In the year of our Lord 1040, the Dane named Harthacnut became king of England. Although the English were expecting him to have the throne—following in the rocky wake of his father and his brother—he approached their shores with more than threescore warships, and landed as if he meant to conquer the island. This was insult enough, but Harthacnut’s impudence went further. To furnish this extravagant army that he did not need, he revived a war tax on his new subjects so harsh that it impoverished all of them. This tax was called the heregeld.
In the year of our Lord 1041, in the stormy depths of autumn, two of Harthacnut’s men rode to the town of Worcester, in Mercia, to collect the heregeld there. The people refused to pay it and they murdered the two tax collectors to clearly express their outrage.
In response, Harthacnut harried Worcester, meaning, with advance warning so the people themselves might flee, he sent men to raze the town.
But not just any men.
To demonstrate that his word was law, Harthacnut ordered the three great earls of the kingdom to destroy Worcester in their own persons, with the work of their own men. Had they refused, that fleet of warships would indeed have disgorged its mercenary troops, and England would have tumbled into chaos once again. Sickened by the task, the earls obeyed their new king.
Leofric of Mercia (in whose realm Worcester lay) was one of those three great earls who were ordered to raze the town. To be ordered by one’s superior to harm one’s own people was a loathsome thing.
Soon after the Worcester tragedy, this Danish king of England died, a young man whose dark soul had eaten him away from the inside. He left no heir of his body. But after great political intrigue and machinations, Harthacnut’s half brother Edward ascended the throne of England. He was placed there by the three great earls (none of whom were fond of him) because they could not find a better choice.
Edward was not the despot his brother had been. He returned power to the Great Council, giving the nobility and the Catholic Church a say in how the kingdom was ruled. But he had spent twenty-five years on the Continent, in Normandy, and it had shaped him deeply. He did not understand their Saxon ways. He did not understand their history. He did not understand their outrage over the heregeld.
He retained those foreign mercenaries, even in their idleness, and did not rescind the heregeld.
At least, not soon enough.