The Danes at Exeter, being now cut off from all hope of relief, asked for terms, and the king granted them their lives on condition of their promising to leave Wessex and not to return.

This promise they swore by their most solemn oaths to observe, and marching northward passed out of Wessex and settled near Gloucester.

Some of the Saxons thought that the king had been wrong in granting such easy terms, but he pointed out to the ealdormen who remonstrated with him that there were many other and larger bands of Danes in Mercia and Anglia, and that had he massacred the band at Exeter--and this he could not have done without the loss of many men, as assuredly the Danes would have fought desperately for their lives--the news of their slaughter would have brought upon him fresh invasions from all sides.
By this time all resistance to the Danes in Mercia had ceased.

Again and again King Burhred had bought them off, but this only brought fresh hordes down upon him, and at last, finding the struggle hopeless, he had gone as a pilgrim to Rome, where he had died.

The Danes acted in Mercia as they had done in Northumbria.