according to his own account, was nearly related to the royal house, drops hints that, after all, Edwy may not have been inferior as a monarch to Edgar. Be this as it may, the monkish estimate of Edgar as one of the greatest of British naval reformers has received general acceptance; and, with very few intervals, there has, in consequence, always been a large British man-of-war bearing the king's name since the day in 1668, when it was conferred upon a two-decker at the instance of James, Duke of York, Lord High Admiral, who had previously given the name to one of his sons who died in infancy.
The brief reign of the boy Edward, miscalled The Martyr, (975-979), was uneventful; but the latter part of the reign of his half-brother, Ethelred the Purposeless (979-1016), was full of naval incident; and, indeed, even the earlier part, from its very beginning, witnessed a marked revival of Danish aggression from across the North Sea. Not however, until 988 did the Danes renew their attempts to settle in the country. Up to that date their expeditions were merely raids and forays.
It was in 988 that Olaf Tryggvesson, one of the most formidable, bloody and revengeful of the Vikings, harassed Watchet and killed Gova, the Thane of Devon. Olaf was the son of a Norwegian sea king, but may have been born in Britain. In 991 he led a fleet of 450 ships to Stone, thence to Sandwich, and thence to Ipswich, and, pressing as far as Maldon, there defeated and slew the earldorman Brihtnoth, who had been sent against him. Ethelred made some attempts to assemble a fleet, so as to cut off the enemy, but his plans were betrayed by the earldorman Elfric, and only a very partial success by sea was secured. In 994 Olaf allied himself with Sweyn[1] of Denmark, son of Harold Blaatand, and the two, with ninety-four ships, made an abortive attempt on London.[2] Driven thence by the townsmen they devastated Kent, Sussex and Hampshire, both along the coast and for some distance inland; and on an evil day Ethelred agreed to buy them off by payment of £16,000 and the provision for them of food and winter quarters at Southampton, Olaf promising never again to visit England, unless peacefully.[3] In the spring he departed for Norway, which he wrested from Earl Hacon and ruled for several years; but, though he personally kept his word, his promise bound no one save himself, and the Vikings presently began their incursions anew.
