Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 18.djvu/37

 year Swend attacked East Anglia, burnt Norwich and Thetford, but met with a gallant resistance from the ealdorman Ulfcytel, the husband of one of the king's daughters. In 1005 there was a famine, so the fleet sailed back for a while to Denmark. During these years of misery nothing is known of Æthelred save that he made some grants to monasteries and to his thegns. Early the next year, however, one of those domestic revolutions took place which expose the thoroughly bad state of his court. For some years a thegn named Wulfgeat had stood far higher than any one else in the king's favour and had enjoyed considerable power of oppression (Wulfgeat appears in 987, Codex Dipl. p. 658). All his possessions were now confiscated, probably by the sentence of the witan, as a punishment for the unjust judgments he had given, and because he had abetted the king's enemies. Moreover, while Æthelred was at Shrewsbury, where he seems to have been holding his court, Ælfhelm, the earl of part of Northumbria, evidently of Deira (Yorkshire), was treacherously slain, under circumstances that, as far as we know them [see under EADRIC, STREONA], point to the king as the instigator of the deed. Shortly afterwards Ælfhelm's two sons were blinded by Æthelred's orders. It is probable that the murder of Ælfhelm, and possible that the treason of Wulfgeat, may in some way have been connected with a raid of Malcolm, king of Scots, that took place at this time; it was checked by Uhtred, son of Earl Waltheof, and the king made him earl over both the Northumbrian earldoms, and soon after gave him his daughter Ælfgifu to wife. The fall of Wulfgeat made way for the rise of another unworthy favourite, Eadric, called Streona [q. v.], whom the king shortly afterwards made ealdorman of the Mercians, and who married another of Æthelred's daughters. Later in the year the ‘great fleet’ came back again from Denmark, and the ravages began again. Æthelred made another attempt to withstand the invaders, and called out the levies of Wessex and Mercia. All harvest-time they were under arms, but no good came of it; the Danes marched, plundered, and destroyed as they would, and then retired to their ‘frith-stool,’ the Isle of Wight. About midwinter they began their work of destruction afresh, and Æthelred held a meeting of the witan to consult how the land might be saved from utter ruin. It was again decided to purchase peace, and this time the sum that was wrung from the people to buy off the invaders was 36,000l. After receiving this enormous sum the Danes left the land in peace for about two years.

The year 1008 is the date of a series of laws put forth by Æthelred with the counsel of the witan (Ancient Laws, p. 129). They contain several good resolutions, repeat some older enactments, deal with ecclesiastical as well as secular matters, and forcibly express a sense of the pressing need of patriotic unity. Provision was made for national defence; a fleet was to be raised and to assemble each year after Easter, and desertion from the land-force was to be punished by a fine of 120s. (a re-enactment of Ine's law of ‘fyrd-wite’), and when the king was in the field the life and property of the deserter were to be at his mercy. The laws published at a witenagemot held at Enham (ib. p. 133) seem to belong to about the same date, and are of much the same character. Probably by mere chance, they do not mention the presence and action of the king. The fleet was raised by an assessment on every shire, inland as well as on the coast. The hundred was taken as the basis of the assessment, which was in ships and armour, not in money. Every three hundred hides furnished a ship, every ten a boat, every eight a helmet and breastplate (, Saxon Chron. pp. 336, 337; Constitutional Hist. i. 105; on the difficulties as regards the assessment, see also Norman Conquest, i. 368; it does not seem clear why it should be supposed that any part of the levy affected private landowners, except as contributors to the quota of their shire). Æthelred's assessment was quoted by St. John and Lyttelton acting for the crown in Hampden's case in 1637 (Tryal of John Hambden, pp. 53, 91). The fleet met at Sandwich about Easter 1009, and Æthelred himself went abroad. An accusation was brought against Wulfnoth, the ‘Child’ of the South-Saxons; he sailed off with twenty ships and began plundering the coast. Æthelred sent his accuser, Brihtric, a brother of Eadric Streona, after him with eighty ships. Some of Brihtric's ships were wrecked and others were burnt by Wulfnoth. When the king heard this he went home, each crew took its ship to London, and the great effort that had been made came to nothing. Then a fleet came over under the jarl Thurcytel (or Thurkill), and soon after another under two other leaders; Canterbury and Kent purchased peace, and the Danes sailed to the Isle of Wight and thence devastated the southern shires. Æthelred now ordered ‘the whole nation’ to be called out; he took the command of a large army, and he and his people are said to have been prepared to conquer or die Once he intercepted the enemy, but no attack was made, owing, it is said, to the bad advice of Eadric.