Then the King, who was too cowardly to fight, bethought him of another means to get rid of his enemies. On St Brice’s Day, 1002, he sent forth a secret order that all the Danes in the kingdom should be massacred in that single night. In many cases the Danes had become friends of the English people among whom they lived, or had married English wives and were living peaceably among the inhabitants; but on that terrible night each Englishman was forced by his miserable King to rise up and massacre in cold blood the Danish people who lived with him, even wives being compelled to betray their husbands and friends to put to death their friends. Among those who fell on that fearful night was a beautiful sister of Sweyn’s, who had married an English nobleman and embraced Christianity; she was living in England, and her presence there was looked upon as a pledge that Sweyn would not attack the kingdom. She was beheaded by command of one of the King’s worthless favourites, whom he afterwards raised to a high position and made governor of the Mercians. First he murdered her husband before her face, and her young son was pierced through with four spears, and finally she herself was beheaded by the furious Edric. She bore herself with fortitude and dignity, and people said that in death she was as beautiful as in life, for even her cheeks did not lose their colour. Sweyn knew England well, for he had several times raided there in his youth, and he was probably kept fully informed of all that was going on by the Danish chief of the East Angles of Norfolk and Suffolk, who is well known both in Scandinavian and in English history. His name was Thorkill the Tall, and he was a great viking, and called himself king, even when he had no lands to rule over. He was one of the noblest born of the Danish men, and King Olaf the Saint of Norway was not ashamed to enter into partnership with him. In 1009 he sailed over to England with a vast army, and landed at Sandwich, taking Canterbury and overrunning all the south-east of England. Ethelred was so terrified by this fresh incursion that he called the whole nation out against the invaders; but in spite of this they marched about wherever they pleased, taking Canterbury and settling down upon East Anglia, from which point Thorkill the Tall ravaged the country. “Oft,” says the old chronicler, “they fought against London city, but there they ever met with ill fare;” but it was the only place of which this could be said.