Young Folks History of England | Page 6

them
off by his ships at sea, and when he died at fifty-two years old, in the

year 901, he left England at rest and quiet, and we always think of him
as one of the greatest and best kings who ever reigned in England, or in
any other country. As long as his children after him and his people
went on in the good way he had taught them, all prospered with them,
and no enemies hurt them; and this was all through the reigns of his son,
his grandson, and great-grandsons. Their council of great men was
called by a long word that is in our English, "Wise Men's Meeting," and
there they settled the affairs of the kingdom. The king's wife was not
called queen, but lady; and what do you think lady means? It means
"loaf-giver"--giver of bread to her household and the poor. so a lady's
great work is to be charitable.

CHAPTER V
.
THE DANISH CONQUEST. A.D. 958--1035.
The last very prosperous king was Alfred's great-grandson, Edgar, who
was owned as their over-lord by all the kings of the remains of the
Britons in Wales and Scotland. Once, eight of these kings came to meet
him at Chester, and rowed him in his barge along the river Dee. It was
the grandest day a king of England enjoyed for many years. Edgar was
called the peaceable, because there were no attacks by the Danes at all
through his reign. In fact, the Northmen and Danes had been fighting
among themselves at home, and these fights generally ended in some
one going off as a Sea-King, with all his friends, and trying to gain a
new home in some fresh country. One great party of Northmen under a
very tall and mighty chief named Rollo, had some time before, thus
gone to France, and forced the King to give them a great piece of his
country, just opposite to England, which was called after them
Normandy. There they learned to talk French, and grew like Frenchmen,
though they remained a great deal braver, and more spirited than any of
their neighbors.
There were continually fleets of Danish ships coming to England; and
the son of Edgar, whose name was Ethelred, was a helpless, cowardly
sort of man, so slow and tardy, that his people called him Ethelred the
Unready. Instead of fitting out ships to fight against the Danes, he took
the money the ships ought to have cost to pay them to go away without

plundering; and as to those who had come into the country without his
leave, he called them his guard, took them into his pay, and let them
live in the houses of the English, where they were very rude, and gave
themselves great airs, making the English feed them on all their best
meat, and bread, and beer, and always call them Lord Danes. He made
friends himself with the Northmen, or Normans, who had settled in
France, and married Emma, the daughter of their duke; but none of his
plans prospered: things grew worse and worse, and his mind and his
people's grew so bitter against the Danes, that at last it was agreed that
all over the South of England every Englishman should rise up in one
night and murder the Dane who lodged in his house.
Among those Danes who were thus wickedly killed was the sister of
the King of Denmark. Of course he was furious when he heard of it,
and came over to England determined to punish the cruel, treacherous
king and people, and take the whole island for his own. He did punish
the people, killing, burning, and plundering wherever he went; but he
could never get the king into his hands, for Ethelred went off in the
height of the danger to Normandy, where he had before sent his wife
Emma, and her children, leaving his eldest son( child of his first wife),
Edmund Ironside, to fight for the kingdom as best he might.
The King of Denmark died in the midst of his English war; but his son
Cnut went on with the conquest he had begun, and before long Ethelred,
the Unready died, and Edmund Ironside was murdered, and Cnut
became King of England, as well as of Denmark. He became a
Christian, and married Emma, Ethelred's widow, though she was much
older than himself. He had been a hard and cruel man, but he now laid
aside his evil ways, and became a noble and wise and just king, a lover
of churches and good men; and the English seem to have been as well
off under him as if he had been one of their own kings. There is no king
of whom more pleasant stories are