The Comic History of EnglandÀ Beckett, Gilbert Abbott
History
The Comic History of England
À Beckett, Gilbert Abbott
Great Britain -- History -- Humor
* Others think this royal spoon was not fiddle headed, but
that he was the earliest specimen of the king's pattern, of
his enemy. Emma, who was called the "Flower of Normandy,"
consented to transplant herself to England, and became the
acknowledged daisy of the British Court.
Young Sweyn had now become king of Denmark, and had made friends with
Olave, king of Norway, the son of old Olave, a deceased pirate, who had
made his fortune by sweeping the very profitable crossing from his own
country to England. These two scamps ravaged the southern coast in 994,
and Ethelred, the unready king, was obliged to buy them off with ready
money. In the year 1001, they made another demand of £24,000, which left
the sovereign not a single dump, except those into which he naturally
fell at the draining of his treasury.
Ethelred, who, if he was unready for everything else, appears to have
been always ready for a quarrel, had contrived to fall out with Richard
the Second, Duke of Normandy, and he was on the point of taking up arms,
when he laid his hand at the feet of Emma.
We would willingly take an enormous dip of ink, and letting it fall on
our paper, blot out for ever from our annals the Danish massacre,
which occurred at about the period to which our history has arrived.
Unfortunately, however, were we to overturn an entire inkstand, we
should only add to the blackness of the page, which tells us that
the Danes were savagely murdered at a time when they were living as
fellow-subjects among the people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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