286 EOGER OF WENDOVER. [A.D. 1010. messengers, assuring them, that if in aught he had done amiss, he would make it all right according to their mind. Accordingly, in the spring he came to England, where he was joyfully and honourably received by all ; and then by common consent an army was assembled against Cnute, who had gained over the men of Lindesey, and had now moved his camp in order to forage. But king Ethelred, coming on him by surprise, put him to flight, and ravaging the whole of Lindesey put to death all the inhabitants he could find. Cnute, by the aid of the wind, escaped with his fleet to the port of Sandwich ; where, to the reproach of the English nation, he cut off the hands, ears, and nostrils of all the hostages which had been given to his father, and then, suffering them to depart, he set out for Denmark to recruit his forces. In the same year, on the twenty-ninth of September, the sea passed its accustomed limit and drowned many towns and an immense multitude of people. Treachery of earl Eadric. A.D. 1015. A great council both of English and Danes was held at Oxford, where, by the counsel of the wicked earl Eadric, the king ordered a number of Danish nobles to be put to death, on the charge of betraying the king ; and their followers, seeking to revenge the death of their lords, were repulsed and driven into the tower of the church of the holy virgin Fretheswith, where they were burnt with fire, as they could not in any other way be ejected. The church was shortly after by the king's command restored to its former state. Among the other nobles who were slain were Sigefurth and Mercher, earls of Northumberland, sons of Eargrin a nobleman, who were invited to a feast by the wicked earl Eadric, and were treacherously slain at his table. King Ethelred ordered Algiva, wife of earl Sigefurth, and a most noble woman, to be conducted to Malmesbury and there confined. While she remained there, the king's son, Eadmund, called by the English nation 'Ironside,' for his great strength of body and of mind, came and married her without his father's knowledge, and setting out with her for Northumberland, invaded the entire territory of the aforesaid two earls, and subjugated their people. Now this Eadmund was not begotten of Emma the Norman, but of a