November 13, 1002: St. Brice’s Day massacre.

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Æthelred II the Unready, Bishop of Tours, Danelaw, King of the English, Kings and Queens of England, St. Brice's Day massacre of 1002, Sweyn Forkbeard

St. Brice’s Day massacre was the killing of Danes in the Kingdom of England on Friday, the 13th of November 1002, ordered by King Æthelred the Unready. In response to the frequent Danish raids, King Æthelred ordered the execution of all Danes living in England. Although evidence is lacking, the skeletons of 34 to 38 men aged between 16 and 25 were found during an excavation at St John’s College, Oxford, in 2008.

Æthelred II ( c. 966 – 23 April 1016), known as the Unready, was King of the English from 978 to 1013 and again from 1014 until his death. His epithet does not derive from the modern word “unready”, but rather from the Old English unræd meaning “poorly advised”; it is a pun on his name, which means “well advised”.

Æthelred was the son of King Edgar and Queen Ælfthryth. He came to the throne at about the age of 12, following the assassination of his older half-brother, Edward the Martyr. His brother’s murder was carried out by supporters of his own claim to the throne, although he was too young to have any personal involvement.

Background

The name refers to St. Brice, fifth-century Bishop of Tours, whose feast day is November 13. The Kingdom of England had been ravaged by Danish raids every year from 997 to 1001, and in 1002 the king was told that the Danish men in England “would faithlessly take his life, and then all his councillors, and possess his kingdom afterwards”. In response, he ordered the deaths of all Danes living in England.

Massacre

Historians believe there was significant loss of life, though evidence is lacking on any specific estimates. Among those thought to have been killed is Gunhilde, who may have been the sister of Sweyn Forkbeard, the King of Denmark. Her husband Pallig Tokesen, the Danish Ealdorman of Devonshire, may also have died in the massacre or, according to a different version, played a part in provoking it by his defection to join raiders ravaging the south coast.

The skeletons of 34 to 38 young men, all aged 16 to 25, were found during an excavation at St John’s College, Oxford, in 2008. Chemical analysis carried out in 2012 by Oxford University researchers suggests that the remains are Viking; older scars on the bones provide evidence that they were professional warriors. It is thought that they were stabbed repeatedly and then brutally slaughtered. Charring on the bones is consistent with historical records of the church burning (see above).

Historians’ views

Historians have generally viewed the massacre as a political act which helped to provoke Sweyn’s invasion of 1003. Simon Keynes in his Oxford Online DNB article on Æthelred described it as a “so-called” massacre, the reaction of a people who had been slaughtered and pillaged for a decade, directed not at the inhabitants of the Danelaw but at the mercenaries who had turned on their employers.

Æthelred’s biographer, Ryan Lavelle, also questions its extent, arguing that it could not have been carried out in the Danelaw, where the Danes would have been too strong, and that it was probably confined to frontier towns such as Oxford, and larger towns with small Danish communities, such as Bristol, Gloucester and London.

He comments on the remarkable lack of remorse shown by Æthelred in the Oxford charter, but views the massacre not so much as a royally executed order as an exploitation of popular ethnic hatred and millenarianism. Audrey MacDonald sees it as leading on to the onslaught which eventually led to the accession of Cnut in 1016.

April 23, 1016: Death of Æthelred II the Unready, King of the English.

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Æthelred II the Unready, Battle of Maldon, Cnut the Great of Denmark, East Anglia, Edgar the Peaceful, Edward the Martyr, King of the English, St. Brice's Day massacre of 1002, Sweyn Forkbeard

Æthelred II (c. 966 – 23 April 1016), was King of the English from 978 to 1013 and again from 1014 until his death.

Æthelred was the son of King Edgar and Queen Ælfthryth. He came to the throne at about the age of 12, following the assassination of his older half-brother, Eadweard the Martyr. His brother’s murder was carried out by supporters of his own claim to the throne, although he was too young to have any personal involvement.

Æthelred II the Unready, King of the English

Name

Æthelred’s first name, composed of the elements æðele, “noble”, and ræd, “counsel, advice”, is typical of the compound names of those who belonged to the royal House of Wessex, and it characteristically alliterates with the names of his ancestors, like Æthelwulf (“noble-wolf”), Ælfred (“elf-counsel”), Eadweard (“rich-protection”), and Eadgar (“rich-spear”).

Æthelred’s notorious nickname, Old English Unræd, is commonly translated into present-day English as “The Unready” (less often, though less inaccurately, as “The Redeless”).The Anglo-Saxon noun unræd means “evil counsel”, “bad plan”, or “folly”.

The element ræd in unræd is the same element in Æthelred’s name that means “counsel”. Thus Æþelræd Unræd is an oxymoron: “Noble counsel, No counsel”. The nickname has also been translated as “ill-advised”, “ill-prepared”, thus “Æthelred the ill-advised”.

Because the nickname was first recorded in the 1180s, more than 150 years after Æthelred’s death, it is doubtful that it carries any implications as to the reputation of the king in the eyes of his contemporaries or near contemporaries.

Æthelred’s father, King Edgar, had died suddenly in July 975, leaving two young sons behind. The elder, Eadweard (later Eadweard the Martyr), was probably illegitimate, and was “still a youth on the verge of manhood” in 975. The younger son was Æthelred, whose mother, Ælfthryth, Edgar had married in 964. Ælfthryth was the daughter of Ordgar, ealdorman of Devon, and widow of Æthelwold, Ealdorman of East Anglia.

At the time of his father’s death, Æthelred could have been no more than 10 years old. As the elder of Edgar’s sons, Eadweard – reportedly a young man given to frequent violent outbursts – probably would have naturally succeeded to the throne of England despite his young age, had not he “offended many important persons by his intolerable violence of speech and behaviour.” In any case, a number of English nobles took to opposing Eadweard‘s succession and to defending Æthelred’s claim to the throne; Æthelred was, after all, the son of Edgar’s last, living wife, and no rumour of illegitimacy is known to have plagued Æthelred’s birth, as it might have his elder brother’s.

Both boys, Æthelred certainly, were too young to have played any significant part in the political manoeuvring which followed Edgar’s death.

Æthelred II the Unready, King of the English

Eadweard reigned for only three years before he was murdered by members of his brother’s household. Though little is known about Eadweard‘s short reign, it is known that it was marked by political turmoil. Edgar had made extensive grants of land to monasteries which pursued the new monastic ideals of ecclesiastical reform, but these disrupted aristocratic families’ traditional patronage. The end of his firm rule saw a reversal of this policy, with aristocrats recovering their lost properties or seizing new ones.

Marriages and issue

Æthelred married first Ælfgifu, daughter of Thored, earl of Northumbria, in about 985.[14] Their known children are:

* Æthelstan Ætheling (died 1014)
* Ecgberht Ætheling (died c. 1005)
* Edmund Ironside (King of England, died 1016)
* Eadred Ætheling (died before 1013)
* Eadwig Ætheling (executed by Cnut 1017)
* Edgar Ætheling (died c. 1008)
* Eadgyth or Edith (married Eadric Streona)
* Ælfgifu (married Uchtred the Bold, ealdorman of Northumbria)
* Wulfhild? (married Ulfcytel Snillingr)
* Abbess of Wherwell Abbey?

In 1002 Æthelred married Emma of Normandy, sister of Richard II, Duke of Normandy. Their children were:

* Edward the Confessor (King of England, died 1066)
* Ælfred Ætheling (died 1036–37)
* Godgifu or Goda of England (married 1. Dreux de Vexin, Count of Mantes, Valois and the Vexin also known as: Drogo of Mantes and 2. Eustace II, Count of Boulogne)

The chief problem of Æthelred’s reign was conflict with the Danes. After several decades of relative peace, Danish raids on English territory began again in earnest in the 980s. Following the Battle of Maldon in 991, Æthelred paid tribute, or Danegeld, to the Danish king, Sweyn Forkbeard.

St. Brice’s Day massacre of 1002

Æthelred ordered the massacre of all Danish men in England to take place on November 13, 1002, St Brice’s Day. No order of this kind could be carried out in more than a third of England, where the Danes were too strong, but Gunhilde, sister of Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark, was said to have been among the victims. It is likely that a wish to avenge her was a principal motive for Sweyn’s invasion of western England the following year.

Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark

By 1004 Sweyn was in East Anglia, where he sacked Norwich. In this year, a nobleman of East Anglia, Ulfcytel Snillingr met Sweyn in force, and made an impression on the until-then rampant Danish expedition. Though Ulfcytel was eventually defeated, outside Thetford, he caused the Danes heavy losses and was nearly able to destroy their ships. The Danish army left England for Denmark in 1005, perhaps because of the losses they sustained in East Anglia, perhaps from the very severe famine which afflicted the continent and the British Isles in that year.

In 1013, King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark invaded England once again, as a result of which Æthelred fled to Normandy in 1013 and was replaced by Sweyn. However, he returned as king for two years after Sweyn’s death in 1014. Æthelred’s 37-year combined reign was the longest of any Anglo-Saxon king of England, and was only surpassed in the 13th century, by Henry III. Æthelred was briefly succeeded by his son, Edmund Ironside, but he died after a few months and was replaced by Sweyn’s son, Cnut the Great, King of Denmark and Norway.

Over the next few months Cnut conquered most of England, while Edmund rejoined Æthelred to defend London when Æthelred died on April 23, 1016. The subsequent war between Edmund and Cnut ended in a decisive victory for Cnut at the Battle of Ashingdon on October 18, 1016. Edmund’s reputation as a warrior was such that Cnut nevertheless agreed to divide England, Edmund taking Wessex and Cnut the whole of the country beyond the Thames. However, Edmund died on 30 November and Cnut became king of the whole country. Another of Æthelred’s sons, Eadweard the Confessor, became king in 1042.

Æthelred was buried in Old St Paul’s Cathedral, London. The tomb and his monument were destroyed along with the cathedral in the Great Fire of London in 1666. A modern monument in the crypt lists his among the important graves lost.