Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/423

 pulous. William of Malmesbury represents Eadric as taking a leading part in the massacre of the Danes in 1002, a story that may at once be dismissed as resting solely on his assertion (Gesta Regum, ii. 177). Eadric first appears in a chronicle in 1006, when it is said that he invited Ælfhelm, earl of Northumbria, to be his guest at Shrewsbury, entertained him two or three days, and then went hunting with him, and that when the earl was separated from the rest of the party, he caused the town executioner (or a butcher? carnifex) named Porthund to slay him. This incident is told only by Florence, who is scarcely so safe an authority for the eleventh century as for earlier times; it sounds legendary, and it is difficult to see how it was that Eadric was entertaining guests at Shrewsbury; he was not yet ealdorman of the Mercians (Norman Conquest, i. 356). He was made ealdorman of the Mercians in 1007, and by 1009 had married Eadgyth, one of the daughters of King Æthelred; the two events are of course to be connected. It was then due to the personal liking the king had for him that this man of mean birth was thus raised to a position of wealth and power which made him almost an independent prince in middle England. He was endued with a crafty wit and a persuasive tongue It is not unlikely that he rose by the downfall of a thegn named Wulfgeat, who seems to have been his predecessor in the royal favour (Norman Conquest, i. 355).

Eadric's six brothers to some extent shared his elevation. One of them, named Brihtric, described by Florence as deceitful, ambitious, and proud, had a quarrel with Wulfnoth, child of the South-Saxons, which caused the dispersion of the great fleet raised against the Danes in 1008. While Florence represents Brihtric as wholly to blame in the matter, the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,’ though it passes no judgment on either of the disputants, makes it evident that Wulfnoth was by no means a man whose innocence is to be lightly assumed. After the dispersion of the English fleet Thurkill's army, which had now taken up its permanent quarters in the Isle of Wight, plundered the southern shires at its will. At last Æthelred gathered an army and got between the Danes and their ships. The people were ready to fight, but Eadric prevented them ‘as it ever yet had been’ (A.-S. Chron. 1009). Florence improves on the simple words of the ‘Chronicle,’ and dwells on the artifices and eloquence with which the ealdorman used to restrain the army from attacking the enemy. It is evident that the chronicler considered that Eadric acted treacherously. His treachery on this and similar occasions was probably of a special kind. As a Mercian, and as ealdorman of the Mercians, he would not be disturbed by any ravages the Danes might make in Wessex. His great aim must have been to keep them out of Mercia, and he may well have considered that this would be best accomplished by abstaining from exciting their feelings of revenge by inflicting a defeat upon them, which, however signal, would certainly not have put an end to their invasions. In 1011, during a short period of peace with the Danes, which was obtained by a heavy payment, Eadric made an expedition into South Wales, and desolated St. David's (Brut y Tywysogion, 1011; Annales Menevenses, 1011). This expedition was no doubt undertaken to secure the Mercian border against attack, for the success of the Danes must have tempted the Welsh to make forays. Osbern, in relating the sack of Canterbury by the Danes in the September of this year, represents Eadric as allied with Thurkill, and as joining in the siege of the city. This story may safely be rejected as fabulous (Anglia Sacra, ii. 132; Norman Conquest, i. 385). Nor is any importance to be attached to the assertion of the St. Albans compiler that he accompanied Æthelred in his flight from England in 1013 (, i. 448). At the meeting of the ‘witan’ in Oxford in 1015, Eadric invited Sigeferth and Morkere, the chief thegns of the Danish confederacy of the ‘Seven Boroughs,’ into his chamber, and there had them treacherously slain (A.-S. Chron.;, and later writers); the story told by William of Malmesbury (Gesta Regum, ii. 179) of the burning of the thegns' followers in the tower of St. Frideswide's is due to a confusion between this incident and an actual occurrence which took place during the massacre of 1002 (, 146, 154). The guilt of the assassination must rest on others as well as Eadric; the king evidently approved of it, and it is probable that the ‘witan’ did so. We do not know whether the thegns were held to be concerned in any conspiracy; if so, there was nothing strange in their punishment by what we should consider an act of private violence rather than by a judicial execution. At the same time Eadric's treachery, and his disregard of the obligations of hospitality, evidently shocked the feelings of the age. The marriage of the ætheling Eadmund with the widow of Sigeferth, and the establishment of his power in the Danish district, must have been regarded with jealousy by Eadric as likely to weaken his own position, and this feeling may perhaps explain some parts of the ealdorman's conduct,