In 1013, however, Sweyn returned, and proceeded to conquer the whole of England. He began from the north-east, and soon the Danish settlements had submitted to him, and their example was followed by all the English to the north of Watling Street. Mercia was forced to yield after it had been cruelly ravaged, and then the Danish warrior took Oxford and Winchester, the chief towns of the old kingdom of Wessex. Leaving his son Canute with the fleet, he on a sudden laid siege to London, where Ethelred was shut up. Though he was but ill provided with necessaries to besiege in form a place of such importance, he imagined the citizens would be terrified at his menaces; but finding they were not moved by them he desisted from his enterprise, and passed on and ravaged the western parts of Wessex, where he found no opposition to his arms. However, as he could not be satisfied whilst London was out of his power, he resolved to besiege it once more; but whilst he was preparing for the siege with greater precaution than before, he had information of Ethelred's departure from thence. This worthless prince, ever dreading to fall into the hands of an enemy he had so cruelly injured, and perceiving himself unsafe in England, retired into Normandy with all his family, upon which the Londoners resolved to submit to the King of Denmark, to whom all the rest of the kingdom was now subject; and now Sweyn was looked upon as King of England without any opposition, no one in the kingdom daring to dispute his title. It does not appear that Sweyn was ever crowned. His first act of sovereignty was to levy a heavy tax to pay his Danish troops, by whose assistance he had conquered England. But at any rate his reign was exceedingly brief, for he died in 1014. Some writers say that he was poisoned, others that he died of a cold, while a third set declare that he was killed by the apparition of St. Edmund, formerly King of East Anglia, armed with a lance, in order to save the town and monastery in which his canonised bones lay from being plundered by the invaders. This is only a legendary version of what was probably a fact, that shortly before his death Sweyn had contemplated an attack on the town of Bury St. Edmunds. [Illustration: MARTYRDOM OF ALPHEGE. (_See p._ 60.)] On the death of Sweyn, Canute, his son, was proclaimed king; but their common danger had given something like energy and combination to the councils of the English. They recalled Ethelred from his exile in Normandy, and pledged themselves to support him on the throne against the Danes, whose government was arbitrary, cruel, and oppressive.