ed to the infamy of purchasing a precarious peace from
the enemy, by the payment of thirty thousand pounds.

The English endeavored to employ this interval in making preparations
against the return of the Danes, which they had reason soon to expect. A
law was made, ordering the proprietors of eight hides of land to provide
each a horseman and a complete suit of armor, and those of three hundred
and ten hides to equip a ship for the defence of the coast. When this
navy was assembled, which must have consisted of near eight hundred
vessels,[*] all hopes of its success were disappointed by the factions,
animosities, and dissensions of the nobility. Edric had impelled his
brother Brightric to prefer an accusation of treason against Wolfnoth,
governor of Sussex, the father of the famous Earl Godwin; and that
nobleman, well acquainted with the malevolence as well as power of his
enemy, found no means of safety Dut in deserting with twenty ships to
the Danes.

[* There were two hundred and forty-three thousand
six hundred hides in England. Consequently, the ships
equipped must be seven hundred and eighty-five. The cavalry
was thirty thousand four hundred and fifty men.]

Brightric pursued him with a fleet of eighty sail; but his ships being
shattered in a tempest, and stranded on the coast, he was suddenly
attacked by Wolfnoth, and all his vessels burnt and destroyed. The
imbecility of the king was little capable of repairing this misfortune.
The treachery of Edric frustrated every plan for future defence; and
the English navy, disconcerted, discouraged, and divided, was at last
scattered into its several harbors.

It is almost impossible, or would be tedious, to relate particularly all
the miseries to which the English were henceforth exposed. We hear of
nothing but the sacking and burning of towns; the devastation of the
open country; the appearance of the enemy in every quarter of the
kingdom; their cruel diligence in discovering any corner which had
not been ransacked by their former violence. The broken and disjointed
narration of the ancient historians is here well adapted to the nature
of the war, which was conducted by such sudden inroads, as would have
been dangerous even to a united and well-governed kingdom, but proved
fatal where nothing but a general consternation and mutual diffidence
and dissension prevailed. The governors of one province refused to march
to the assistance of another, and