highest love towards herself, and the most furious desire of revenge against her husband. He knew, however, to dissemble these passions; and seducing Athelwold into a wood, on pretence of hunting, he stabbed him with his own hand, and soon after publicly espoused Elfrida.

The Danish Power.

BURKE.

Edgar had two wives, Elflada and Elfrida; by the first he had a son, called Edward. The second bore him one, called Etheldred. On Edgar's death Edward, in the usual order of succession, was called to the throne; but Elfrida caballed in favour of her son; and finding it impossible to set him up in the life of his brother, she murdered him with her own hands in her castle of Corfe, whither he had retired to refresh himself, wearied with hunting. Etheldred, who by the crimes of his mother ascended a throne sprinkled with his brother's blood, had a part to act, which exceeded the capacity that could be expected in one of his youth and inexperience. The partisans of the secular clergy, who were kept down by the vigour of Edgar's government, thought this a fit time to renew their pretensions. The monks defended themselves in their possession; there was no moderation on either side, and the whole nation joined in these parties. The murder of Edward threw an odious stain on the king, though he was wholly innocent of that crime. There was a general discontent; and every corner was full of murmurs and cabals. In this state of the kingdom it was equally dangerous to exert the fulness of the sovereign authority, or to suffer it to relax. The temper of the king was most inclined to the latter method, which is of all things the worst. A weak government, too easy, suffers evils to grow, which often make the most rigorous and illegal proceedings necessary. Through an extreme lenity it is on some occasions tyrannical.

This was the condition of Etheldred's nobility; who by being permitted everything, were never contented.

Thus all the principal men held a sort of factious and independent authority; they despised the king; they oppressed the people, and they hated one another. The Danes, in every part of England but Wessex as numerous as the English themselves, and in many parts more numerous, were ready to take advantage of these disorders; and waited with impatience some new attempt from abroad, that they might rise in favour of the invaders. They were not long without such an occasion; the Danes pour in almost upon every part at once, and distract the defence which the weak prince was preparing to make.

In those days of wretchedness and ignorance, when all the maritime parts of Europe were attacked by these formidable enemies at once, they never thought of entering into any alliance against them; they equally neglected the other obvious method to prevent their incursions, which was, to carry the war into the invader's country.

What aggravated these calamities, the nobility, mostly disaffected to the king, and entertaining very little regard to their country, made, some of them, a weak and cowardly opposition to the enemy; some actually betrayed their trust; some even were found, who undertook the trade of piracy themselves. It was in this condition, that Edric, Duke of Mercia, a man of some ability, but light, inconstant, and utterly devoid of all principle, proposed to buy a peace from the Danes. The general weakness and consternation disposed the king and the people to take this pernicious advice. At first, 10,000l. was given to the Danes, who retired with this money and the rest of their plunder. The English were now, for the first time, taxed to supply this payment. The imposition was called Danegelt, not more burthensome in the thing, than scandalous in the name. The scheme of purchasing peace not only gave rise to many internal hardships, but, whilst it weakened the kingdom, it inspired such a desire of invading it to the enemy, that Sweyn, king of Denmark, came in person soon after with a prodigious fleet and army. The English, having

once found the method of diverting the storm by an inglorious bargain, could not bear to think of any other way of resistance. A greater sum, 48,000l. was now paid, which the Danes accepted with pleasure, as they could by this means exhaust their enemies and enrich themselves with little danger or trouble. With very short intermissions they still returned, continually increasing their demands. In a few years they extorted upwards of 160,000l. from the English, besides an annual tribute of 48,000l. The country was wholly exhausted both of money and spirit. The Danes in England, under the protection of the foreign Danes, committed a thousand insolences; and so infatuated with stupidity and baseness were the English at this time, that they employed hardly any other soldiers for their defence.

In this state of shame and misery, their sufferings suggested to them a design rather desperate than brave. They resolved on a massacre of the Danes; some authors say, that in one night the whole race was cut off. Many, probably all the military men, were so destroyed. But this massacre, injudicious as it was cruel, was certainly not universal; nor did it serve any other or better end than to exasperate those of the same nation abroad; who the next year landed in England with a powerful army to revenge it, and committed outrages even beyond the usual tenor of the Danish cruelty. There was in England no money left to purchase a peace, nor courage to wage a successful war; and the King of Denmark, Sweyn, a prince of capacity, at the head of a large body of brave and enterprising men, soon mastered the whole kingdom, except London. Etheldred, abandoned by fortune and his subjects, was forced to fly into Normandy.

As there was no good order in the English affairs, though continually alarmed, they were always surprised; they were only roused to arms by the cruelty of the enemy; and they were only formed into a body bybeing driven from their homes; so that they never made a resistance until they seemed to be entirely conquered. This may serve to account for the frequent sudden reductions of the island, and the frequent renewals of their fortune when it seemed the most desperate. Sweyn, in the midst of his

victories, dies; and, though succeeded by his son Canute, who inherited his father's resolution their affairs were thrown into some disorder by this accident. The English were encouraged by it. Etheldred was recalled, and the Danes retired out of the kingdom; but it was only to return the next year with a greater and better appointed force. Nothing seemed able to oppose them. The king dies. A great part of the land was surrendered, without resistance, to Canute. Edmund, the eldest son of Etheldred, supported, however, the declining hopes of the English for some time; in three months he fought three victorious battles; he attempted a fourth, but lost it by the base desertion of Edric, the principal cause of all these troubles. It is common with the

conquered side to attribute all their misfortunes to the treachery of their own party. They choose to be thought subdued by the treachery of their friends, rather than the superior bravery of their enemies. All the old historians talk in this strain; and it must be acknowledged, that all adherents to a declining party have many temptations to infidelity.

Edmund, defeated but not discouraged, retreated to the Severn, where he recruited his forces. Canute followed at his heels. And now the two armies were drawn up, which were to decide the fate of England; when it was proposed to determine the war by single combat between the two kings. Neither was unwilling; the Isle of Alney, in the Severn, was chosen for the lists; Edmund had the advantage by the greatness of his strength, Canute by his address; for when Edmund had so far prevailed as to disarm him, he proposed a parley; in which he persuaded Edmund to a peace, and to a division of the kingdom. Their armies accepted the agreement; and both kings departed in a seeming friendship. But Edmund died soon after, with a probable suspicion of being murdered by the instruments of his associate in the empire.

Canute on this event assembled the states of the kingdom, by whom he was acknowledged King of England. He was a prince truly great; for having acquired the kingdom by his valour, he maintained and improved it by his justice and clemency. Choosing rather to rule by the inclination of his subjects than the

right of conquest, he dismissed his Danish army, and committed his safety to the laws. He re-established the order and tranquillity which so long a series of bloody wars had banished. He revived the ancient statutes of the Saxon princes; and governed through his whole reign with such steadiness and moderation, that the English were much happier under this foreign prince than they had been under their natural kings. Canute, though the beginning of his reign was stained with those marks of violence and injustice which attend conquest, was remarkable in his latter end for his piety. According to the mode of that time, he made a pilgrimage to Rome, with a view to expiate the crimes which paved his way to the throne; but he made a good use of this peregrination, and returned full of the observations he had made in the country through which he passed, which he turned to the benefit of his extensive dominions. They comprehended England, Denmark, Norway, and many of the countries which lie upon the Baltic. Those he left, established in peace and security, to his children. The fate of his northern possessions is not of this place. England fell to his son Harold, though not without much competition in favour of the sons of Edmund Ironside; while some contended for the right of the sons of Etheldred, Alfred and Edward. Harold inherited none of the virtues of Canute; he banished his mother Emma, murdered his halfbrother Alfred, and died without issue, after a short reign full of violence, weakness, and cruelty.

His brother Hardicanute, who succeeded him, resembled him in his character; he committed new cruelties and injustices in revenging those which his brother had committed, and he died after a yet shorter reign. The Danish power, established with so much blood, expired of itself; and Edward, the only surviving son of Etheldred, then an exile in Normandy, was called to the throne by the unanimous voice of the kingdom.