manners among the English, that they retained all their ancient
ferocity, and valued themselves only on their national character of
military bravery. The recent as well as more ancient achievements of
their countrymen tended to support this idea; and the English princes,
particularly Athelstan and Edgar, sensible of that superiority, had
been accustomed to keep in pay bodies of Danish troops, who were
quartered about the country, and committed many violences upon the
inhabitants. These mercenaries had attained to such a height of
luxury, according to the old English writers [p], that they combed
their hair once a day, bathed themselves once a week, changed their
clothes frequently; and by all these arts of effeminacy, as well as by
their military character, had rendered themselves so agreeable to the
fair sex, that they debauched the wives and daughters of the English,
and dishonoured many families. But what most provoked the
inhabitants, was, that instead of defending them against invaders,
they were ever ready to betray them to the foreign Danes, and to
associate themselves with all straggling parties of that nation. The
animosity between the inhabitants of English and Danish race had from
these repeated injuries risen to a great height; when Ethelred, from a
policy incident to weak princes, embraced the cruel resolution of
massacring the latter throughout all his dominions [q]. [MN 1002.]
Secret orders were despatched to commence the execution everywhere on
the same day; and the festival of St. Brice [MN Nov. 13.], which fell
on a Sunday, the day on which the Danes usually bathed themselves, was
chosen for that purpose. It is needless to repeat the accounts
transmitted concerning the barbarity of this massacre: the rage of the
populace, excited by so many injuries, sanctioned by authority, and
stimulated by example, distinguished not between innocence and guilt,
spared neither sex nor age, and was not satiated without the tortures
as well as death of the unhappy victims. Even Gunilda, sister to the
King of Denmark, who had married Earl Paling, and had embraced
Christianity, was, by the advice of Edric, Earl of Wilts, seized and
condemned to death by Ethelred, after seeing her husband and children
butchered before her face. This unhappy princess foretold, in the
agonies of despair, that her murder would soon be avenged by the total
ruin of the English nation.
[FN [p] Wallingford, p. 547. [q] See note [D] at