Meanwhile the English found in Canute, the son and successor of Sweyn, an enemy no less terrible than the prince from whom death had so lately delivered them. He ravaged the eastern coast with merciless fury, and put ashore all the English hostages at Sandwich, after having cut off their hands and noses. He was obliged, by the necessity of his affairs, to make a voyage to Denmark; but returning soon after, he continued his depredations along the southern coast: he even broke into the counties of Dorset, Wilts, and Somerset; where an army was assembled against him, under the command of Prince Edmond and Duke Edric. The latter still continued his perfidious machinations; and after endeavouring in vain to get the prince into his power, he found means to disperse the army; and he then openly deserted to Canute with forty vessels. [MN 1015.] Notwithstanding this misfortune, Edmond was not disconcerted; but, assembling all the force of England, was in a condition to give battle to the enemy. The king had had such frequent experience of perfidy among his subjects, that he had lost all confidence in them: he remained at London, pretending sickness, but really from apprehensions that they intended to buy their peace, by delivering him into the hands of his enemies. The army called aloud for their sovereign to march at their head against the Danes; and, on his refusal to take the field, they were so discouraged, that those vast preparations became ineffectual for the defence of the kingdom. Edmond, deprived of all regular supplies to maintain his soldiers, was obliged to commit equal ravages with those which were practised by the Danes; and after making some fruitless expeditions into the north, which had submitted entirely to Canute’s power, he retired to London, determined there to maintain, to the last extremity, the small remains of English liberty. [MN 1016.] He here found every thing in confusion by the death of the king, who expired after an unhappy and inglorious reign of thirty-five years. He left two sons by his first marriage, Edmond, who succeeded him, and Edwy, whom Canute afterwards murdered. His two sons by the second marriage, Alfred and Edward, were immediately, upon Ethelred’s death, conveyed into Normandy by Queen Emma.