The Invasions of England

by Edward Foord; Gordon Home

Sweyn himself lived only a few weeks, fortunately for England, for he was little more than a savage pirate leader. His army, and the English who were with it, elected as king his son Cnut, but the Witan of Wessex and Mercia sent to Aethelred—so hard to quench was English loyalty!—‘saying that no lord was dearer to them than their natural lord, if he would govern them better than he did before.’ So at Lent Aethelred came home ‘to his own people,’ and for once acted with vigour. He promptly marched against Cnut, who was at Gainsborough, caught him unprepared, and forced him to fly out to sea. He touched at Sandwich, and in his rage and disappointment committed the worst of the comparatively few crimes that stain his memory. He cut off the noses, hands, and ears of his hostages, put them ashore, and sailed away to Denmark.

For about a year England was free from invaders, but not from faction-strife. Money was needed for Thorkil’s mercenary fleet—21,000 pounds of silver. Eadric Streona murdered his personal foes without hindrance. Finally, the Kings gallant son, Eadmund, sick of the endless disorder, took up a position of open hostility to his wretched father. Aethelred was already sickening to death, and when Cnut appeared again at Sandwich in the autumn the army raised to fight him broke up owing to the treachery of Streona, who deserted to Cnut, with Jarl Thorkil and his mercenaries. Wessex submitted to the Danes once more. Aethelred was carried to faithful London; Eadmund retreated northward. There he rallied the Anglo-Danish levies to punish Eadric, and early next year attacked West Mercia; but Cnut marched northward through the Danelaw upon York, and the Northumbrians, under Earl Uhtred, hurried back to defend their homes. Uhtred found the situation so hopeless that he submitted ‘for need,’ as the Chronicle pathetically says. But his submission was merely the signal for his murder—by the advice of Eadric, of course. Eadmund took refuge in London with the remains of his army, and Cnut, leaving Jarl Eric Haakonson in charge of Northumbria, prepared to follow him. Eadmund appears to have reached the faithful city early in April, and on the 16th the wretched Aethelred died.

The once mighty English Empire was now restricted to the walls of London, but Eadmund II. made a splendid effort to recover it. Before ending this most wearisome and gloomy chapter of this story of invasion it is pleasant to chronicle one heroic attempt. Like Poland in the eighteenth century, the kingdom of Alfred was at least to die with honour.

Eadmund stayed only a few days in London. Its gallant inhabitants could be trusted to do their duty to the last, and the landless king sallied forth to rally adherents to his scanty following. Scarcely had he left London when Cnut beleaguered it. Being unable to force the bridge, he opened a passage for his ships round the fortifications of Southwark, probably by largely utilizing the watercourses in the marsh. The popular impression that Cnut had with him a corps of engineers capable of carrying out such a formidable undertaking as that of excavating a ship canal something near a mile in length is certainly erroneous. It must be remembered that until quite modern times South London was liable to be flooded at every high tide, and it is more than probable that the only pioneering work imposed upon the Danish warriors consisted in making short cuts from one reed-grown watercourse to another, and in clearing a fairway. Cnut thus brought his lighter vessels above the bridge and completed the blockade; but the citizens held out stoutly, hoping for relief from Eadmund.

The King had reached Wessex safely, and the men of his dynasty’s homeland soon began to rally to his banner. In June he was able to take the field and defeat a Danish force at Penselwood. Cnut sent off in haste an Anglo-Danish army under Thorkil and the traitor Eadric, but Eadmund defeated them at Sherston, and marched for London. He burst through Cnut’s lines into the city and broke up the siege. Cnut collected his forces on the south bank of the Thames, but Eadmund, two days later, slipped away up the river and forced a passage at Brentford. The Danes, however, though beaten, were not routed, and the English lost many men by drowning—apparently because they had scattered to plunder. The Danes still threatened London, but Eadmund’s victories were attracting to him large reinforcements, and he was soon so strong that Cnut finally abandoned the siege and retreated to the mouth of the Orwell. Having collected provisions by systematic ravage, he transferred his base of operations to the Medway; but Eadmund, who was north of London, promptly crossed the Thames at Brentford and met him at Otford. For the fifth time he gained the day, and Cnut was driven back into Sheppey.

THE FINAL STRUGGLE BETWEEN EADMUND II. AND CNUT ROUND LONDON.

At this moment the double traitor Eadric deserted Cnut, and made his peace with the far too magnanimous Eadmund, apparently because he brought with him his Magesaetan (Hereford and Shropshire) levies, which had hitherto been aiding Cnut. The indefatigable Danish king, however, did not give up the game. He once more transferred his army into Essex, and when Eadmund advanced against him he stood to fight at Assandune (Ashington). He may have counted upon Eadric’s treachery; it seems impossible that the abominable desertion that followed had not been concerted. In the heat of the battle the traitor left the line and ‘began the flight with the Magesaetas, and so betrayed his true lord and all the people of England.’ The result was fearful disaster. The whole English army was broken and destroyed; ‘all the nobility of the English race was there undone.’ Eadmund, undaunted still, retreated to Gloucestershire, and set to work to collect another army. But he must have been almost in despair, and it was well for him that the Danes were also wearied out and ready to come to terms. On the Isle of Alney, near Deerhurst, the kings met and concluded a treaty, by which the gallant English leader saved a part of his shattered realm, to be, as he might hope, a base for the future recovery of the whole. He kept Wessex, East Anglia, and West Mercia, while Cnut took Northumbria and the old Mercian ‘Danelaw.’

The reconquest to which Eadmund must have looked forward was not to be. On November 30 the brave King died at Oxford. Cnut at once put forward his claim to be his successor, and was accepted by the Witan without opposition. It must have been general exhaustion and despair, as well as lack of leaders, that impelled the decision. Cnut proved an able and successful ruler, and identified himself thoroughly with the nation which had accepted him under compulsion.

The deduction to be made from the melancholy story of the Danish Conquest is obviously that national unity was still lacking in England. Neither was patriotism other than a local feeling. So far as can be seen, the peasantry simply followed the magnates, and these latter, with some honourable exceptions, were clearly, as a class, worthless. A ‘redeless’ king was betrayed by contemptible and treacherous advisers and nobles, and the ill-compacted people, without national sentiment, and with no means of expressing its opinion, was unable then to redeem the blunders and cowardice of its nominal leaders.