quarters in Wight, marched across Hants and Berks to Reading,
and burned Wallingford. Thence they returned with their booty to the
fleet, by the very walls of the royal city. "There might the Winchester
folk behold an insolent host and fearless wend past their gate to sea."
The king himself had fled into Shropshire. The tone of utter despair
with which the Chronicle narrates all these events is the best measure
of the national degradation. "There was so muckle awe of the host," says
the annalist, "that no man could think how man could drive them from
this earth or hold this earth against them; for that they had cruelly
marked each shire of Wessex with burning and with harrying." The English
had sunk into hopeless misery, and were only waiting for a strong rule
to rescue them from their misery.

The strong rule came at last. Thorkell, a Danish jarl, marched all
through Wessex, and for three years more his host pillaged everywhere in
the South. In 1011, they killed AElfheah, the archbishop of Canterbury,
at Greenwich. When the country was wholly weakened, Swegen turned
southward once more, this time with all Northumbria and Mercia at his
back. In 1013 he sailed round to Humber mouth, and thence up the Trent,
to Gainsborough. "Then Earl Uhtred and all Northumbrians soon bowed to
him, and all the folk in Lindsey; and sithence the folk of the Five
Burgs, and shortly after, all the host by north of Watling-street; and
men gave him hostages of each shire." Swegen at once led the united army
into England, leaving his son Cnut in Denalagu with the ships and
hostages. He marched to Oxford, which received him; then to the royal
city of Winchester, which made no resistance. At London AEthelred was
waiting; and for a time the town held out. So Swegen marched westward,
and took Bath. There, the thegns of the Welsh-kin counties--Somerset,
Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall--bowed to him and gave him hostages. "When
he had thus fared, he went north to his ships, and all the folk held him
then as full king." London itself gave way. AEthelred fled to Wight, and
thence to Normandy. He had married Ymma, the daughter of Richard the
Fearless; and he now took refuge with her brother, Richard the Good.

Next year Swegen died, and the West Saxon witan sent back for AEthelred.
No lord was dearer to them, they said, than their lord by kin. But the
host had already chosen Cnut; and the host had a stronger claim than the
witan. For two years AEthelred ca