another host overran Cheshire. In the succeeding
year, "great harm was done in Devonshire and in Wales;" and a year later
again, London was burnt and Portland ravaged. In 985, AEthelred, the
Unready, as after ages called him, from his lack of _rede_ or counsel,
quarrelled with AElfric, ealdormen of the Mercians, whom he drove over
sea. The breach between Mercia and Wessex was thus widened, and as the
Danish attacks continued without interruption the redeless king soon
found himself comparatively isolated in his own paternal dominions.
Northumbria, under its earl, Uhtred (one of the house of Bamborough),
and the Five Burgs under their Danish leaders, acted almost
independently of Wessex throughout the whole of AEthelred's reign. In 991
Sigeric, archbishop of Canterbury, advised that the Danes should be
bought off by a payment of ten thousand pounds, an enormous sum; but it
was raised somehow and duly paid. In 992, the command of a naval force,
gathered from the merchant craft of the Thames, was entrusted to AElfric,
who had been recalled; and the Mercian leader went over on the eve of an
engagement at London to the side of the enemy. Bamborough was stormed
and captured with great booty, and the host sailed up Humber mouth.
There they stood in the midst of the old Danish kingdom, and found the
leading men of Northumbria and Lindsey by no means unfriendly to their
invasion. In fact, the Danish north was now far more ready to welcome
the kindred Scandinavian than the West Saxon stranger. AEthelred's realm
practically shrank at once to the narrow limits of Kent and Wessex.

The Danes, however, were by no means content even with these successes.
Olaf Tryggvesson, king of Norway, and Swegen Forkbeard,[1] king of
Denmark, fell upon England. The era of mere plundering expeditions and
of scattered colonisation had ceased; the era of political conquest had
now begun. They had determined upon the complete subjugation of all
England. In 994 Olaf and Swegen attacked London with 94 ships, but were
put to flight by a gallant resistance of the townsmen, who did "more
harm and evil than ever they weened that any burghers could do them."
Thence the host sailed away to Essex, Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire,
burning and slaying all along the coast as they went. AEthelred and his
witan bought them off again, with the immense tribute of sixteen
thousand pounds. The host accepted the terms, but settled down for the
winter at Southampton--a suffic