Ethelred I.

Ethelred I., elder brother and predecessor of Alfred the Great, was king of Wessex and Kent from 866 till his death on 23d April 871, shortly after his great victory over the Danes at Æscedune or Ashdown, a victory supposed to be commemorated by the White Horse (q.v.).—ETHELRED II., the 'Unready,' was only seven at the death of his father, King Edgar, and ten when in 978 the murder of his half-brother, Edward the Martyr, placed him on the English throne, and brought about Dunstan's fall. From boyhood he was swayed by unworthy and traitorous favourites, and his reign, 'the worst,' says Freeman, 'and most shameful in our annals,' was a series of raids and invasions by the Northmen, and endeavours to buy them off with ever-increasing bribes. Still, 'Unready,' his nickname, stands for 'reardless, deficient in counsel; of misplaced energy he had more than enough. This showed itself in his treacherous massacre of the Danish settlers on St Brice's Day (13th November), 1002, a crime that was punished by fierce invasions, until in 1014 he was forced to take refuge in Normandy. In 1002 he had married Duke Richard's daughter, Emma; the marriage was fraught with important consequences, as the earliest link between England and Normandy. Sweyn's death soon allowed his recall, but on 23d April 1016 he himself died in London. He was succeeded by Edmund Ironside, third of seven sons by a first marriage; by Emma he was the father of Edward the Confessor.