Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 6, 2025
Some slept; others watched restlessly, and talked together, sleepless under the influence of that strange excitement, half exhilaration and half fear, which prevails in a camp on the eve of a battle. The camp fires burned brightly all the night, and the sentinels kept vigilant watch, expecting every moment some sudden alarm. The night passed quietly away. Ethelred and Alfred both arose early.
Ethelred had hoped to gain some help from the duke; but he could only give us shelter in our need, for he had even yet to hold the land that Rolf, his forefather, had won against his neighbours, and could spare us not one of his warriors. So in Rouen we waited and watched for some new turn of things that might give us fresh hopes of regaining our own land.
The first mention of Weymouth in West Saxon times is in a charter of King Ethelred, still existing, that makes a grant of land "in Weymouth or Wyke Regis" to Atsere, one of the King's councillors. Edward Confessor gave the manor to Winchester, and afterwards it became the property of Eleanor, the consort of Edward I. The large village slowly grew into a small town and port.
It was an expedition greater than any that Brihtnoth had ever met with steel or Ethelred with gold, and its purpose was one of deliberately planned invasion and conquest. At first when Olaf and Sweyn met and joined their fleets and armies there was a disagreement between them as to which chief was to assume the higher command.
The only course he seems to have thought of, therefore, was the old cowardly policy of again buying peace with gold. Olaf was allowed to anchor his fleet for the winter at Southampton, and in order to avert any raiding into the surrounding country, Ethelred levied a special tax upon the people of Wessex to supply the crews with food and pay.
In this extremity, Ethelred, to whom historians give the epithet of the UNREADY, instead of rousing his people to defend with courage their honour and their property, hearkened to the advice of Siricius, Archbishop of Canterbury, which was seconded by many of the degenerate nobility; and paying the enemy the sum of ten thousand pounds, he bribed them to depart the kingdom.
Alfred lived at the court of Ethelbert, and became noted for the intelligence and studious activities which were to make his future reign the conspicuous epoch in English history, so brilliantly commemorated a thousand years after his death in 901, in the millenary celebrated in Winchester and its neighborhood in 1901. Ethelbert died in 866 and was succeeded by Ethelred.
For St Edward was at heart a Norman, and Winchester, beside summing up in itself all the splendour of pre-Norman England, had been given by Ethelred to the widow of Canute, Emma, the mother of St Edward.
They would soon have been at the mercy of the Saxon king, had it not unfortunately happened that the Danes on the east coast, from Essex to Northumbria, joined the invaders, which unlooked-for event compelled Alfred to raise the blockade, and send Ethelred his son to the west, where the Danes were again strongly intrenched at Banfleet, near London.
I continued the story: "But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanour, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass with this legend enwritten
Word Of The Day
Others Looking