As long as St Dunstan lived, AEthelred was not so bad as he afterwards became.  We must remember what a bad mother AEthelred had in AElfthryth, or Elfrida, who was an evil wife to her first husband, and most probably caused the murder of the king her step-son, the son of King Edgar, who was her second husband.  This was the Edward known as St Edward the Martyr.

The story of AElfeah comes under the year A.D. 1011.  “In this year sent the king and his witan to the (Danish) army, and desired peace, and promised them tribute and food on condition that they ceased from their harrying.  They had then overrun East Anglia, and Essex, and Middlesex, and Oxfordshire, and Cambridgeshire, and Hertfordshire; and south of Thames, all Kent and Sussex, and Hastings, and Surrey, and Berkshire, and Hampshire, and much of Wiltshire.  All these misfortunes befell us through ill counsel, that they were not in time (either) offered tribute or fought against, but when they had done the greatest ill, then peace and truce were made with them.  And nevertheless for all the truce and tribute, they went flockmeal everywhere and harried and robbed and slew our poor folk.  And then, in this year, between the nativity of St Mary and St Michael’s Mass, they sat round Canterbury and came into it through treachery, because AElfmaer betrayed it, whose life the Archbishop AElfeah had before saved.  And there they took the Archbishop AElfeah, and AElfweard, the king’s reeve, and Abbot AElfmaer, and Bishop Godwin.  And Abbot AElfmaer they let go away.  And they took there within all the clergy, and men and women:  it was untellable to any man how much of the folk there was.  And they were afterwards in the town as long as they would.  And when they had thoroughly surveyed the city then went they to their ships and led the Archbishop with them.  Then was he a captive who erewhile had been the head of the English race and of Christendom.[I] There might then be seen misery there where oft erewhile men had seen bliss, in that wretched city whence had first come to us Christendom and bliss before God and before the world.

[Footnote I:  i.e. of English Christianity.]

“And they kept the archbishop with them as long as to the time when they martyred him.

“A.D. 1012.  In this year came Eadric the ealdorman, and all the chief witan, religious and lay, of the English folk of London, before Easter:  Easterday was then on the date of the Ides of April (13th April).  And they were there then so long as until all the tribute was paid, after Easter; that was eight and forty thousand pounds.  Then on the Saturday (19th April) was the (Danish) army greatly stirred up against the bishop, because he would not promise them any money; but he forbad that anything should be given for him.  They were also very drunken, because wine had been brought there from the south.  Then took they the bishop, led him to their husting on the eve of Sunday, the octave of the Pasch; and there they then shamefully killed him:  they pelted him with bones and the heads of oxen, and then one of them struck him with an axe-iron on the head, so that with the blow he sank down; and his holy blood fell on the earth, and that his holy soul be sent to God’s kingdom.”