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 had an understanding with Sweyn, and arrived with fifty ships at Greenwich. He plundered great part of the south of England, extorted heavy sums by way of ransom, captured Canterbury, thanks to the treachery of Elfinar, sacked that city, and murdered Archbishop Alphege at a drunken orgie on Easter Saturday, 1012. Meanwhile London was ineffectually attacked, and Oxford was burnt. Ethelred could do nothing. He was tired of buying off invaders. He hired Thurcytel, and forty-five of his ships, to assist in the protection of the kingdom. Sweyn came once more, in 1013, accompanied by his son Canute, and landed at Sandwich. Thence he went to the mouth of the Humber, and thence along the Trent as far as Gainsborough. Northern England submitted to him; and when he had horsed his army he marched southward, leaving his prisoners and his ships under the care of Canute. London was attacked, but Thurcytel contributed to the defence; and Ethelred was able to repulse the Danes, who thereupon turned their attention to the reduction of the West of England, which quickly acknowledged Sweyn as king. This defection decided the wretched Ethelred to abandon his country. Once more Thurcytel proved useful, for they were his ships that escorted the unfortunate monarch to Normandy; but Thurcytel's fidelity was only hired, and, three years later, the soldier of fortune was fighting for Sweyn's son Canute against Ethelred's son Edmund Ironside. He died Regent of Denmark.

Canute succeeded his father in 1014. At the news of the old king's death Ethelred returned, with Edmund Ironside, and was acclaimed by the Saxon portion of the people, who declared "that no lord was dearer to them than their natural lord, if he would rule them rightlier than he had before done." Ethelred made promises freely, and entered into a kind of compact with his subjects, the first of the kind on record in English history. One of the first things he did, however, was to levy £21,000 for the army, with which he marched against Canute, who was at Lindsey, and who retired in his ships to Sandwich, where, after mutilating them by cutting off their hands, ears, and noses, he landed the hostages who had been entrusted to his father Sweyn. With Sandwich as his