[**] [4]
[* Wallingford, p. 547.]
[** See note D, at the end of the volume.]
{1002.}Secret orders were despatched to commence the execution every
where on the same day, and the festival of St. Brice, which fell on
a Sunday, [November 13,] the day on which the Danes usually bathed
themselves, was chosen for that purpose. It is needless to repeat the
accounts transmitted concerning the barbarity of this massacre: the rage
of the populace, excited by so many injuries, sanctioned by authority,
and stimulated by example, distinguished not between innocence and
guilt, spared neither sex nor age, and was not satiated without the
tortures as well as death of the unhappy victims. Even Gunilda, sister
to the king of Denmark, who had married Earl Paling, and had embraced
Christianity, was, by the advice of Edric, earl of Wilts, seized and
condemned to death by Ethelred, after seeing her husband and children
butchered before her face. This unhappy princess foretold, in the
agonies of despair, that her murder would soon be avenged by the total
ruin of the English nation.
{1003.} Never was prophecy better fulfilled; and never did barbarous
policy prove more fatal to the authors.
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