ecclesiastics, he made versions of parts of Bede; of the Pastorale of
Gregory the First; of the Soliloquies of St. Augustine, and of the work of
Boethius, _De Consolatione Philosophiæ_. Beside these principal works are
other minor efforts. In all his writings, he says he "sometimes interprets
word for word, and sometimes meaning for meaning." With Alfred went down
the last gleams of Saxon literature. Troubles were to accumulate steadily
and irresistibly upon the soil of England, and the sword took the place of
the pen.


THE DANES.--The Danes thronged into the realm in new incursions, until
850,000 of them were settled in the North and East of England. The
Danegelt or tribute, displaying at once the power of the invaders and the
cowardice and effeminacy of the Saxon monarchs, rose to a large sum, and
two millions[11] of Saxons were powerless to drive the invaders away. In
the year 1016, after the weak and wicked reign of the besotted _Ethelred_,
justly surnamed the _Unready_, who to his cowardice in paying tribute
added the cruelty of a wholesale massacre on St. Brice's Eve--since called
the Danish St. Bartholomew--the heroic Edmund Ironsides could not stay the
storm, but was content to divide the kingdom with _Knud_ (Canute) the
Great. Literary efforts were at an end. For twenty-two years the Danish
kings sat upon the throne of all England; and when the Saxon line was
restored in the person of Edward the Confessor, a monarch not calculated
to restore order and impart strength, in addition to the internal sources
of disaster, a new element of evil had sprung up in the power and cupidity
of the Normans.

Upon the death of Edward the Confessor, the claimants to the throne were
_Harold_, the son of Godwin, and _William of Normandy_, both ignoring the
claims of the Saxon heir apparent, Edgar Atheling. Harold, as has been