St Brice's Day massacre

The name () refers to St. Brice, fifth-century Bishop of Tours, whose feast day is 13 November. After several decades of relative peace, Danish raids on English territory began again in earnest in the 980s, becoming markedly more serious in the early 990s. Following the Battle of Maldon in 991, Æthelred paid tribute, or Danegeld, to the Danish king. Æthelred married Emma of Normandy in 1002, daughter of Richard I of Normandy; her mother was a Dane named Gunnor, and their son became Edward the Confessor. Some Danes had arrived as traders and intermarried with the Anglo-Saxon population, and some settled in Wessex becoming farmers and were raising families in the Anglo-Saxon controlled areas of England. Meanwhile, Æthelred's kingdom had been ravaged by Danish raids every year from 997 to 1001; in 1001 a Danish army rampaged across southern England, indiscriminately burning many towns and inflicting a series of defeats on Anglo-Saxon forces that had been raised to oppose them. ==The massacre==

In 1002 Æthelred was told that the Danish men in his territory "would faithlessly take his life, and then all his councillors, and possess his kingdom afterwards". In response, "the king gave an order to slay all the Danes that were in England." Although the later Norman chronicler William of Jumièges claims that the entire Anglo-Danish population—including men, women, and children—were targeted, modern historians hold this to be a non-contemporary exaggeration, as there is no contemporary evidence of widespread slaughter, and the 12th century historian Henry of Huntingdon claimed that only Danish men in certain towns and regions were attacked by Æthelred's men. ==Oxford massacre==

The massacre in Oxford was referred to by Æthelred in a royal charter of 1004 as "a most just extermination" of Danes who had settled and "sprung up in this island". He goes on to proclaim it was with God's aid he rebuilt St Frideswide's Church (now Christ Church Cathedral): During an excavation at St John's College, Oxford, in 2008, archaeologists found the remains of 37 people who had been massacred. All of them appeared to be male, apart from two who were too young for their sex to be identified, and most were aged 16 to 25. Chemical analysis carried out in 2012 by Oxford University researchers suggests that the remains are Viking; older scars on some of the bones suggest a mixture of settlers and "Danes who had sprung up in this island", The bodies show evidence of multiple serious injuries caused by a range of weapons. Their manner of death was a frenzied attack while defenceless by more than one attacker and from all sides of the body. DNA testing of one of the bodies closely matched it with the remains of a man who had been excavated in Otterup, on the Island of Funen in Denmark, suggesting that they were either half-brothers or uncle and nephew. The Ridgeway Hill Viking burial pit near Weymouth, Dorset, a site dated as being between 970 and 1038 AD discovered when building a new relief road, contained 54 Scandinavian males all beheaded, suggesting a mass execution that may be linked to Oxford and the decree by Æthelred. ==Historians' views==

Some historians, such as Frank Stenton, have viewed the massacre as a political act which helped to provoke Sweyn's invasion of 1003. Audrey MacDonald states the massacre eventually led to the accession of Cnut in 1016. Other historians are more sympathetic to Æthelred. Simon Keynes in his Oxford Online DNB article on Æthelred described it as the reaction of a people who had suffered under repeated Danish attacks through mercenaries who had turned on their employers. Ian Howard believes the massacre was committed in response to the treachery of Æthelred's mercenary army, Æthelred's biographer Ryan Lavelle suggests that the massacre was probably confined to frontier towns such as Oxford, and larger towns with small Danish communities, such as Bristol, Gloucester and London within territory under Æthelred's control, noting lack of remorse shown in the Oxford charter which exploited ethnic hatred and millenarianism. It is clear that the massacre was not widespread. Numerous historians agree that not only was a campaign of widespread extermination across all of England implausible, but that there is extremely limited archaeological or historical evidence for wholesale slaughter. The killing in Oxford almost exclusively targeted males of military age. Historian Levi Roach also notes that it is impossible to conclusively link the mass grave in Oxford and those elsewhere to St. Brice's day, as there was regular sectarian violence across England during this period. That the Danelaw remained calm and content under Æthelred's hegemony has been taken as evidence that the killings were local to certain areas at best. "Needless to say," writes Ann Williams, "the decree was not aimed at the English of Scandinavian descent living in the eastern shires." Only a few years after the massacre, Æthelred granted land to a Dane named Toti outside Oxford, and many Scandinavian figures remained at his court, demonstrating that the St Brice's Day decree was not an order for a general extermination. ==See also==