was her second husband. This was the Edward known as St Edward the
Martyr.

The story of Ælfeah 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 Ælfmaer betrayed it, whose life the
Archbishop Ælfeah had before saved. And there they took the Archbishop
Ælfeah, and Ælfweard, the king's reeve, and Abbot Ælfmaer, and Bishop
Godwin. And Abbot Ælfmaer 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.]