Instead of making a desperate attempt to drive them off, the
king bribed them to depart with 10,000 pounds of silver, accepting
it is said this cowardly advice from archbishop Sigeric.
The fatal precedent soon bore fruit: the invaders came back
in larger numbers, headed by Olaf Tryggveson, the celebrated
adventurer who afterwards made himself king of Norway, and
who was already a pretender to its throne. He was helped by
Sweyn, king of Denmark, and the two together laid siege to
London in 994, but were beaten off by the citizens. Nevertheless
Æthelred for a second time stooped to pay tribute, and bought
the departure of Dane and Norwegian with 16,000 pounds of
silver. There was a precarious interval of peace for three years
after, but in 997 began a series of invasions led by Sweyn which
lasted for seventeen years, and at last ended in the complete
subjection of England and the flight of Æthelred to Normandy.
It should be noted that the invader during this period was no
mere adventurer, but king of all Denmark, and, after Olaf
Tryggveson’s death in 1000, king of Norway also. His power
was something far greater than that of the Guthrums and
Anlafs of an earlier generation, and—in the end of his life at
least—he was aiming at political conquest, and not either at
mere plunder or at finding new settlements for his followers.
But if the strength of the invader was greater than that of his
predecessors, Æthelred also was far better equipped for war
than his ancestors of the 9th century. He owned, and he sometimes
used—but always to little profit—a large fleet, while all
England instead of the mere realm of Wessex was at his back.
Any one of the great princes of the house of Egbert who had
reigned from 871 to 975, would have fought a winning fight with
such resources, and it took nearly twenty years of Æthelred’s
tried incapacity to lose the game. He did, however, succeed
in undoing all the work of his ancestors, partly by his own
slackness and sloth, partly by his choice of corrupt and treacherous
ministers. For the two ealdormen whom he delighted to
honour and placed at the head of his armies, Ælfric and Eadric
Streona, are accused, the one of persistent cowardice, the other
of underhand intrigue with the Danes. Some of the local magnates
made a desperate defence of their own regions, especially
Ulfkytel of East Anglia, a Dane by descent; but the central
government was at fault. Æthelred’s army was always at the
wrong place—“if the enemy were east then was the fyrd held west,
and if they were north then was our force held south.” When
Æthelred did appear it was more often to pay a bribe to the
invaders than to fight. Indeed the Danegeld, the tax which he
raised to furnish tribute to the invaders, became a regular
institution: on six occasions at least Æthelred bought a few
months of peace by sums ranging from 10,000 to 48,000 pounds
of silver.
At last in the winter of 1013–1014, more as it would seem from sheer disgust at their king’s cowardice and incompetence than because further resistance was impossible, the English gave up the struggle and acknowledged Sweyn as king. First Northumbria, then Wessex, then London yielded, and Canute. Æthelred was forced to fly over seas to Richard, duke of Normandy, whose sister he had married as his second wife. But Sweyn survived his triumph little over a month; he died suddenly at Gainsborough on the 3rd of February 1014. The Danes hailed his son Canute, a lad of eighteen, as king, but many of the English, though they had submitted to a hard-handed conqueror like Sweyn, were not prepared to be handed over like slaves to his untried successor. There was a general rising, the old king was brought over from Normandy, and Canute was driven out for a moment by force of arms. He returned next year with a greater army to hear soon after of Æthelred’s death (1016). The witan chose Edmund “Ironside,” the late king’s eldest son, to succeed him, and as he was a hard-fighting prince of that normal type of his house to which his father had been such a disgraceful exception, it seemed probable that the Danes might be beaten off. But Æthelred’s favourite Eadric Streona adhered to Canute, fearing to lose the office and power that he had enjoyed for so long under Æthelred, and prevailed on the magnates of part of Wessex and Mercia to follow his example. For a moment the curious phenomenon was seen of Canute reigning in Wessex, while Edmund was making head against him with the aid of the Anglo-Danes of the “Five Boroughs” and Northumbria. There followed a year of desperate struggle: the two young kings fought five pitched battles, fortune seemed to favour Edmund, and the traitor Eadric submitted to him with all Wessex. But the last engagement, at Assandun (Ashingdon) in Essex went against the English, mainly because Eadric again betrayed the national cause and deserted to the enemy.
Edmund was so hard hit by this last disaster that he offered to divide the realm with Canute; they met on the isle of Alney near Gloucester, and agreed that the son of Æthelred should keep Wessex and all the South, London and East Anglia, while the Dane should have Northumbria, the “five boroughs” and Eadric’s Mercian earldom. But ere the year was out Edmund died: secretly murdered, according to some authorities, by the infamous Eadric. The witan of Wessex made no attempt to set on the throne either one of the younger sons of Æthelred by his Norman wife, or the infant heir of Edmund, but chose Canute as king, preferring to reunite England by submission to the stranger rather than to continue the disastrous war.
They were wise in so doing, though their motive may have been despair rather than long-sighted policy. Canute became more of an Englishman than a Dane: he spent more of his time in his island realm than in his native Denmark. He paid off and sent home the great army with whose aid he had won the English crown, retaining only a small bodyguard of “house-carls” and trusting to the loyalty of his new subjects. There was no confiscation of lands for the benefit of intrusive Danish settlers. On the contrary Canute had more English than Danish courtiers and ministers about his person, and sent many Englishmen as bishops and some even as royal officers to Denmark. It is strange to find that—whether from policy or from affection—he married King Æthelred’s young widow Emma of Normandy, though she was somewhat older than himself—so that his son King Harthacnut and that son’s successor Edward the Confessor, the heir of the line of Wessex, were half-brothers. It might have been thought likely that the son of the pagan Sweyn would have turned out a mere hard-fighting viking. But Canute developed into a great administrator and a friend of learning and culture. Occasionally he committed a harsh and tyrannical act. Though he need not be blamed for making a prompt end of the traitor Eadric Streona and of Uhtred, the turbulent earl of Northumbria, at the commencement of his reign, there are other and less justifiable deeds of blood to be laid to his account. But they were but few; for the most part his administration was just and wise as well as strong and intelligent.
As long as he lived England was the centre of a great Northern empire, for Canute reconquered Norway, which had lapsed into independence after his father’s death, and extended his power into the Baltic. Moreover, all the so-called Scandinavian colonists in the Northern Isles and Ireland owned him as overlord. So did the Scottish king Malcolm, and the princes of Wales and Strathclyde. The one weak point in his policy that can be detected is that he left in the hands of Malcolm the Bernician district of Lothian, which the Scot had conquered during the anarchy that followed the death of Æthelred. The battle of Carham (1018) had given this land to the Scots, and Canute consented to draw the border line of England at the Tweed instead of at the Firth of Forth, when Malcolm did him homage. Strangely enough it was this cession of a Northumbrian earldom to the Northern king that ultimately made Scotland an English-speaking country. For the Scottish kings, deserting their native Highlands, took to dwelling at Edinburgh among their new subjects, and first the court and afterwards the whole of their Lowland subjects were gradually assimilated to the Northumbrian nucleus which formed both the most fertile and the most civilized portion of their enlarged realm.
The fact, that England recovered with marvellous rapidity from the evil effects of Æthelred’s disastrous reign, and achieved great wealth and prosperity under Canute, would seem to show that the ravages of Sweyn, widespread and ruthless though they
