t over him, succeeded Alfric in the government
of Mercia and in the command of the English armies. A great famine,
proceeding partly from the bad seasons, partly from the decay of
agriculture, added to all the other miseries of the inhabitants. The
country, wasted by the Danes, harassed by the fruitless expeditions of
its own forces, was reduced to the utmost desolation, and at last
submitted (1007) to the infamy of purchasing a precarious peace from the
enemy by the payment of thirty thousand pounds.

The English endeavored to employ this interval in making preparations
against the return of the Danes, which they had reason soon to expect. A
law was made, ordering the proprietors of eight hides of land to provide
each a horseman and a complete suit of armor, and those of three hundred
and ten hides to equip a ship for the defence of the coast. When this
navy was assembled, which must have consisted of near eight hundred
vessels, all hopes of its success were disappointed by the factions,
animosities, and dissensions of the nobility. Edric had impelled his
brother Brightric to prefer an accusation of treason against Wolfnoth,
governor of Sussex, the father of the famous earl Godwin; and that
nobleman, well acquainted with the malevolence as well as power of his
enemy, found no means of safety but in deserting with twenty ships to
the Danes. Brightric pursued him with a fleet of eighty sail; but his
ships being shattered in a tempest, and stranded on the coast, he was
suddenly attacked by Wolfnoth, and all his vessels burned and destroyed.
The imbecility of the King was little capable of repairing this
misfortune. The treachery of Edric frustrated every plan for future
defence; and the English navy, disconcerted, discouraged, and divided,
was at last scattered into its several harbors.

It is almost impossible, or would be tedious, to relate particularly all
the miseries to which the English were henceforth exposed. We hear of
nothing but the sacking and burning of towns; the devastation of the
open country; the appearance of the enemy in every quarter of the
kingdom; their cruel diligence in discovering any corner which had not
been ransacked by their former violence. The broken and disjointed
narration of the ancient historians is here well adapted to the nature
of the war, which was conducted by such sudden inroads as would have
been dangerous even to a united and well-governed kingdom, but proved
fatal where nothing