all their best meat, and bread, and beer, and always call them Lord
Danes. He made friends himself with the Northmen, or Normans, who
had settled in France, and married Emma, the daughter of their duke;
but none of his plans prospered: things grew worse and worse, and
his mind and his people's grew so bitter against the Danes, that
at last it was agreed that all over the South of England every
Englishman should rise up in one night and murder the Dane who
lodged in his house.

Among those Danes who were thus wickedly killed was the sister of the
King of Denmark. Of course he was furious when he heard of it, and
came over to England determined to punish the cruel, treacherous king
and people, and take the whole island for his own. He did punish the
people, killing, burning, and plundering wherever he went; but he
could never get the king into his hands, for Ethelred went off in the
height of the danger to Normandy, where he had before sent his wife
Emma, and her children, leaving his eldest son( child of his first
wife), Edmund Ironside, to fight for the kingdom as best he might.

The King of Denmark died in the midst of his English war; but his son
Cnut went on with the conquest he had begun, and before long Ethelred,
the Unready died, and Edmund Ironside was murdered, and Cnut became
King of England, as well as of Denmark. He became a Christian, and
married Emma, Ethelred's widow, though she was much older than himself.
He had been a hard and cruel man, but he now laid aside his evil ways,
and became a noble and wise and just king, a lover of churches and
good men; and the English seem to have been as well off under him as
if he had been one of their own kings. There is no king of whom more
pleasant stories are told. One is of his wanting to go to church at
Ely Abbey one cold Candlemas Day. Ely was on a hill in the middle of