nd thrusting into a convent the widow of Sigefert. She was a
woman of singular beauty and merit; and in a visit which was paid her,
during her confinement, by Prince Edmund, the King's eldest son, she
inspired him with so violent an affection that he released her from the
convent, and soon after married her without the consent of his father.

Meanwhile the English found in Canute, the son and successor of Sweyn,
an enemy no less terrible than the prince from whom death had so lately
delivered them. He ravaged the eastern coast with merciless fury, and
put ashore all the English hostages at Sandwich, after having cut off
their hands and noses. He was obliged, by the necessity of his affairs,
to make a voyage to Denmark; but, returning soon after, he continued his
depredations along the southern coast. He even broke into the counties
of Dorset, Wilts, and Somerset, where an army was assembled against him,
under the command of Prince Edmund and Duke Edric. The latter still
continued his perfidious machinations, and, after endeavoring in vain to
get the prince into his power, he found means to disperse the army, and
he then openly deserted to Canute with forty vessels.

Notwithstanding this misfortune Edmund was not disconcerted, but,
assembling all the force of England, was in a condition to give battle
to the enemy. The King had had such frequent experience of perfidy among
his subjects that he had lost all confidence in them: he remained at
London, pretending sickness, but really from apprehensions that they
intended to buy their peace by delivering him into the hands of his
enemies. The army called aloud for their sovereign to march at their
head against the Danes; and, on his refusal to take the field, they were
so discouraged that those vast preparations became ineffectual for the
defence of the kingdom. Edmund, deprived of all regular supplies to
maintain his soldiers, was obliged to commit equal ravages with those
which were practised by the Danes; and, after making some fruitless
expeditions into the north, which had submitted entirely to Canute's
power, he retired to London, determined there to maintain to the last
extremity the small remains of English liberty. He here found everything
in confusion by the death of the King, who expired after an unhappy and
inglorious reign of thirty-five years (1016). He left two sons by his
first marriage, Edmund, who succeeded him, and Edwy, whom Canute
afterward murdered. His