Hitherto the Danes had wanted cavalry, on account of the difficulty of transporting horses from Denmark; but as soon as they were in possession of East Anglia, which abounded with horses, they mounted part of their troops, and by that means extended their conquests. Shortly after, they subdued Essex, Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Northamptonshire, Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, Wiltshire, and Devonshire, whilst Ethelred, who had scarce anything left, kept himself shut up in London, not daring to take the field and stop their progress. In all the above-named counties, London and Canterbury were the only places in the king's power. But at length the last was attacked so vigorously that it was captured, plundered, and reduced to ashes; and Alphege, the archbishop, being taken prisoner, was afterwards murdered by these barbarians at Greenwich, to which place, the station of their ships, they had brought him.

In the old church of Greenwich, on the top of the partition wall between the nave and the chancel, was formerly the following inscription: "This church was erected and dedicated to the glory of God, and the memory of St. Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury, here slain by the Danes, because he would not ransom his life by an unreasonable sum of money, An. 1012." He was first buried at St. Paul's in London, and afterwards removed to Canterbury. He was honoured as a martyr, and stands in the Roman Martyrology on the 19th of April. The money, £8,000, being paid, the greater part of the Danish fleet dispersed.

In 1013, however, Sweyn returned, and proceeded to conquer the whole of England. He began from the north-east, and soon the Danish settlements had submitted to him, and their example was followed by all the English to the north of Watling Street. Mercia was forced to yield after it had been cruelly ravaged, and then the Danish warrior took Oxford and Winchester, the chief towns of the old kingdom of Wessex. Leaving his son Canute with the fleet, he on a sudden laid siege to London, where Ethelred was shut up. Though he was but ill provided with necessaries to besiege in form a place of such importance, he imagined the citizens would be terrified at his menaces; but finding they were not moved by them he desisted from his enterprise, and passed on and ravaged the western parts of Wessex, where he found no opposition to his arms. However, as he could not be satisfied whilst London was out of his power, he resolved to besiege it once more; but whilst he was preparing for the siege with greater precaution than before, he had information of Ethelred's departure from thence. This worthless prince, ever dreading to fall into the hands of an enemy he had so cruelly injured, and perceiving himself unsafe in England, retired into Normandy with all his family, upon which the Londoners resolved to submit to the King of Denmark, to whom all the rest of the kingdom was now subject; and now Sweyn was looked upon as King of England without any opposition, no one in the kingdom daring to dispute his title.

It does not appear that Sweyn was ever crowned. His first act of sovereignty was to levy a heavy tax to pay his Danish troops, by whose assistance he had conquered England. But at any rate his reign was exceedingly brief, for he died in 1014. Some writers say that he was poisoned, others that he died of a cold, while a third set declare that he was killed by the apparition of St. Edmund, formerly King of East Anglia, armed with a lance, in order to save the town and monastery in which his canonised bones lay from being plundered by the invaders. This is only a legendary version of what was probably a fact, that shortly before his death Sweyn had contemplated an attack on the town of Bury St. Edmunds.

MARTYRDOM OF ALPHEGE. (See p. [60.])

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On the death of Sweyn, Canute, his son, was proclaimed king; but their common danger had given something like energy and combination to the councils of the English. They recalled Ethelred from his exile in Normandy, and pledged themselves to support him on the throne against the Danes, whose government was arbitrary, cruel, and oppressive.

Ethelred at first was unwilling to trust to their promises, being apprehensive of a design to deliver him into the hands of his enemies; but being encouraged by the reception met with by his son, whom he had sent before to sound the people's inclinations, he returned to England, and was welcomed with every demonstration of joy; and his subjects swore allegiance to him again, as if he had begun a new reign, his flight being considered as a sort of abdication of the crown. He, on his part, promised to reform whatever was amiss; and the eagerness of the English to throw off a foreign yoke, made them flock to the king with such zeal and haste that he soon found himself at the head of a powerful army. His first expedition plainly showed his misfortunes had made no alteration in him; for instead of marching against the Danes, he employed his forces to be revenged on the men of Lindsey—one of the three divisions of Lincolnshire; the other two being named Holland and Kesteven. The inhabitants of the first-named division, it appeared, had provided the Danes with horses, and had also offered to join them. After Ethelred had punished these traitors, he prepared to march and fight the enemy, who little expected so sudden a revolution. Although Canute was undoubtedly a great prince, and had the same forces his father Sweyn had conquered England with, he did not think fit to hazard a battle; but, on the contrary, before Ethelred was advanced near enough to oblige him to fight, he led his troops to the sea-side, and embarking them, set sail for Denmark. Before his departure, he ordered the hands, noses, and ears of the hostages he had in his power to be cut off, leaving them thus mangled on the shore.

As soon as Ethelred found himself freed from the Danes, he took no heed of his promise to his subjects, but on the contrary resumed his old maxims, and imposed, on various pretences, excessive taxes, which raised much murmuring among the nobles and people. To these causes for public discontent he added others of a more private nature, which destroyed all the hopes entertained of his amendment. Morkar and Sifforth, the chief men of the five Danish boroughs, were sacrificed to his avarice. To draw these two earls into his power, the king convened the Witena-gemot at Oxford, where he caused them to be murdered, and then seized their estates, as if they had been condemned by the common forms of justice. Algitha, widow of Sifforth, was shut up in a monastery, to which circumstance she was indebted for her later good fortune; for Edmund, the king's eldest son, passing that way some time after, was desirous to see one so renowned for her beauty, and fell so desperately in love with her, that he married her even against his father's consent.