Note Gg. p. . The Massacre of Saint Brice

The account of the massacre in the Chronicles stands thus; “On þam geare se cyng hét ofslean ealle þa Deniscan men þa on Angelcynne wæron. Ðis wæs gedon on Britius mæssedæg, forðam þam cynge wæs gecyd þæt hi woldon hine besyrewan æt his life, and siððan ealle his witan, and habban siððan þis rice.”

To this account I have in the present edition ventured to add one piece of local detail, namely the story of the Danes at Oxford who took refuge in Saint Frithswyth’s minster. This is recorded in the charter of Æthelred in Cod. Dipl. iii. 327, which is marked by Mr. Kemble as spurious or doubtful, but which I am now inclined to follow Mr. James Parker (Historical Notices of Oxford, p. ) in accepting as at all events recording a real fact. The story runs thus; “Omnibus in hac patria degentibus sat constat fore notissimum, quoddam a me decretum cum concilio optimatum satrapumque meorum exivit ut cuncti Dani qui in hac insula, velut lolium inter triticum, pullulando emerserant justissima examinatione necarentur, hocque decretum morte tenus ad effectum perduceretur, ipsi quique in præfata urbe [Oxonefordæ] morabantur Dani mortem evadere nitentes, hoc Christi sacrarium, fractis per vim valvis et pessulis, intrantes, asylum sibi propugnaculumque contra urbanos suburbanosque ibi fieri decreverunt; sed cum populus omnis insequens, necessitate compulsus, eos ejicere niteretur nec valeret, igne tabulis injecto hanc ecclesiam, ut liquet, cum munimentis ac libris combusserunt.” I am now inclined to accept this story, and to hold that it has been wrongly transferred by William of Malmesbury to the time of the murder of Sigeferth and Morkere at Oxford in 1015. His story runs thus (ii. 179). After describing the murder of the two Thegns, much as in the Chronicle, but with some further details, he adds, “clientuli eorum, dominorum necem vindicare conantes, armis repulsi et in turrim ecclesiæ Sanctæ Frideswidæ coacti, unde dum ejici nequirent, incendio conflagrati. Sed mox regis pœnitentia, eliminata spurcitia, sacrarium reparatum; legi ego scriptum quod in archivo ejusdem ecclesiæ continetur index facti.” This certainly looks very much as if William had seen the original of the charter, which records the reparation of the church (“Dei adjutorio a me et a meis constat renovata”), and had put the story at a wrong time. That this is so is almost proved by the date. Æthelred could have had no time for church restoration between the Gemót of 1015 and his death in 1016. Between the massacre in 1002 and the date of the charter in 1004, though the state of things was not very favourable for such works, he had rather more time. The confusion between the two stories was easy. Sigeferth and Morkere and their followers, though not Danes in the same sense as the victims of Saint Brice, were almost certainly of Danish descent.

In Florence we get the first touch of amplification in the general story. The rest of the passage he merely translates, but the words “ealle þa Deniscan men þa on Angelcynne wæron” become “omnes Danos Angliam incolentes, majores et minores, utriusque sexus.” This is the first hint of any slaughter of women, and it is confined to Danish women.

William of Malmesbury directly mentions the massacre twice. The first time (ii. 165) it comes in almost incidentally, in a rhetorical passage about the character of Æthelred and the wretchedness of his reign. He speaks of “Danos, quos levibus suspicionibus omnes uno die in tota Anglia trucidari jusserat, ubi fuit videre miseriam, dum quisque carissimos hospites, quos etiam arctissima necessitudo dulciores effecerat, cogeretur prodere et amplexus gladio deturbare.” We begin here to get a dim vision of Danes possessed of English wives or mistresses. In the other passage (ii. 177) he describes the slaughter of Pallig, Gunhild, and their son, which is again brought in incidentally, as the moving cause of Swegen’s great invasion in 1013. Gunhild, “non illepidæ formæ virago,” had given herself as a hostage on the conclusion of peace with the Danes (“accepta Christianitate, obsidem se Danicæ pacis fecerat”). She was beheaded by order of Eadric (“eam cum cæteris Danis infaustus furor Edrici decapitari jusserat”), and, before her own death, she had to see her husband killed in some undescribed way, and her son, a promising lad, pierced with four spears (“occiso prius ante ora marito, et filio, commodæ indolis puero, quattuor lanceis forato”).

I suspect, as I said in the text, that the notion of a massacre of women, which we find even in Florence, arose out of this one tale of Gunhild. In William of Jumièges (v. 6) we get some soul-harrowing details;

“Edelredus, Anglorum rex, regnum, quod sub magna potentissimorum regum gloria diu floruerat, tanto nefariæ proditionis scelere regiminis sui tempore polluit, ut et pagani tam exsecrabile nefas horrendum judicarent. Nam Danos per omne regnum unanimi concordia secum cohabitantes, mortis periculum minime suspicantes, subito furore sub una die perimi, mulieres quoque alvo tenus terræ esse defossas, et ferocissimis canibus concitatis mamillas ab earum pectoribus crudeliter extorqueri, lactentes vero pueros ad domorum postes allisos excerebrari jussit, nullis criminum existentibus culpis.”

Here we have only Danish women and Danish children. In the Roman de Rou (6352 et seqq.) we get the first hint of a massacre of English women. It is not directly asserted, but it seems to be implied.

“En Engleterre erent Daneis
Cumunément od li Engleis,
Des Englesches fames perneient,
Filz et filles asez aveient.”
(vv. 6358–6361.)

Then we read an account of nearly the same horrors as in William of Jumièges, with some improvements. The details of the throat-cutting are given more minutely; we hear also of embowelling (“et as auquanz esbueloent”), and not only dogs but bears are employed to tear off the breasts of the women.

“Li dames è li dameseiles
Enfoient tresk ’as mameles,
Poiz amenoient li gainuns,
Ors enchaenez è brohuns,
Ki lur traient li cerveles
E desrumpeient li mameles.”
(vv. 6384–6389.)

In both accounts the destruction is all but complete; certain young men, two or more—“quidam juvenes” in William of Jumièges, “douz valez” in Wace—escape—according to William—in a ship which they found in the Thames, and carry the news to King Swegen in Denmark.

We now turn to John of Wallingford, who died in 1214, and who (Gale, ii. 547) knows much more about the matter. The Danes were far from being such comfortable neighbours to the English as they appear in the two Norman accounts. They held all the chief towns and did much mischief; “optima terræ municipia vel occupaverant vel præparaverant, et genti terræ multas molestias inferebant.” But the chief evil was the way in which they made themselves too agreeable to the English women. They took great care of their persons; they changed their clothes often, they combed their hair every day, and took a bath every Saturday; “habebant ex consuetudine patriæ unoquoque die comam pectere, sabbatis balneare, sæpe etiam vestituram mutare, et formam corporis multis talibus frivolis adjuvare.” The consequence was that many English matrons broke their marriage vows and many noble maidens became mistresses of Danes. Many wars and confusions arose out of these and the other evil deeds of the Danes, till it was settled that each province should get rid of its own Danes; “ut quælibet provincia suos Danos occideret.” They were accordingly all killed on Saturday, their bathing-day. John of Wallingford does not mention the day of Saint Brice, but in 1002 that festival would really fall on a Saturday. Here we get the destruction of women and children; but they are now distinctly the English women who had yielded to the seductions of the Danes and the children who were born of these unlawful unions; “ipsas mulieres suas, quæ luxuriæ eorum consenserant, et pueros, qui ex fœditate adulterii nati erant.” John of Wallingford does not employ either dogs or bears for the torture of the women; he is satisfied with cutting off their breasts; but those who had their breasts cut off and those who were put in the ground—in Italian phrase “planted”—now form two classes, while before there was only one; “mammas quarumdam absciderunt, alias vivas terræ infoderunt.” The number of young men who escape is raised to twelve.

I must now go back a generation or two to Henry of Huntingdon. He was living in 1154, yet he seems to profess to get his information from contemporaries—“de quo scelere in pueritia nostra quosdam vetustissimos loqui audivimus.” Æthelred, according to his account (M. H. B. 752 A), was puffed up with his marriage with Emma (“quo proventu rex Adelred in superbiam elatus”), and so massacred the Danes. He sent letters secretly to every town, ordering them to be put to death at one and the same hour, which was done on Saint Brice’s day. Some were slain with the sword, others were burned; “vel gladiis truncaverunt inpræmeditatos, vel igne simul cremaverunt subito comprehensos.” There is no mention of women, not even of Gunhild. This account of Henry of Huntingdon appears in an abridged form in Æthelred of Rievaux (Gen. Regg. X Scriptt. 362), who sarcastically adds that his royal namesake was “fortior solito,” though directly after he calls him, seemingly in earnest, “rex strenuissimus.”

Roger of Wendover (i. 444) transfers the story to the year 1012. In his version Swegen is present in England at the time of the death of Ælfheah; the tribute is paid; on its payment the Danes and English made a league of brotherhood to have but one heart and one soul; Swegen goes back to Denmark; then comes the massacre, on which Swegen comes back for his last invasion. The instigator of the massacre was “Huna quidam, regis Ethelredi militiæ princeps, vir strenuus et bellicosus.” The relations between Danes and English women are here, as in John of Wallingford, a chief ground of offence, but they take a somewhat different form; “Dani ... per totam Angliam adeo invaluerant, quod uxores virorum nobilium regni et filias violenter opprimere et ubique ludibrio tradere præsumpserunt.” We hear nothing of the Saturday bath and the other attractions of the Danes. Huna—a man who does not appear in history, but of whom we shall hear again in romance—complains of this state of things, and, by his advice, letters for a general massacre on Saint Brice’s day are sent to all parts, much as in Henry of Huntingdon. The Danes, “qui paullo ante cum Anglis, additio juramento, fuerant confœderati ut pacifice cum illis habitarent,” are massacred; the women too—what women we are not told—are killed with their children, but now both are killed by being dashed against door-posts; “mulieres cum parvulis ad postes domorum allisæ animas miserabiliter effuderunt.” Young men (“quidam juvenes”) take the news to Swegen as before.

Immediately after this, Roger goes on to tell the story of Gunhild in a form founded on that of William of Malmesbury, but with some improvements. Not only Gunhild herself, but her husband and son are hostages (“virago prudentissima, inter Danos et Anglos pacis mediatrix exsistens, obsidem sese cum viro et unico quem habebat filio, Ethelredo regi ad pacis securitatem dedit”), a thing plainly impossible in the case of Pallig. William of Malmesbury had mentioned Eadric in connexion with her death, probably because he looked on Eadric as the author of the whole scheme of massacre. But, as Huna fills that post in Roger’s story, Eadric becomes the special gaoler of Gunhild; “hæc quum fuisset a rege Eadrico duci”—which he was in 1012, though not in 1002—“ad custodiendum commissa.” Her death, by Eadric’s order, and that of Pallig and their son, follow much as in William of Malmesbury.

Here is a good case of the growth of legend, but the growth of legend is not all. It is easy to see from this last account that the massacre of Saint Brice got mixed up with quite different stories belonging to quite different dates, of which I shall have to speak again.

The massacre of Saint Brice may be compared with the two massacres of the Goths recorded by Ammianus, xxxi. 16; Zôsimos, iv. 26, 27, v. 35. The former, which was done “datis tectioribus litteris,” is distinctly approved by both historians; they speak of the “consilium prudens” and ἀγχινοία of Julius, the Eadric of the story, who took care that Theodosius, unlike Æthelred, should not know of his scheme. The second is a massacre of women and children.