Æthelred himself was the black sheep of his illustrious family—a long line of noble men they were for the most part. In that age much of the character of a nation's history depended upon its monarch, and it is almost impossible to tell the fortunes of a country except by giving the biographies [Pg103] of the reigning king. This Æthelred seems to have had energy enough, but he began many enterprises and never ended them, and wasted a great deal of strength on long, needless expeditions, and does not appear to have made effective resistance to the enemies who came knocking at the very gates of England. He had no tact and little bravery, and was given to putting his trust in unworthy and treacherous followers. Æthelred was the descendant of good King Ælfred and his noble successors, but his own kingdom was ready to fall to pieces before he reigned over it very long, and his reign of thirty-eight years came near to being the ruin of England. There were two or three men who helped him in the evil work, who were greater traitors at heart than Æthelred himself, and we can hardly understand why they were restored to favor after their treason and selfishness were discovered. As one historian says, if we could only have a few of the private letters, of which we have such abundance two or three centuries later, they would be the key to many difficulties. The Danes were nibbling at the shores of England as rats would gnaw at a biscuit. They grew more and more troublesome. Over in Normandy, Richard the Good was treating these same Danes like friends, and allowing them to come into his harbors to trade with the Norman merchants. In the Côtentin country they found a people much like themselves, preserving many old traditions, and something of the northern speech. The Côtentin lands were poor and rocky, but the hills were crowded [Pg104] with castles, well armed and well fortified, and the men were brave soldiers and sailors, true descendants of the old vikings. They sought their fortunes on the sea too, and we can trace the names of these Côtentin barons and their followers through the army of William the Conqueror to other castles in the broad English lands that were won in less than a hundred years from Æthelred's time. Very likely some of these Côtentin Normans were in league with the northern Danes who made their head-quarters on the Norman shores, and went plundering across the Channel. Soon Æthelred grew very angry, which was to be expected, and he gathered his fleets at Portsmouth, and announced that he should bring Duke Richard back a captive in chains, and waste the whole offending country with fire, except the holy St. Michael's Mount. [Illustration: QUEEN EMMA OR ÆLFGIFU (FROM THE REGISTER OF HYDE ABBEY).]