there was at least an attempt made to spend the interval in useful legislation and in putting the country into a more efficient state of defence. Æthelred and his favourites, as usual, spoiled everything; but we need not attribute their cowardice and incapacity to all the Witan of England. As far as we can see, the schemes of the legislature were well considered; a respite was needed in order to devise any scheme at all, and humiliating as it was to buy that respite, such a course may have been absolutely necessary. But in this reign everything was thwarted by executive misconduct. Æthelred first laid on his Witan the necessity of consenting to all this degradation, and he then frustrated their endeavours to make such degradation needless for the future.

Meanwhile the reigning favourite attained the height of his greatness. He was made Ealdorman of the Mercians,^[641] dishonouring the post once held by the glorious daughter of Ælfred. It was most likely at this time that he received the King’s daughter Eadgyth in marriage. We have now to repeat the same comments which we made in the case of Ælfric. That old enemy, after his last treason |1003.| four years before, now vanishes from history, and his place |Inexplicable treasons of Eadric.| as chief traitor is taken by Eadric. The history of Eadric from this moment is simply a catalogue of treasons as unintelligible as those of his predecessor. Why a man who had just risen to the highest pitch of greatness, son-in-law of his sovereign and viceroy of an ancient kingdom, should immediately ally himself with the enemies of his King and country, is one of those facts which are utterly incomprehensible. But that it is a fact there is no good reason to doubt. Our best authorities for this period, the writers nearest to the time, those least given to exaggeration or romantic embellishment, distinctly assert that it was so, and we have nothing but ingenious guesses on the other side.