another pirate clamouring, sword in hand, for similar treatment. Even his own court betrayed him repeatedly. Nearly every year larger sums were paid to the foe; every year the foe became bolder and more exacting. Recognising the impotence of the king, the English nobles raised a fleet of their own, but, being mismanaged, it did nothing beyond contribute to the general exhaustion. Everywhere there were treachery and desertion. To add to the confusion, difficulties arose with Normandy. The year 1002 saw English desperation seeking relief by means of a general massacre of the Danes throughout the realm.
This provoked Sweyn, Prince of Denmark, to throw himself officially into a quarrel which previously had been chiefly waged by the more irresponsible and adventurous of his father's nominal subjects, including Sweyn himself, when a young man. Upon his accession to the Danish throne, the attainment of the sovereignty of England became his main object in life.
The Danegeld seems to have been diverted at this time from its original and shameful purpose, and to have been employed for the more creditable and legitimate end of raising and maintaining a fleet wherewith to offer some sort of opposition to the national enemy. It temporarily became Heregeld, or money for the support of a fighting force. But it was too late. The collapse had made too great progress; Ethelred, after a brief struggle, fled to Normandy; and, by 1013, England was practically at the feet of the conqueror. When Swweyn died, Ethelred returned, and gained some successes, as did also his son, the gallant Edmund Ironside; but Edmund's death left Canute's son master of the whole kingdom.
Canute began his government with a series of the hardest severities. He nearly annihilated the English royal family; and he squeezed from the impoverished country a levy of £83,000, most of which sum he gave, as a pirate chief's largesse, to his Danish seamen. Yet, when he had established himself, he ruled well, and even generously. He abolished distinctions between Danes and Englishmen; he put Englishmen, like Godwin and Leofric, into positions of trust; he favoured the church, although his father had been an apostate; and, while he also ruled Denmark, and Norway, which he conquered in 1028, and had Scotland and Sweden as his vassals, he was essentially and primarily a great king of England.
There can be no doubt that the British collapse resulted rather from British disunion and mismanagement than from paucity of
