from the English a tribute of eight thousand pounds, had distributed themselves, as best suited their convenience, in the towns, or in the country; and fifteen of their ships, with the crews, had entered into the king's service. In the meantime Thurkill sent messengers to Sweyn, king of Denmark, inviting him to come to England; telling him that the land was rich and fertile, but the king a driveller; and that, wholly given up to wine and women, his last thoughts were those of war: that in consequence he was hateful to his own people and contemptible to foreigners: that the commanders were jealous of each other, the people weak, and that they would fly the field, the moment the onset was sounded.
Sweyn[1] was naturally cruel, nor did he require much persuasion; preparing his ships, therefore, he hastened his voyage. Sandwich was the port he made, principally designing to avenge his sister Gunhilda. This woman, who possessed considerable beauty, had come over to England with her husband Palling, a powerful nobleman, and by embracing Christianity, had made herself a pledge of the Danish peace. In his ill-fated fury, Edric had commanded her, though proclaiming that the shedding her blood would bring great evil on the whole kingdom, to be beheaded with the other Danes. She bore her death with fortitude; and she neither turned pale at the moment, nor, when dead, and her blood exhausted, did she lose her beauty; her husband was murdered before her face, and her son, a youth of amiable disposition, was transfixed with four spears. Sweyn then proceeding through East Anglia against the Northumbrians, received their submission without resistance: not indeed, that the native ardour of their minds, which brooked no master, had grown cool, but because Utred, their prince, was the first to give example of desertion. On their submission all the other people who inhabit England on the north, gave him tribute and hostages. Coming southward, he compelled those of Oxford and Winchester, to obey his commands; the Londoners alone, protecting their lawful sovereign within their walls, shut their
- ↑ Malmesbury seems to have fallen into some confusion here. The murder of the Danes took place on St. Brice's day, a.d. 1002, and accordingly we find Sweyn infesting England in 1003 and the following year (see Saxon Chronicle): but this his second arrival took place, a.d. 1013: so that the avenging the murder of his sister Gunhilda could hardlv be the object of his present attack.
