midwinter’s tide.  Then became the dread of the army so great, that no man could think or discover how they could be driven out of the land, or this land maintained against them; for they had every shire in Wessex sadly marked by burning and by plundering.  Then the king began earnestly with the witan to consider what might seem most advisable to them all, so that this land might be saved, before it was utterly destroyed.  Then the king and his witan decreed, for the behoof of the whole nation, though it was hateful to them all, that they needs must pay tribute to the Danish army.  Then the king sent to the army, and directed it to be made known to them that he would that there should be a truce between them, and that tribute should be paid, and food given them.  And then all that they accepted, and then were they victualled from throughout the English nation.”—­Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Bohn’s Edition.

xiii This is copied almost verbatim from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

xiv The account is taken almost verbatim from Florence of Worcester.

xv Children of Ethelred.

By his two wives—­(1) Aelfleda—­(2) Emma, Ethelred had fourteen children, of whom only four or five have been mentioned in this narrative, or are of importance to the student—­Edmund Ironside and his brother Edwy (chapter 25), by Aelfleda, and Alfred and Edward by Emma—­the last well known in history as Edward the Confessor, and introduced in Chapter xix. of this tale.  The following genealogical table from Edgar to the children of Edmund may be of use.  It will be remembered that the lineage of the present royal house passes through the last-named son of Edmund Ironside to Egbert: 

Edgar
  * Edward the Martyr, d. 979.
  * Ethelred the Unready, d. 1016.
       + Edmund Ironside, 1016.
            o Edmund.
            o Edward, who became the great-grandfather of Henry the
              Second.
       + Edwy.
       + Elgitha.
       + Alfred, 1036.
       + Edward the Confessor, 1066.

xvi Sceorstan.

Antiquarians differ much about the site of this famous battle.  Sharp thinks it was near Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, and Thorpe, in his notes to “Florence of Worcester,” says—­“May not Chimney be the spot, a hamlet in Oxfordshire, in the parish of Bampton-in-the-Bush, near the edge of Gloucestershire, the name of Chimney being merely a translation, introduced after the Norman Conquest, of Sceorstan, which may probably have owed its origin to a Saxon house or hall, conspicuous for having a chimney when that luxury was of rare occurrence?” Others say that Sceorstan was not in Anglo-Saxon “a chimney,” but “a graven stone,” and make the site that of a boundary stone, still separating the four counties of Oxford, Gloucester, Worcester, and Warwick, near Chipping Norton.  Bosworth says it is Sherston in Wilts.

xvii Single Combat between Edmund and Canute.