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However, solutions to problems were rarely achieved. Taxes rose to high levels and just as today there were plenty of scandals.
    There may well be some exaggeration in this account, but it nevertheless shows the degree of madness that had taken hold of Ethelred’s mind. The king, intent at all costs on looking after number one, would ensure he and his family retreated to a safe distance from the flare of battle. One rare instance of initiative amid all the carnage was Ethelred’s decision to marry again, this time a Norman noblewoman, named Emma.
    The move turned out to be politically expedient. By this time the north of France had been granted to the ‘Northmen’, hence the name Normandy, and they were using these shores to launch raids on the south coast of England. In marrying Emma, Ethelred could apply enough pressure to stop this and also find a useful ally in times of refuge. When, after 1013, the invasion force under Swein Forkbeard ruthlessly destroyed one city after another, including even the capital Winchester and London, the English king, Emma and their two sons (one of whom was the future Edward the Confessor) fled into exile in Normandy.
    Now, as has happened on other occasions of peril, England were rescued by the weather. Their harsh winter of 1014 did for Forkbeard, and while the Danes were busy readying Canute to take his place, the English sent for their king in exile.
    His pride puffed up, Ethelred duly consented, though was obliged to accept certain restraints if he were to sit upon the throne again. No longer would he extort high taxes from his subjects, or enslave them. Indeed he should govern in the caring manner of his illustrious predecessors in good Anglo-Saxon spirit. The terms of the agreement were formally written down and enshrined in
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
. This ‘treaty’ represented the first constitutional settlement in England between king and his people. It anticipates the Magna Carta of some 200 years later, and even the Reform Acts of the 19th century.
    With a resolve hitherto unknown, Ethelred set about forcing back the Danes, albeit briefly. This time he had along side him the strength and military nous of his now full grown son and heir, Edmund ‘Ironside’.

Ironside on the Case
Wessex’s pride restored
    E dmund II, nicknamed Ironside ‘for his valour’, had a considerable task before him on taking over the crown from his weak father, Ethelred II. Though the nation had expressed its forgiveness of their errant king when he vowed to fight the Danes, Ethelred’s backsliding and death soon afterwards left a divided country for Edmund to rule.
    Indeed Ethelred’s reign had caused such deep resentments that a powerful lobby, voiced by the bishops of Wessex, opposed Edmund’s kingship and instead wished to make the Danish Canute their king: ‘They repudiated and renounced in his [Canute’s] presence all the race of Ethelred, and concluded peace with him, swearing loyalty to him.’
    Edmund had inherited a nation at war with itself. Canute drew on supporters in the north and east to besiege Edmund’s stronghold in London, while Edmund rallied as many of his countrymen to his side, especially from his ancestral Wessex. In one campaign after another Edmund was victorious. After 30-odd years of humiliation, here at last was an Anglo-Saxon king behind whom the nation could unite.
    Alas some wounds would never heal. In what was probably a treacherous plot, one Eadric of Mercia joined forces with Edmund when the going suited, only to revert to his alliance with Canute at a critical stage in the Battle of Ashingdon, near Southend. Such double-dealing was, in fact, quite commonplace in Ethelred’s time but it was a decisive blow for Edmund’s cause – ‘all the flower of England perished there’.
    However, Edmund survived the battle. Later, while in retreat in Gloucestershire, Canute caught up with him and curiously the two warriors – perhaps out of mutual respect,