1001. "The army [the Danes of course] went over the land and did as was their wont. Slew and burned ... it was sad in every way for they never ceased from their evil."
1002. "In this year the king and his witan resolved, that tribute would be paid and peace made with them, on condition that they should cease from their evil." This they accepted and were paid, £24,000.
1006. "At midwinter the Winchester folk might see an insolent and fearless army as they went by their gate to the sea, and fetched them food and treasure over fifty miles from the sea. Then was there so great awe of the army that no one could think or devise how they should be driven from the country. Every shire in Wessex had they cruelly marked with burning and with harrying. The king began then with his witan earnestly to consider what might seem most advisable to them all, so that the country might be protected ere it were at last undone." This time the tribute was £36,000, and another time the ships put to sea with a Danegelt of £48,000.
England grew more and more miserable and shamefully unable to defend herself, the captains of her fleet were incapable or treacherous, and at last, when some of the ships had been wrecked and there had been some sad disasters at sea, the chronicle has a more despairing tone than ever. "It was as if all counsel had come to an end," the writer says, "and the king and aldermen and all the high witan went home, and let the toil of all the nation lightly perish." [Pg175]
Æthelred the Unready won for himself, in his reign of thirty-eight years, the hearty contempt and distrust of all his people. There is a temptation to blame him for the misery of England, and to attribute it all to his faults and to the low aims and standards of his character, to his worthless ambitions. But, in a general way, the great men, or notorious men of history, who stand out before a dim and half-forgotten background, are only typical of their time and representative of it. One very good man, or bad man, cannot be absolutely a single specimen of his kind; there must be others who rank with him, and who have been his upholders and influencers. So while the story of any nation is in its early chapters, and seems to be merely an account of one ruler or statesman after another, we must not forget that each symbolized his day and generation,—a brave leader of a brave race, or a dull or placid or serene representative of a secure, inactive age.