The Danegelt or tribute, displaying at once the power of the invaders and the cowardice and effeminacy of the Saxon monarchs, rose to a large sum, and two millions[11] of Saxons were powerless to drive the invaders away.

In the year 1016, after the weak and wicked reign of the besotted _Ethelred_, justly surnamed the _Unready_, who to his cowardice in paying tribute added the cruelty of a wholesale massacre on St.Brice's Eve--since called the Danish St.Bartholomew--the heroic Edmund Ironsides could not stay the storm, but was content to divide the kingdom with _Knud_ (Canute) the Great.

Literary efforts were at an end.

For twenty-two years the Danish kings sat upon the throne of all England; and when the Saxon line was restored in the person of Edward the Confessor, a monarch not calculated to restore order and impart strength, in addition to the internal sources of disaster, a new element of evil had sprung up in the power and cupidity of the Normans.
Upon the death of Edward the Confessor, the claimants to the throne were _Harold_, the son of Godwin, and _William of Normandy_, both ignoring the claims of the Saxon heir apparent, Edgar Atheling.

Harold, as has been already said, fell a victim to the dissensions in his own ranks, as well as to the courage and strength of William, and thus Saxon England fell under Norman rule.
THE LITERARY PHILOSOPHY .-- The literary philosophy of this period does not lie far beneath the surface of the historic record.