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Rh advised Aethelred to offer a still larger ransom, this time no less than £48,000. It proved difficult, however, to raise so great a tribute. The disappointed vikings therefore went on ravaging, and a little later betook themselves to Kent, where they sacked Canterbury, owing to treachery on the part of the abbot of St Augustine's, and captured the Archbishop, Aelfheah (Alphege). For some months they held the primate to ransom, only to murder him in a drunken riot at Greenwich early in 1012. When at last the tribute was got together, the Danish forces broke up and some went back to Denmark; but Thorkil himself with a fleet of forty-five ships remained in England and took service with Aethelred. The plan of setting a thief to catch a thief was evidently to be tried again; but it met with no more success than in the case of Pallig, for the news, that Thorkil was obtaining power in England, immediately brought his overlord Svein upon the scene, bent upon conquering the whole country and outshining his lieutenant.

The plan of attack in 1013 was quite different to the methods hitherto adopted. Instead of raiding Wessex or East Anglia, Svein directed his fleet to the Humber, evidently counting on a friendly reception from the men of the Danelaw. Nor was he disappointed. As soon as he landed with his son Knut at Gainsborough on the Trent, Uhtred, a son of Waltheof of Bamborough, who had distinguished himself against the Scots and become jarl of the Yorkshire Danes, offered him his allegiance, and shortly afterwards all the men of the Five Boroughs submitted and gave him hostages. A good base being thus secured, where he could leave his ships in his son's guardianship, he next marched through Leicestershire across the Watling Street into Eadric's dukedom and so south to Oxford and Winchester. Both these boroughs submitted as soon as he appeared, and it was not till he turned eastwards to London, where Aethelred lay with Thorkil, that we hear of any resistance. There was a fight, it would seem, for the possession of London Bridge in which Svein's men were unsuccessful. Checked for the moment in the east, and uncertain how best to deal with Thorkil, Svein next proceeded to Bath to secure control of Western Wessex. A hundred and forty years before this district had been the scene of Alfred's heroic defence, but its old spirit had long departed. In a few days it submitted, after which we are told "all the people held Svein for full king." These sweeping desertions made Aethelred realise that England as a whole was resolved not to fight for him, and that Thorkil's forces were hardly likely for long to save him from Svein's vengeance. He accordingly took ship and sought a refuge in Normandy at the court of Duke Richard the Good, the brother of his second wife Emma, whom he had married eleven years before on the very eve of the fateful massacre of 1002.

Svein's triumph, complete as it seemed, was destined to be only momentary. He retired to his base on the Trent to keep the Yule-tide feast with his son Knut, and had the satisfaction of receiving hostages