So, on 13 November 1002, Ethelred the Unready (King of England) ordered the killing of all the Danes in the land. This has become known as the St. Brice's Day Massacre, and really isn't a very cheerful thing at all, therefore makes an excellent topic for a gloomy Saturday night, no?
One of the main problems with History is that people don't really remember the good times (unless something really, really good happened). For example, the reign of Henry VII was a fairly happy and prosperous one - the nation had plenty of money, there was not a lot of disease or famine (well, no more than people at the time were used to) and he didn't partake in any major battles or wars (not including the Battle of Bosworth Field, where he stole the crown from Richard III...). Anyway, things were all really rather cheerful, if not ecstatically wonderful, until Henry VIII took the throne.
Initially, he was well loved - he was reportedly very tall and handsome, and inherited a peaceable country in very good economic shape, so people had no cause to complain, really - and then things went downhill a bit. The Reformation caused massive disturbances throughout the land (though admittedly, not as much as they would later cause in the reigns of his three children) and throughout the Court - especially concerning his many marriages. He was not a spendthrift, like his father had been and threw money away on lavish feats, Court entertainments and castles, and the country soon became very poor - something even the sacking of the monasteries (a move which proved very unpopular in some circles) couldn't reverse. There were a few wars and rebellions, and by the time he died, in 1547, the country was in a much worse shape than when he had ascended the throne, in 1509.
And it is his reign, rather than his father's, that we remember the most about.
Now, you could argue that that is because his reign was longer (38 years, in comparison to his father's 12) so there was simply more time for more events to happen in - or that he simply did more things - marrying six times instead of once and breaking from the Roman Church, for example, and you would have a point. But ultimately, very little "of interest" happened in Henry VII's reign because it was all so...normal. There were no cataclysmic, drastic events, just boringly everyday ones - and they don't make History.
This is a very long-winded way of saying "No one would really remember Ethelred the Unready if it wasn't for the St. Brice's Day Massacre because most other events in his reign were a bit normal and boring and fairly average for the time, but then this happened and it was kind of a big deal so people like to write about it and it's become important". (Which in itself is rather long-winded...)
Anyway, Ethelred the Unready (who's name, surprisingly, is accepted by the American English spell checker I can't work out how to change to English) was born in 968 and ascended the throne at the age of 10. Clearly, because of his age, he had members of the Witan (I suppose you could call this a forerunner to Parliament, but it wasn't really - it was more a bunch of super rich nobels, all male of course, vying to see who could have the most influence over the King) to advise him...only they weren't very good at doing that.
The Vikings (aka the Danes) had been conducting a campaign of destruction for many many years, and each King had to come up with a way of dealing with them. One of Ethelred's grandfathers, Alfred the Great (yes, the one who becomes King Arthur in the legends) managed to unite the English kingdoms and expel them by fighting with them until they surrendered, but for young Ethelred, this wasn't really an option. Instead, he was advised to pay off the Vikings.
For a few years this worked - though the taxes on his subjects were crippling, they managed to raise enough to pay the Danegeld ('Dane Gold...which was actually paid in silver)...until the Vikings demanded even greater payments, and invaded the country when they were not supplied with them. Obviously, this didn't go down to well with the English, which sent Ethelred (and his advisers) into a panic, so he did the only thing he could think of. On 13 November, 1002, he ordered the massacre of all Danes living in England.
The commands weren't exactly widely obeyed, and whilst it would have obviously been horrible for those Danes who had been living in the country for decades and become, in their minds, English to watch their family members be murdered, or be killed themselves, the event wasn't quite the massacre it is often made out to be. There are no figures available for the numbers killed, though we can see evidence of pockets of destruction still - earlier this year, in fact, the remains of between 34 and 38 men were found at St. John's College in Oxford, who are believed to have been killed in the massacre. However, the killings were mostly concentrated around the Southern parts of the country, particularly main towns Oxford and London, but fewer people were killed in the North, which is interesting because that is where most of the Vikings' attacks were centered.
Going back to my original point, this is clearly a Big Bad Event, and it is still well remembered today - in fact, it's the thing that Ethelred is most famous for. Not even his losing the crown to Swein Forkbeard (no, really...) and having to escape to France for a few years in exile come as high up on his list of 'achievements'.
And that is a shame, because Ethelred, for all his poor decisions (which may not have been his own fault - the meaning of 'unready' has changed since it was first bestowed upon him, and, back in his day, meant 'ill advised' rather than 'unprepared'. It was meant to be a pun, as Ethelred translates to 'good advise'...but I'm not sure I get Anglo-Saxon humour...) did actually do some pretty good things. Even with the large amounts of tax which were imposed on the country as a result of the Danegeld, his reign brought with it relatively good economic prosperity, and his judicial reforms, brought about by Archbishop Wulfstan, were the origin of the American grand jury, some say.
But "there was quite a bit of money floating about and we were starting to have a bit of a court system" doesn't sell books or films as well as "murder! Fighting! Great doom and gloom!" does. Which is probably why Eastenders is so popular...
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