ETHELRED I. (called also Edelred and Ethered), King of Wessex and head of the Heptarchy, was the third surviving eon of King Ethelwulf, who in hie will (ratified by the Witan) appointed Ethelred to succeed to the throne immediately after his eldest brother Ethel bald ; he did not however succeed till after the death of his elder brother Ethelbert in 866. [ETHELWIILF and ETHELBERT of Wessex.] The reign of Ethelred was eminently disastrous both for Wessex and for the other states of England. In the last year of the preceding king, the great Danish chief, Ragnar Lodbrog, had been taken prisoner while snaking an attack on Northumbria, and put to death with cruel tortures. It appears to have been with the purpose of avenging this lose that the various Scandinavian nations immediately united their strength in that great expedition against England, which terminated in the conquest of half the country. The invaders, to the number of several thousands, under the command of Inguar (or Ivar) and Ubbo (or Hubba) landed on the coast of East Anglia, immediately after the accession of Ethelred to the throne of Wessex. Having encamped and passed the winter on shore, they marched into Yorkshire in the spring of 867, took possession (lat of March) of the city of York, and having there (12t'h of April) repulsed with great slaughter an attack of the Northumbrian under Osbert and Ella, made themselves masters of all the kingdom of Northumbria to the south of the Tyne, and placed Inguar over it as king. They.then marched into the kingdom of Mercia, and passed the winter of 867-8 in the town of Nottingham. Beorhed, the Mercian king, now solicited the aid of Ethelred ; and the King of Wessex, accompanied by his younger brother Alfred, whom he appears to have admitted to a share of the royal power, advanced with an army against the foreigners. The Danes however did not venture to engage the allied forces of Wessex and Mercia; and a treaty was made by which they agreed to evacuate Nottingham and to retire to York. In that city they remained quiet for the remainder of this year, and all the next, during which England was afflicted by a severe famine, followed by a terrible mortality both of human beings and cattle. But, in the spring of 870, disregarding the late pacification, the Danes resumed hostilities, carrying their arms across the Humber into Lincolnshire, which was included in the dominions of Mercia. Notwithstanding some attempts to check their progress, which were made by Earl Algar, the governor of the district, they speedily overran all Lincoln, and pushed their way into the adjoining territory of East Anglia, sacking and destroying in their course the abbeys of Croyland and Medehamatead (or Peterborough), the town of Huntingdon, and the nunnery of Ely, and massacreing and laying waste wherever they appeared with unheard-of ferocity. At
u village called Hoxton, iu Norfolk, they seized Edmund, the East Anglian king, and put him to death : he sustained the torments they inflicted upon him with such constancy that he was afterwards revered as a martyr, and the 20th of November, the day on which he met his fate, was assigned to him in the calendar. His death made the Danes masters of East Anglia, over which they placed Godrun, one of their chiefs, as king. They now resolved to invade Wessex, the only state which they had not either conquered or rendered powerless. They entered Berkshire, under the command of Halfden and Bacaeg, and took the town of Reading without encountering any resistance ; but they were soon after attacked by Earl Ethelwulf at the neighbouring village of Inglefield, and driven from their ground with the loss of Sidnor, one of their most renowned captains. Four days after they were fallen upon at Reading by King Ethelred and his brother Alfred ; but on this occasion the Saxons were repulsed with great loss, the brave Earl Ethelwulf being among the slain. The battle of Reading however was followed in four days more by another more important encounter at a place which the old writers call Aescesdun, or tho Ash-tree Hill, and which has been supposed by some to be Ashhampatead in the west, by others Aehton in the cast, of Berkshire. The Danes were here attacked with great impetu osity and valour by Alfred, and, notwithstanding their advantageous position, were, after a struggle of some length, completely defeated and put to flight. It is said that the English chased them for the whole of the night and next day over the country till they reached the town of Reading, in which they again shut themselves up. But a fortnight after the battle of Ash-tree Hill they again met the two kings of Wessex at Basing, in the north of Hampshire, and this time the English were worsted. A similar result attended the next battle, fought, about two months after, at a place called Merton, which has been variously conjectured to be places named Merton in Surrey, Oxfordshire, Wilts, and Berkshire. In this engagement, which must have taken place early in 871, Ethelred received a wound, of which he died soon after Easter, leaving the now almost shadowy inheritance of the crown of Wessex, and what would at a later period have been called the suzerainty of England, to his younger brother Alfred.