it of sloth and simony. With no regular system of taxation, little
government machinery, and no police, standing army, or royal judges, it
was impossible to enforce royal protection adequately, or to check the
centrifugal tendency of England to break up into its component parts.
The monarchy was a man rather than a machine; a vigorous ruler could
make some impression, but whenever the crown passed to a feeble king,
the reign of anarchy recommenced.

Alfred's successors annexed the Danelaw which Alfred had left to
Guthrum, but their efforts to assimilate the Danes provoked in the
first place a reaction against West Saxon influence which threatened
more than once to separate England north of the Thames from Wessex,
and, secondly, a determination on the part of Danes across the sea to
save their fellow-countrymen in England from absorption. Other causes
no doubt assisted to bring about a renewal of Danish invasion; but the
Danes who came at the end of the tenth century, if they began as
haphazard bands of rovers, greedy of spoil and ransom, developed into
the emissaries of an organized government bent on political conquest.
Ethelred, who had to suffer from evils that were incurable as well as
for his predecessors' neglect, bought off the raiders with ever-
increasing bribes which tempted them to return; and by levying Danegeld
to stop invasion, set a precedent for direct taxation which the
invaders eventually used as the financial basis of efficient
government. At length a foolish massacre of the Danish "uitlanders" in
England precipitated the ruin of Anglo-Saxon monarchy; and after heroic
resistance by Edmund Ironside, England was absorbed in the empire of
Canute.

Canute tried to put himself into the position, while avoiding the
mistakes, of his English predecessors. He adopted the Christian