Ethelred

“ Eight years had passed since the king's marriage with Elfrida, and the one child born to them was now seven, the darling of his parents, Ethelred the angelic child, who to the end of his long life would be praised for one thing only—his personal beauty. But Edward, his half-brother, now in his thirteenth year, was regarded by her with an almost equal affection, on account of his beauty and charm, his devotion to his step-mother, the only mother he had known, and, above all, for his love of his little half-brother. ”

“ Ethelred is dying. He has summoned his son. The tidings reached Edmund here. He had only been with us a single day, and was about to depart again for the war, for Canute threatens to attack London. It is there Ethelred lies sick unto death. Edmund seemed more moved than I should have expected. He has departed in all haste, taking Alfgar with him. ”

“ The only one who escaped without damage moral or physical from that evening was Ethelred. When the Dean and Mrs. Lightbody with Edgar and Edmund, gardeners and lanterns and ladders, and an improvised stretcher, arrived at the tower, Ethelred managed somehow to get back to the house unperceived, and was able to claim, relying upon the loyalty of his fellow-conspirators, that he had gone to bed immediately after dinner with a bad headache. The rest of the family suffered in various degrees. ”

“ I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred, the hero of the "Trist," having sought in vain for peaceable admission into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run thus:—
"And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn ”

“ In the tide of health, the youthful monarch, offspring of Ethelred! ruled well his subjects; the Welsh and the Scots, and the Britons also, Angles and Saxons relations of old. So apprehend the first in rank, that to Edward all the noble king were firmly held high-seated men. Blithe-minded aye was the harmless king; though he long ere, of land bereft, abode in exile wide on the earth; when Knute o'ercame the kin of Ethelred, and the Danes wielded the dear kingdom of Engle-land. Eight and twenty winters' rounds they wealth dispensed. ”

“ Why King Ethelred was called the Unready; how the Danes drove away the English princes, and made Canute king; how Canute rebuked his courtiers and improved the people, and how the Danes and Saxons made slaves of their prisoners and of the poor. The son of the wicked Elfrida was king after his brother Edward. His name was Ethelred, and he was king a great many years, but never did anything wise or good. The Danes came again to England, when they found out how foolish King Ethelred was, and that he was never ready, either with his ships or his soldiers, or with good counsel ”

“ Now we may conclude, that the wisdom of men, and their meditations, and their counsels, are as nought against the appointment of God. In this same year succeeded Ethelred Etheling, his brother, to the government; and he was afterwards very readily, and with great joy to the counsellors of England, consecrated king at Kingston. In the same year also died Alfwold, who was Bishop of Dorsetshire, and whose body lieth in the minster at Sherborn.
A.D. 979. In this year was Ethelred consecrated king, on the Sunday fortnight after Easter, at Kingston. ”

“ Jasmine supposed it might be tactless to observe that Edred showed no signs of heartbreak, and instead of commenting she enquired sympathetically what Ethelred was going to do.
"Ah, poor Ethelred's a great problem. He wants to be an engineer, and really he is very clever with his fingers; but his father is quite opposed to anything in the nature of technical education until he's had an ordinary education. ”

“ After Ethelred had punished these traitors, he prepared to march, and fight the enemy, who little expected so sudden a revolution.
Although Canute was undoubtedly a great prince, and had the same forces his father Sweyn had conquered England with, he did not think fit to hazard a battle; but, on the contrary, before Ethelred was advanced near enough to oblige him to fight, he led his troops to the sea-side, and embarking them, set sail for Denmark. ”

“ And about two months after this, king Ethelred and Alfred his brother fought against the army at Marden; and they were in two bodies, and they put both to flight, and during a great part of the day were victorious; and there was great slaughter on either hand; but the Danes had possession of the place of carnage: and there bishop Heahmund [110] was slain, and many good men: and after this battle there came a great army in the summer to Reading. And after this, over Easter, king Ethelred died; and he reigned five years and his body lies at Winburn-minster. ”

“ Ethelwulf, by his will, disposed of the kingdom of Kent to his second son, Ethelbert, and the kingdom of Wessex to Ethelbald, Ethelred, and Alfred, in order of seniority, and directed his heirs to maintain one poor person for every tithing in his hereditary lands. He died in 857, having reigned eighteen years, leaving behind him four sons and one daughter, who was married to Burhred, King of Mercia, and died at Pavia in 888. ”

“ For three-quarters of a century after Alfred’s death his descendants kept alive something at any rate of this spirit of greatness, but in 978 there succeeded to the crown a boy of ten called Ethelred, who as he grew up earned for himself the nickname of ‘rede-less’ or ‘man without advice’. ”

“ Brice, 1002, he gave it out that he would massacre these people, among them the sister of the Danish king, a noble woman who had become a Christian (only it is to be hoped a better one) , and married an English earl. He had them all butchered.
[Illustration: ETHELRED WEDS EMMA.]
In 1003, Sweyn, with revenge in his heart, began a war of extermination or subjugation, and never yielded till he was, in fact, king of England, while the royal intellectual polyp, known as Ethelred the Unwholesome, fled to Normandy, in the 1013th year Anno Domini. ”

“ Ethelred’s ‘wise men’ could only recommend him to buy off the Danes with hard cash called ‘Danegold’ or ‘Danegeld’. The ‘Dane-geld.’The Danes pocketed the silver pennies, laughed, and came back for more. When for a moment there arose a hero, Ethelred’s son Edmund Ironside, he fought in one year, as Alfred had fought, six pitched battles and almost beat Canute. King Canute, 1016–1035.Then he agreed to divide the island with Canute, and was murdered in the next year (1017) . Canute ruled England until his death in 1035. ”

“ XXI. How Bishop Theodore made peace between the kings Egfrid and Ethelred. [679 a.d.] In the ninth year of the reign of King Egfrid, a great battle674 was fought between him and Ethelred, king of the Mercians, near the river Trent, and Aelfwine,675 brother to King Egfrid, was slain, a youth about eighteen years of age, and much beloved by both provinces; for King Ethelred had married his sister Osthryth.676 There was now reason to expect a more bloody war, and more lasting enmity between those kings and their fierce nations ”

“ Ethelred and Canute continued for three years like "the Lion and the Unicorn, fighting for the Crown," with about equal success, when death overtook "Slowcoach," after a long and inglorious reign. He died on St. George's Day, 1016, having been for five-and-thirty years man and boy, on and off the throne of England.
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH. EDMUND IRONSIDES—CANUTE—HAROLD HAREFOOT—HARDICANUTE—EDWARD THE CONFESSOR—HAROLD—THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS. ON the decease of Ethelred the citizens of London offered the throne to his son Edmund, who had got the strange nickname of Ironsides. ”

“ Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles, says: "Salvabitur vir," &c. which means in our language "Full oft the unbelieving husband is sanctified and healed through the believing wife, and so belike the wife through the believing husband." The queen above-named afterwards did many things in this land to promote the glory of God, and conducted herself well in her noble rank, as always was her custom. She was sprung from a noble line of ancestors, and her father was Edward Etheling, son of king Edmund. This Edmund was the son of Ethelred, who was the son of Edgar, the son of Edred ”

“ Ethelred must not be confused with Etheldred, the feminine name, properly Æthelthryth, meaning in Anglo-Saxon the Noble-threatener, connected with the German Ediltrud, or noble maiden. Most likely names ending in trut had been brought to England, and as the Valkyr sense was forgotten, the native meaning of threat was attached to the word, and the spelling 410adapted to it. St. Æthelthryth was a queen who must have been a very uncomfortable wife, and who, finally, retired into a monastery, getting canonized as St. ”

“ To Ethelbert, whose kingdom lay at the edge of the great world, the message came from this world’s sovereign pontiff, who in some awful way represented its almighty God, and had authority to admit to His kingdom. He was not ignorant of what lay within the hand of Rome to give. His wife was a Catholic Christian, daughter of a Frankish king, and had her own ministering bishop. Doubtless the queen had spoken with her lord. Still Ethelbert feared the spell-craft of this awe-inspiring embassy, and would meet Augustine only under the open sky. ”

“ Perhaps of all I had the most reason to think that ill was before the king, for Erling, though he said no more to me, was plainly full of bodings. And I have heard that other men dreamed dreams of terror and told them to one another. Only Ethelbert was always cheerful, singing as he rode and laughing with us, so that we ought to have been ashamed to be dull. ”

“ That thou art glad. Perchance thou hear'st me not,
For thou wert still a heedless man of mirth,
Though sage as strong at need. If this were so,
Not less thy God would hear my prayer to thee,
And grant it in thy reverence. Ethelbert!
Thou hadst thy trial time, since, many a year
All shepherdless thy well-loved people strayed
What time thyself, their shepherd, knew'st not Christ,
Sole shepherd of man's race. King Ethelbert!
Rememberest thou that day in Thanet Isle? ”

“ After a silence of a minute or two, he said, suddenly:
"Look here, Ethel; if you don't like your London life, you can't be as well there as here, and you can, if you will, satisfy my uncle that you are better, as well as happier, here at Golden Friars. You can do that, and that is the way to end it—the only way to end it that I see. You can write to me, Ethel, without danger. You will, I know, every day, just a line; and when you tell me how to address mine, you shall have an answer by every post. Don't go out in London, Ethel; you must promise that." ”

“ To each of his other sons he gave a portion of his kingdom, armor and plumes, a prancing charger, and a trusty sword; but to Ethelried he gave nothing. When the poor Prince saw his brothers riding out into the world to win their fortunes, he fain would have followed. Throwing himself on his knees before the King, he cried, "Oh, royal Sire, bestow upon me also a sword and a steed, that I may up and away to follow my brethren."
But the King laughed him to scorn. "Thou a sword!" he quoth. "Thou who hast never done a deed of valor in all thy life! ”

“ My lord, Ethelbert is young, and as for thee, thou hast looked thy last upon the height of thy manhood. And Egbert our son will never be the man that thou art. I say, beware! Come tell me now, if so be that Ethelbert of East Anglia wriggle from out of this pact he is come to make with us—if he make of us laughing-stocks from Iceland unto Caisar Charles's court—aye, and beyond—say ye will strike, O Offa of Mercia, so that your kingly dignity be upheld in the land! ”

“ Scarcely has the king gone out and the count disappeared behind him, than a thick tapestry is raised and Edith enters on the scene. She has seen nothing save that the king is young and beautiful; heard nothing but that he loves her. Ethelwood's devotion, his refusal to marry the king's sister, the danger he is incurring, all glide over her heart like a breath on a mirror. She goes to the window. Ethelwood is on his knees holding the king's stirrup. In the office which, where nobility of spirit is present, is regarded as an honour, Edith sees nothing but shame ”

“ The maid, Ethel, had recognised her in the tent, but not before she had inquired tremblingly about a dark young man, a lover, and also about—sweet little fool!—a stranger who was not dark.
"I know you meant no harm, Mr. Main," said Elfrida—they were sitting in the old garden on the last evening of her stay, which the publishing firm had graciously extended by a week—"but Ethel is such a little goose, and Harry is such a fine young fellow, and has been so faithful, and I just felt that if Ethel, in her fun, went on the roundabout with you, he would—well, let her drop. ”

“ He is very repulsive to me, with his keen little eyes, and his thick lips, and his perpetual smirk. If I ever have a lover I must have a grand, handsome one, as noble as papa, or perhaps like your lover, Ethel—I do not know his name, but I saw him at the ball with you, and I thought he was splendid. Well, when I have a real lover he must be like that, Ethel! ”

“ ETHEL AND TAMSIN
When Ethel had read Matthew Thursby’s letter to the last word she quietly refolded the paper and laid it on the table. The sisters were watching her every movement intently. She wished they would speak—that they would say something—anything. But it seemed as if they were waiting for her to break the silence. Her eyes turned from one to the other. In their faces she read nothing save love and compassion. ”