cathedral and collegiate churches, and were often married, despite the feeling which had gradually grown up in the Western Church, that the clergy ought not to marry. There is said to have been much ignorance and vice among the seculars. The objects that those who desired a religious reform set before themselves were to restore the monasteries, to introduce a stricter rule of monastic life, and, as far as possible, to get the cathedral and other great churches into the hands of monks, whom they liked better than secular clergymen, married or unmarried. Dunstan, who had himself reformed his Abbey, and made it famous as a school, sympathized with the monks' party, though he was more moderate and cautious than many of its supporters. Edwy's marriage was another cause of strife. It appears that his wife Elfgifu (in Latin Elgiva) was related to him within one of the numerous degrees then forbidden by the ecclesiastical law of marriage, and that the monastic party therefore refused to consider her as the King's wife. Edwy, who was apparently in the hands of the party opposed to the monks, seems from the first to have behaved unwisely, quarrelling almost at the outset of his reign with Dunstan, and driving him out of the country. Whether by his treatment of Dunstan, his marriage, or his government in general, the King gave offence, and in 957 all England north of Thames revolted, choosing Edwy's brother Edgar for its King. The next year Archbishop Oda prevailed on Edwy divorce Ælfgifu. There is a story, which happily rests on no good authority, that Oda had her branded in the face and banished, and that when she ventured to come back, she was seized at Gloucester, and put to a cruel death. Nothing is really known of her end; as for Edwy, he died in 959.

5. Eadgar or Edgar, surnamed the Peaceful, 959-975.-Edwy's brother King Edgar, a youth of sixteen, was now chosen King over the whole

nation" West-Saxons, Mercians, and Northumbrians." His reign proved peaceable and prosperous, and by maintaining a strong fleet, he kept the country from invasion. Dunstan, now Archbishop of Canterbury, was his counsellor; and, though in many churches secular priests were turned out to make way for monks, Dunstan was too much a statesman to take a violent part in the movement. Thirteen years after his accession to the throne, Edgar was crowned with great solemnity at Bath in 973. He then sailed with his fleet to Chester, where some six or eight of his vassal Kings with their fleets came and swore to do him faithful service by land and sea. Tradition adds that, in token of their submission, they rowed Edgar, who himself acted as steersman, in a boat on the Dee, from his palace at Chester to the Church of St. John and back. There is another tradition that Edgar exacted of Idwal, a rebellious North-Welsh prince, a tribute of three hundred wolves' heads yearly, and that Idwal paid this for three years, but omitted it in the fourth, declaring that he could find no more. Edgar left by different wives two sons, Edward and Ethelred, one about twelve and the other about six years old.

6. Eadward or Edward, surnamed the Martyr, 975-979.-There was much disorder after Edgar's death, for the parties of the monks and the seculars at once began to quarrel again. Besides this, there was a dispute as to which of Edgar's sons should be King; but finally the elder, Edward, was chosen. After a reign of less than four years, the young King was murdered at Corfes Gate (Corfe Castle). He was called "the Martyr," a name which the English then readily gave to any good man unjustly slain. The story goes that young Edward, returning tired and thirsty from hunting, stopped at the door of his stepmother, Elfthryth (in Latin Elfrida). She came out to welcome him; but while

he was eagerly draining the cup presented to him, he was stabbed by one of her attendants. He at once put spurs to his horse and galloped off, but sinking from the saddle, his foot caught in the stirrup, and he was dragged along till he died. It is added that the child Æthelred, for whose sake the murder had been committed, on hearing of his brother's death burst into tears, at which Ælfthryth in passion beat him till he was almost senseless.

7. Ethelred II., surnamed the Unready, 979-1016.-Æthelred was only ten years old when raised to the throne. Dunstan seems for some time before his death, which happened in 988, to have taken no part in the government, and Æthelred, when he grew up, let himself be guided by unworthy favourites, so that everything went to wrack and ruin. Weak, treacherous, and cruel, he was always leaving things undone, or doing them at the wrong time; so that he is known in history as "the Unready," that is, the Uncounselled, probably in allusion to his name Æthel-red, which means Noble-in-counsel. Want of union left the country an easy prey to the Danes and Norsemen, who had, within two years of his accession, renewed their invasions. Each Ealdorman went his own way, making himself as independent as he could; and men cared little for the King or the nation, though they often fought valiantly for their town or their shire. Thus in 991, Brihtnoth, the aged Ealdorman of the EastSaxons, fell fighting against Norwegian vikings at Maldon. We read the details in the fragment of a poem which has come down to us. "The loathly strangers," so it runs, had offered to withdraw on payment of money, to which Brihtnoth answered that he and his men would "give them spears for tribute." But the plan of buying off the invaders with large sums was soon afterwards adopted by the King and his advisers. The land-tax called Danegeld, which

continued to be levied long after the Danish invasions had ceased, was originally imposed for the payment of these tributes. Nothing could have suited the pirates better, and again and again they came to slay and plunder, sure of being bought off in the end. In 994, and again in 1003, the King of the Danes, Swend or Swegen "Forkbeard," who had been baptized when a child, but had returned to heathenism, invaded the country, and proved a terrible foe. In III the Danes under one Earl Thurkill took Canterbury, carrying away, for ransom or for slavery, a vast number of captives. Among these was the Archbishop Alfheah, who at first agreed to ransom himself, but afterwards refused, being too poor to pay, and unwilling to raise the money from his already impoverished people. In a fit of drunken fury the Danish warriors pelted him with stones and ox-bones, in spite of the remonstrances of Thurkill, who offered all the money he had, or might be able to get anything except his ship, the dearest possession of a Viking-to save the holy man's life. last one of the Danes, in pity of the Archbishop's suffering, clove his head with a battle-axe. This is said to have happened at Greenwich, where the parish church of St. Alphege (a later form of the name of Ælfheah) still reminds us of the murdered Archbishop.

At

8. The Danish Conquest. King Swegen. -At last, in 1013, Swegen wrested the kingdom from Æthelred. Sailing up the Trent, he obtained without a blow the submission of the country beyond Watling Street. Northumbrian and Mercian forces swelled his army on its march southwards, and Wessex, terror-stricken by his cruelties, was soon conquered. It must be noted to the credit of London that it beat off the invaders four times during this reign, only yielding after all the rest of the country had done so. Swegen being now acknowledged as

King, Æthelred followed his wife Emma, who had taken shelter with her brother, Duke Richard the Good of Normandy. Early the next year Swegen diedsmitten, so men fancied, by the wrath of the MartyrKing Edmund, from whose town of Bury, under threats of destruction to town and townsfolk, church and clergy, he had demanded tribute. Upon this Æthelred was recalled, but he died soon after, while the war was being kept up between his son Edmund and Swegen's son Cnut.

9. Eadmund or Edmund II., surnamed Ironside, April 23-Nov. 30, 1016.-Two rival Kings were now elected, Edmund, Ethelred's son by his first marriage, being chosen in London, and Cnut at Southampton. Edmund, whose strength and valour gained him the name of Ironside, fought six pitched battles against his rival, but was at last induced to share the kingdom with him. Edmund had all south of the Thames, together with EastAnglia, Essex, and London; Cnut took the rest. On Nov. 30th in the same year Edmund died, after a seven months' reign.

CHAPTER VI.

THE DANISH KINGS.

Cnut the Dane; his Kingdoms; the great Earldoms (1)— story of Cnut and the waves (2)—Harold I.; division of the Kingdom between Harold and Harthacnut; death of Alfred; England reunited; (3)—Harthacnut (4).

I. The Danish Line. Cnut or Canute, 1017-1035.-Cnut the Dane was soon acknowledged as King of all England. He had for some time professed Christianity, and though his earlier deeds were