A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



shire right up to the walls of the city of Winchester. Then came the 

 wickedness of the massacre of St. Brice's Day (13 November, 1002), 

 when, after all allowance for exaggeration, the murder of a great number 

 of Danes throughout the kingdom was accomplished. The cruel work 

 began at Winchester, whence the order emanated. Prompt and 

 bitter was the vengeance. The next year brought Sweyn, with the 

 young Cnut his son, back to England to avenge their kindred. For 

 four years Sweyn marched backwards and forwards through southern 

 and eastern England in a continuous march of pillage and slaughter. 

 Southampton was sacked ; the abbey of Romsey was pillaged, the abbess 

 and her nuns escaping to Winchester. Waltham was burnt, and most 

 of the churches of the county were rased to the ground. In 1006 the 

 Danes had mastered all central England and made the Isle of Wight their 

 permanent winter quarters. They were bought off from time to time 

 by immense sums, but only to be succeeded by fresh bands. In 1014 

 Canterbury was sacked and burnt; and St. Alphege, who had been trans- 

 lated from Winchester to Canterbury in 1005, was murdered. In the 

 following year, 1015, Winchester had to ransom herself and give host- 

 ages. 



To this terrible gloom, which had settled down more darkly over 

 Hampshire than over any other part of the country, there now came 

 unexpected relief. Sweyn died in 1014, and the feeble Ethelred returned 

 from Normandy with his heroic son Edmund Ironside. Cnut's main 

 strength was in Wessex, and he established his capital at Winchester. 

 On Ethelred's death in 1016, the Witan at Southampton accepted Cnut 

 as their king, whilst the burghers of London stood by Edmund. After 

 some months of fierce fighting between the rivals the two kings agreed 

 to divide the kingdom, with Winchester as the capital of the Dane's 

 dominion ; but immediately afterwards Edmund died, and Cnut became 

 the sole king of England. The Christianity of the young king seems 

 to have been genuine. As an act of reparation for the murder of Saint 

 Alphege by his countrymen, he caused the remains to be enshrined at 

 Canterbury and took an important part in the ceremonial. Winchester, 

 as the seat of his government, became the place of the greatest import- 

 ance in the kingdom. Cnut was lavish in his gifts both to the Old and 

 New Minsters, and on his death at Shaftesbury in 1035, at the early age 

 of forty, his remains were brought back for burial in the Old Minster. 1 



Cnut had taken to wife Emma, daughter of the Duke of Nor- 

 mandy and widow of Ethelred, and after the succession and death of 

 their sons Harold and Harthacnut (the last of the Danish race of kings), 

 England joyfully called to the throne the surviving son of Ethelred and 

 Emma. This son, best known as Edward the Confessor, was crowned 

 at Winchester on Easter Day, 1043, by the Archbishops of Canterbury 

 and York and a host of suffragans. Alwine, a Norman by birth and 

 related to Queen Emma, was at this time Bishop of Winchester. The 



1 His bones, with those of Emma his queen, are in one of the coffers on the screen of the 

 cathedral church. 



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